LGBTQ

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Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that

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Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that

Once upon a time, back in the days of the Bill Clinton White House, there was a strong church-state coalition that stretched, basically, from the Assemblies of God to the Unitarians. The legal activists in this coalition didn’t agree on everything, but they did agree on some basic First Amendment principles that helped defend believers in a wide variety of religious minorities.

If you know the history of that era, you can sense that a few important words are missing from the recent Los Angeles Times report (behind a paywall) that ran at Yahoo!News with this aggressive headline: “Court says San Jose school district must recognize Christian club that excludes LGBTQ kids.”

That headline, of course, could have noted — somehow — that the this victory for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was based on the same legal principles that defend the First Amendment rights of LGBTQ support groups at the same school.

The key is that there are two crucial words — “equal access” — that are missing from this rather solid story, which includes enough quoted material from voices on both sides for readers to figure out what is going on (if they have a background in church-state studies). Hold that thought.

First, here is the Times overture:

In spring 2019, a teacher at Pioneer High School in San Jose posted a message on his classroom whiteboard questioning a "Sexual Purity" statement that a club for Christian student athletes was requiring its leaders to sign.

The club's statement said sexual relationships should exist only between married, heterosexual couples. The teacher wrote that he was "deeply saddened" that a club on the public school campus made its leaders "affirm" those ideas, and he asked students what they thought.

The resulting firestorm led to the San Jose Unified School District rescinding recognition of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for excluding LGBTQ students in violation of the district's nondiscrimination policy. In response, the club and its international parent organization sued in federal court, alleging religious discrimination.

On Monday, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes won a major victory when a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the club be reinstated as an official student group for the current school year while litigation between the parties continues in the lower district court.

Shutting down the FCA violated the “nondiscrimination policy”?


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Do the math: Was Archbishop Rembert Weakland a flawed hero or an erudite heretic?

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Do the math: Was Archbishop Rembert Weakland a flawed hero or an erudite heretic?

Writing obituaries about controversial — but to many people beloved — public figures is a difficult task that involves some complicated mathematics.

The death of former Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee is a classic example and, here is the crucial point in this post, this was not a simple matter of “left” vs. “right.”

That said, there is no question that for decades — during the papacies of St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — Weakland was a liberal Catholic superstar, with the word “liberal” in this case defined in political, cultural and doctrinal terms. But then there were revelations about his ethics and private life.

Thus, it was not surprising to see a double-decker New York Times headline with this kind of content:

Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Critic of Vatican Orthodoxy, Dies at 95

In his long career, he was an intellectual touchstone for progressive Catholic reformers. But he resigned after the disclosure of a long-ago love affair.

The Gray Lady’s obit also included this block of background material:

In the 1980s and ’90s, Archbishop Weakland had been a thorny problem for the Vatican. Addressing issues that troubled many of America’s more than 60 million Catholics, he championed new roles for women; questioned church bans on abortion, birth control and divorce; and challenged the Vatican’s insistence on celibacy for an all-male priesthood.

He also became a leading critic of America’s economic and social policies during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, drafting a landmark 120-page pastoral letter on the economy that called for reordering the nation’s priorities to cut military spending and attack poverty and inequality.

However, let me stress that the Times placed that salute to Weakland AFTER a pretty solid, accurate look at his scandalous fall and other revelations that emerged about his behavior and decisions, for decades, during the Church of Rome’s hellish clergy sexual abuse crisis.

If you want to dig into the hard facts about Weakland’s role in that crisis, click here for crucial material — “Deposition of Archbishop Emeritus Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B.” — by the independent Bishop Accountability organization. That is an organization that defied a simple “left” or “right” tag.


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Bonus podcast: Clemente Lisi on news about 'good' Catholics, as opposed to 'bad' ones

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Bonus podcast: Clemente Lisi on news about 'good' Catholics, as opposed to 'bad' ones

Here is a question from the news, sort of, that cuts to the heart of this bonus GetReligion podcast by Clemente Lisi, taken from his on-air visit this week with Todd Wilken at Lutheran Public Radio (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

If Gov. Ron DeSantis started carrying a rosary, and talking about it quite a bit in the context of his Catholic faith (think President Joe Biden), would journalists in major newsrooms see this as a good thing or a bad thing? Possible answers: “Yes,” “No” and “You need to ask?”

Go ahead, if you want to, and think about it in the context of these recent posts: “Concerning the right-wing rosary attack — was that Atlantic feature really 'news'?” and “Tip for reporters — Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes.”

In reality, the spark for this podcast came from Religion Dispatches piece the other day, by exevangelical trans scribe Chrissy Stroop, with this headline: “Media fail to acknowledge that 2024 hopeful Ron DeSantis is as Catholic as Biden.” Hold that thought.

The Religion Dispatches piece included commentary on a March 22 GetReligion post with this headline: “As Florida's DeSantis wages culture war, his Catholic faith isn't news — unless it's used to attack him.” By the way, editors there failed to note that Lisi is Catholic, as opposed to evangelical, which seems relevant.

Here is the key passage from the Lisi post:

The two things that lots of people don’t want to read about these days is the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump, part of a larger trend regarding news fatigue in this country. Unfortunately, this post will mention both and only because it is about Ron DeSantis.

The Florida governor has been in the news the past few years because of his connection to the former president and a virus that paralyzed the planet for two years. A hero to the right and bogeyman to the left, DeSantis has received plenty of mainstream news coverage — much of it one-sided — because of his use of so-called culture war issues to push legislation.

DeSantis, who is running for re-election and among the favorites to run for the White House in 2024, has been a lightning rod for Democrats and a focus of criticism from the mainstream press. … While the coverage has predictably focused on politics, the religion-news hooks in these stories have largely been ignored — unless they were highlighted to be used against him.


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Podcast: Journalists should ask if faith-based schools clearly state their doctrines on sexuality

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Podcast: Journalists should ask if faith-based schools clearly state their doctrines on sexuality

I forget who originally came up with the term “Romeaphobia.”

This can be defined as the hatred or fear of all things that can be viewed as links to Roman Catholicism or the early church in general. Obviously, this affects issues linked to worship and church governance. However, in my experience (I grew up in Texas), many evangelicals (especially Baptists) have a fear of clear, authoritative doctrinal statements that, you know, might be interpreted as “Roman” creeds. All together now: We are “Bible Christians” and that’s that.

I am not saying this to take a shot at my heritage (I am very thankful for the deep faith and examples of my family and my father was a Southern Baptist pastor). The reason I mention this up is because, in my opinion, this anti-creedal Romeaphobia is playing a major role in an important news story all over America. This was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Does this USA Today headline sound familiar? It should, for readers from sea to shining sea: “Christian Florida school tells parents gay and transgender students must 'leave immediately'.”

My goal here is to offer advice to reporters who want to do accurate, fair-minded coverage of these church-state skirmishes (let’s hope there are some out there). I’m also offering press-relations advice to terrified leaders of Christian schools at all levels, from kindergartens to colleges. The Romeaphobia angle? That takes us into legal nuts-and-bolts questions about these conflicts.

Let’s start with the rather familiar USA Today overture:

A Florida-based Christian school sent out an email informing parents that LGBTQ-identifying students "will be asked to leave the school immediately."

According to the email obtained by NBC News, the top administrator of Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida, Barry McKeen, sent the email to the families for the kindergarten-grade 12 school on June 6. He later confirmed and doubled down on the policy in an Aug. 18 video on the school's official Facebook page.

The June email read: "We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church. Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately."

For starters, private schools — liberal and conservative — have First Amendment rights, including the right to clearly state their foundational doctrines and, thus, disciplines that apply to staff, faculty and students. Tip No. 1 for reporters and church leaders: Get to know the details of the UNANIMOUS 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision commonly referred to as the Hosanna Tabor case.

But we need to figure out what actually happened in this Florida case.


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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

There are moments in journalism that stand out more than others. One of those moments is when a certain piece — whether it’s a news story, analysis or opinion — gets a lot of attention by a large group of people for good and/or for bad reasons.

For a set of bad reasons, The Atlantic piece on the weaponization of the rosary was that piece for many Catholics and those who keep a watchful eye on media coverage of matters pertaining to the largest Christian denomination in the United States.

The piece — not necessarily a news story, but it was not labeled as commentary or even analysis — became a viral conversation topic among many family and friends over the last week. While the issue of Christian nationalism is important to understand, the bigger discussion — and questions I had to field — was more like this: What’s wrong with journalism these days?

That’s the central preoccupation of many — especially those of us who have been doing this for decades. (For more on that, please check out tmatt’s post and podcast from this past Friday. This view of what was going on in this piece may shock you.)

There were many lines from the Atlantic piece that stood out, but one that did most was this one:

The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.

There’s the thesis of the piece, the connect-the-dots language linking strange behavior to current tensions in Catholic life in America.

There’s plenty to unpack here, but the reality is that citing a few political websites claiming to represent Catholic thought and then adding a smattering of social media memes is no way to gauge for what anyone really thinks and believes.


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Look at a United Methodist timeline: Why are conservatives going nuclear with lawsuits?

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Look at a United Methodist timeline: Why are conservatives going nuclear with lawsuits?

The slowly evolving trainwreck that is the disunited United Methodist Church is an unbelievably complicated story and I have lots of sympathy for journalists who are being asked to cover it — week after week — in normal-length news reports.

I have some right to say this, since I have been covering this story since 1984 or earlier.

For starters, there is no one United Methodist Church and there hasn’t been one for decades. See this flashback column that I wrote a few years ago: “Old fault lines can be seen in the ‘seven churches’ of divided Methodism,” which was followed by “Doctrinal debates that define the divided United Methodists.”

The bottom line, once again: This war has always been about biblical authority and a host of other doctrinal clashes, with battles about homosexuality grabbing the headlines.

Anyway, I was reading another update from The Nashville Tennessean the other day — “United Methodists grapple with schism as 300-plus churches leave across U.S.” (high paywall) — and something hit me (other than the fact that “schism” still isn’t an accurate word for what is happening here). The key was looking at several key events on a timeline.

First, let’s plug in a key fact from a recent Religion News Service report about the doctrinally conservative UMC congregations who are trying to hit the denominational exit doors in Western North Carolina and Florida. The lawyers trying to sue the UMC establishment are, you see, are working on a deadline

A lawyer for the Western North Carolina Annual Conference, which has more than 1,000 congregations, responded … saying it would not comply since the request does not follow the disaffiliation plan approved by a special session of the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in 2019.

That plan allows churches to leave the denomination through the end of 2023. They can take their properties with them after paying two years of apportionments and pension liabilities.

Tick, tick, tick.

That 2019 General Conference was, of course, the watershed event in which a coalition of growing Global South churches and some conservative Americans infuriated the shrinking UMC establishment by passing the “Traditional Plan,” while also (#TriggerWarning) urging enforcement of “Book of Discipline” doctrinal stands on marriage and sexuality.


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Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

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Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

There was nothing unusual about Nigerian Archbishop Henry Ndukuba leading the 2021 dedication rites for Holy Trinity Cathedral Church, which was packed with Nigerian Anglicans and a dozen or so bishops.

But this historic service was held in Houston and the cathedral is not part of the Diocese of Texas or the U.S. Episcopal Church. Some clergy at this Church of Nigeria North American Mission event were recognized as Anglicans by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some were not.

This puzzle became more complicated recently during Lambeth 2022, which Nigeria boycotted, along with the churches of Uganda and Rwanda. Other Global South bishops, during Lambeth standoffs with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby over the status of doctrines on marriage and sex, declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops.

"There is a profound asymmetric quality to the Anglican Communion, where the voice of the bulk of its membership is either absent or muted," said the Rev. David Goodhew of St. Barnabas Church in Middlesborough, England. He is the author of a series of articles about African Anglicanism for Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church, an independent Anglican publication founded in 1878.

"If one adds up the number of bishops who didn't share Holy Communion at Lambeth … that is a very large number," he said. "I have been startled by the number of descriptions that said this Lambeth was a success. I don't know how one makes that claim when it would appear the bulk of the Anglican Communion's bishops couldn't come together to receive Communion. That looks like a disaster."

Bottom line: Global South Anglicans are experiencing a "volcano of growth" and remain "at loggerheads" with the shrinking churches of the United Kingdom, North America and other western nations. While most Global South bishops serve growing flocks -- roughly 75% of active worshipers in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion -- many western bishops lead what Goodhew called "micro-dioceses" with under 1,000 active members or "mini-dioceses" with fewer than 5,000.

The Church of Nigeria, meanwhile, claims 17 million members and the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, near Boston, estimates active participants at 22 million. The other churches skipping Lambeth 2022 were Uganda, with 10 million members, and Rwanda, with 1 million members.

The Church of England remains Anglicanism's power hub. It has 26 million members, but 2019 weekly attendance was about 679,000 -- before the COVID-19 crisis.


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Podcast: Concerning the right-wing rosary attack -- was that Atlantic feature really 'news'?

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Podcast: Concerning the right-wing rosary attack -- was that Atlantic feature really 'news'?

No doubt about it. The early favorite for the wild headline of 2022 has to be “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol” atop that viral feature from The Atlantic. And that now-deleted graphic with the rosary made of bullet holes? That will show up in media-bias features for years (maybe decades) to come.

Yes, I know that the editors tried to tone that down with a replacement headline — but it’s the original screamer that perfectly captured the article’s thesis. Oh, and the editors updated a mistake in the second line of the original headline with that new sub-headline: “Why are sacramental beads suddenly showing up next to AR-15s online?”

Attention Atlantic editors: Here is a quick guide to the seven Roman Catholic sacraments. Correction, please.

So here was the first question in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). It’s a question your GetReligionistas have been asking more often in the past decade (even before Orange Man Bad): What WAS this thing? A news feature? A piece of blunt analysis? An opinion screed? And here’s the question I saw several people ask: Did the Atlantic editors set out to publish an anti-Catholic classic?

Here’s my hot take: I think the Atlantic editors thought they were publishing a PRO-Catholic piece that set out to defend GOOD Catholics who want to change centuries of church teachings from the BAD Catholics who want to defend those teachings, especially orthodox doctrines on marriage, sexuality, abortion, etc.

Why do I think that? Here is the crucial part of the article, from my point of view, starting with the overture:

Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.

Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants.


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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

The journalism nightmare begins with an email, a text or, in the old days, a telephone call or a photocopy of a document in the mail.

Sources may or may not demand to remain anonymous. They want your newsroom to dive into a controversy that — in most cases — involves money, sex, power and what violations of religious law, criminal laws or both.

The source has tons of information on one side of a conflict that has two sides, or more. There is no way to write the story without multiple voices speaking — but only one side will talk. Nine times out of 10, there are legitimate issues of confidentiality, often legalities linked to counseling or medical care.

The reporter describes all of this to an editor. It’s clear this story will require untold hours of research (money, in newsroom terms) and, if the story ever pans out, the result will be long and complicated. The editor’s eyes glaze over. The question: Why is this story worth the time, money and effort?

I got one of those calls, long ago, about the sex life and financial times of PTL’s Jim Bakker. Eventually Charlotte Observer editors passed, pulling me off that lead. I left and, years later, a great reporter (see the essential Charles E. Shepard book) pulled the evolving threads together for a Pulitzer.

I cannot imagine how many emails and calls Robert Downen and Houston Chronicle reporters fielded before being allowed to dig into years of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m waiting for the book.

All of this is a long introduction to the challenges that, I suspect, loom over this double-decker Religion News Service headline:

Why the largest US Lutheran denomination apologized to a Latino congregation

It’s been a ‘perfect storm’ of charismatic personalities and a heightened awareness of racism, all brewing in one of the country’s whitest denominations

But the story doesn’t open with issues linked to race.

What we see in this unbelievably complicated story is a head-on collision between key elements of postmodern theories about “intersectionality.” Think race, sex, gender, economics and the demographic realities facing the declining world of oldline liberal Protestantism.


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