Politics

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post really isn't about Mark Galli: Why reporters should know basics about Christian flocks

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back in the early 1980s, I worked at The Charlotte Observer during an interesting time in Presbyterian history. I am referring to the final crossing of the “t”s and the dotting of the “i”s that completed the union of the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the southern Presbyterian Church in the United States to create the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of the “Seven Sisters” of liberal Protestantism.

At that time, Charlotte was a rare Southern city — in that there were as many, or more, Presbyterians than there were Southern Baptists. Thus, a “Presbyterian” merger was big news.

Ah, but trying to write about this story in a mainstream newspaper was a nightmare, due to the complexity of Presbyterianism in that region. You start with the churches that merged, the UPC and the PCUS. Then you add the PCUSA. For starters, do you also know the differences between the PCUSA, the ARPC (Associate Reformed Presbyterian), the CPC (Cumberland Presbyterian), the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America), the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian) and the EPC (Evangelical Presbyterian Church)?

You couldn’t cover Charlotte back then without being able to handle this doctrinal alphabet soup.

This brings me to Mark Galli and the firestorm about his Christianity Today editorial (GetReligion “big idea” post here) asking for Donald Trump to be removed from the White House. At the moment, some journalists are acting like CT is part of the Religious Right, while Trump-ites are saying it’s now on the religious left. All of this, of course, is linked to confusion about how to define That Word — “evangelicalism.”

As you would expect, Galli — who is retiring as CT editor — has been in a hot spotlight.

So who is this guy? The Los Angeles Times offered a short profile (yes, the original headline called Galli an “evangelist” editor) that included this:

Galli was born in San Francisco and grew up in Santa Cruz — liberal hotspots and somewhat unlikely cities in which to develop strong evangelical influences. And yet Galli has spent much of his career at Christianity Today, which Billy Graham founded in the 1950s.

“When I was a teenager ... my mother had a conversion experience actually watching Billy Graham on TV,” Galli said.

During a difficult emotional time, Galli’s mother got on her knees in their home, in front of the the television, and accepted Jesus Christ, he said. A few months later, on Dec. 19, 1965 — 54 years, to the day, before Galli published this editorial — he too accepted Christ during an altar call. …

Like those evangelicals who support Trump, Galli shares their anti-abortion stance and support for religious freedom. But he said he doesn’t understand why Trump’s supporters seem to dig in their heels when defending what he considers the president’s immoral behavior. 

This sounds like a rather ordinary, West Coast version of an “evangelical” biography — but one that contains zero specific information about the editor’s denominational or theological background.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

What's the one thing journalists need to learn from the Christianity Today firestorm?

, , , , , ,

Let’s consider this an educational moment. Since journalists are paying lots of attention, right now, to Christianity Today and other things linked to the late Billy Graham, let’s do a flashback to some poll numbers published in the fall of 2018.

This polling was done by the Billy Graham Center Institute at Wheaton College, working with LifeWay Research. One of the goals was to understand why evangelicals voted the way that they did in 2016.

Lots of things grabbed my attention, but here are some numbers that I think journalists need to ponder at the moment in light of the recent CT editorial by departing editor Mark Galli. You may have heard about it. The headline proclaimed: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”

But back to CT in 2018. The bytes that jumped out at me:

* Only half of the evangelicals polled voted for the candidate that they truly wanted to support in the White House race.

* One out of three said that they voted AGAINST Hillary Clinton or AGAINST Donald Trump.

* One in four white evangelicals said that they voted AGAINST Trump. One in three black evangelicals said the same thing.

* At least 20% of evangelicals didn’t vote (and I’ve seen figures as high as 40% elsewhere).

Put it all together and a high percentage — 77% in this poll — of white evangelicals did said that they voted for Trump. However, echoing earlier CT reporting, only about half of them said that they wanted to do so.

I wrote a national column about that with this headline: “Complex realities behind that ‘81 percent of evangelicals love Trump’ media myth.” Here’s how it ended:

Waves of news about this 81 percent vote have “created a simplistic, negative caricature of who evangelicals are, right now,” said Ed Stetzer, director of the Billy Graham Center. “It allows lazy people to keep saying that all of those evangelicals are ‘all in’ for Donald Trump. ... They’re trying to turn Trump voters into Trump.

”Trump voters are not Trump, and that’s certainly true for most evangelicals.”

So what’s the Big Idea that journalists need to learn from all of this, including the Galli editorial?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

BBC tells us where the next clash with radicalized Islam will be: In the Sahel

, , , , , ,

It was a small news article about Niger, a country almost no one has heard of.

There’s been an attack on a base there that leaves 71 soldiers dead, BBC wrote. This area of the world has been heating up in a major way as a brew of toxic Islam mixed with the possibility of yet another caliphate being declared in the area at some point.

All this is taking place in the Sahel, the southern edge of the Saharan Desert.

How many news readers could find that on a map?

Militants have killed at least 71 soldiers in an attack on a military base in western Niger - the deadliest in several years.

Twelve soldiers were also injured in the attack in Inates, the army says.

No group has yet said it was behind the killings. But militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group (IS) have staged attacks in the Sahel region this year despite the presence of thousands of regional and foreign troops.

Security analysts say the insurgency in Niger is escalating at an alarming rate.

Is the word “militants” these days so clear that everyone automatically knows that the adjective “Muslim” or “Islamic” goes with it? And what happens to those they attack?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

This weekend 'think piece' is not about l'affaire Christianity Today: Please read it anyway

, , , , , , , , , ,

Believe it or not, I had already selected a Dallas Morning News essay by Baylor University historian Thomas about evangelicals and politics as this weekend’s “think piece” before l’affaire Christianity Today rocked the chattering classes that live on Twitter.

The double-decker headline proclaims, “When political pollsters talk about ‘evangelicals,’ they aren’t talking about all of us: The evangelical leaders whom the president cites are actually a small group.”

Kidd has been everywhere in recent weeks, with due cause, because of his new Yale University Press book: “Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.”

Somebody, somewhere, really needs to buy a truckload this book and distribute copies to every journalist in America (and maybe the world) who plans to cover the 2020 White House race. And not just because of Trump! There are crucial “evangelical” plot lines unfolding linked to African-American evangelicals (ask Mayor Pete Buttigieg) and the growing number of evangelical Latinos (think suburban voters in Florida).

But, wait, is the word “evangelical” a political term? Here is a bite from a recent column I did on Kidd’s work:

Some journalists and pollsters are now operating on the assumption that white evangelicals are the only evangelicals that matter, noted Kidd. … A few have, however, started to realize that many Americans who self-identify as "evangelicals" are not walking the talk. 

That has been common knowledge since the late 1970s, when Gallup researchers began asking hard questions about religious beliefs and the practice of those beliefs in daily life. Gallup cut its estimate that "evangelicals" were 34% of America's population to 18% – a number that would shock many journalists, as well as GOP activists.

"Evangelicals are covered, they are important, when they are a factor in politics — period," said Kidd.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Final 2019 podcast: Oh-so familiar Top 10 religion stories list (with a few exceptions)

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Near the end of every year, the Religion News Association (the flock previously known as the Religion Newswriters Association) posts its list of the year’s Top 10 religion-beat stories.

It’s tough work, but somebody has to do it. I don’t envy the scribes who have to create the list of events that go on the ballot.

The archive on the RNA website only goes back to 2002, but I have been writing annual columns on this topic since forever, or close to it (click here for my Internet-era archive). As you would expect, this was the top of the final “Crossroads” podcast for 2019 (click here to tune that in).

When you’ve been studying lists of this kind for four decades, it’s easy to spot patterns. The RNA list will almost always contain:

* Some event or trend linked to politics and this often has something to with evangelicals posing a threat to American life.

* Mainline Protestants gathered somewhere to fight over attempts to modernize doctrines linked to sex and marriage.

* The pope said something headline-worthy about some issue linked to politics or sexuality.

* Someone somewhere attacked lots of someones in the name of God.

* There may or may not be a story about Southern Baptists waging war on one another for some reason linked to biblical authority.

This year’s RNA Top 10 was way more predictable than usual, in terms of offering sort-of-trend updates on old news. The No. 1 story, however, was truly big news:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Friday Five: CT's editorial, LDS church's $100 billion, Catholic priests, SBC sex abuse, holiday grief

, , , , , , , ,

Did you hear about the editor-in-chief of a leading evangelical magazine calling Donald Trump unfit to lead the nation?

But enough about the editorial that Marvin Olasky and World magazine wrote before the 2016 presidential election.

Christianity Today broke the internet — or at least crashed its own website — with retiring editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s editorial Thursday making the case for Trump’s removal from office.

Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey, a former online editor at CT, tweeted that her mouth “dropped open” when Galli’s piece hit the World Wide Web.

Me? I was about as surprised as I could be without actually being surprised.

As The Atlantic’s Emma Green noted:

Within hours of the article’s publication, the magazine’s website had crashed and Galli had been invited to speak on CNN and NPR, among other outlets. To be clear, Galli’s editorial in no way signals that evangelicals are about to defect, en masse, from Trump or the Republican Party. Christianity Today, also known as CT, mostly appeals to well-educated readers who are moderate in every way, including politically and theologically. Much of its readership is international, and many older print subscribers might not even register the small, seismic event that just happened on CT’s website. And polling over the past few months has consistently shown that white evangelicals remain among Trump’s staunchest supporters.

And at the New York Times, Elizabeth Dias pointed out:

The editorial was a surprising move for a publication that has generally avoided jumping into bitter partisan battles. But it was unlikely to signal a significant change in Mr. Trump’s core support; the magazine has long represented more centrist thought, and popular evangelical leaders with large followings continue to rally behind the president.

More later.

But for now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

The Washington Post's long quest to explain Buttigieg's race problem while ignoring religion

, , , , ,

The Washington Post had a front-page story this week on Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s “long quest to bridge racial gap,” as the print headline put it.

The online title: “Inside Pete Buttigieg’s years-long, and often clumsy, quest to understand the black experience.”

You get the idea.

According to the Post article, the surprise 2020 contender’s struggle to connect with African Americans goes back to his college days.

Even though the piece tops 3,000 words — a novel in the world of newspapers — one crucial factor is hardly mentioned. Given that this is GetReligion, it probably won’t take you long to guess what.

If you’ll forgive me for sounding like a broken record, I’ll refer back to a post I wrote earlier this month asking, “Serious question: Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?”

In that post, I noted:

The stories get into poverty and other crucial issues, but I’m going to focus on a specific point raised in all three articles: the connection, if any, between Buttigieg’s sexual orientation and his low support among black voters in the Bible Belt.

I keep waiting for a major newspaper reporter (perhaps a Godbeat pro is available?) to explore that question. So far, it hasn’t happened. Or if it has, I missed it (in which case I’d welcome a link).

As for the Post story, it offers some interesting anecdotes on Buttigieg’s life experiences with African Americans, opening with his time as an intern for a black reporter in Chicago:


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

After Brexit, will United Kingdom become an untied kingdom? If so, what about its churches?

, , , , , , ,

The British election December 12 was as dramatic as America’s in 2016. Some claim the smashing triumph of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives over Jeremy Corbyn and Labour means Donald Trump will be re-elected if U.S. Democrats likewise go hard left. Or not.

Whatever the U.S. ripples, the inevitable “Brexit” from the European Union is epochal for the U.K. 

Journalists should be pondering an equally historic possibility. Philip Jenkins, a Baylor University historian of religion whose Christian Century columns about overseas trends are always worth reading, posed the following on Patheos.com days before the Brits balloted.

What if Brexit turns the United Kingdom into an untied kingdom? What if the nation with the world’s fifth largest economy dissolves? What happens to ties between some of the churches that are involved?

In terms of history, not long ago we saw the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia break into assorted nation-states, and before that the Czechs and Slovaks split up.

England dominates the four segments of the nation officially named The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Jenkins contends that today’s supposed “British” government sees itself "only in terms of England” and he predicts in coming years “the nation of Great Britain will have ceased to exist.”

A crackup’s first stage would be the departure of Scotland after 312 years. In a 2014 referendum, an impressive 45 percent of Scots voted to quit the U.K. The potential break was further demonstrated in the Britain-wide referendum that backed Brexit when a lopsided 62 percent of Scots voted to remain in the European Union. The pro-independence Scottish National Party surged in last week’s voting. Jenkins claims Scotland’s breakaway is now “just a matter of time.”  

Northern Ireland likewise voted to remain in the European Union, by 56 percent.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

CNN's religion editor delves into Salvation Army's effort to change its 'anti-LGBTQ' reputation

, , , , ,

“As Chick-fil-A capitulates, should press characterize Salvation Army and FCA as anti-LGBTQ?”

That was the title on a post I wrote last month after news broke that Chick-fil-A would stop donating to certain groups deemed anti-gay, including the Salvation Army.

Chick-fil-A’s decision has continued to make headlines since then, including an interesting story last week in World magazine. The evangelical news publication noted that despite the recent severed ties, most of the fast-food chicken chain’s charitable giving still goes to Christian ministries.

The chicken sandwich brouhaha is a part — but not the whole, um, chicken enchilada — of a big report out today by CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke.

Instead, Burke focuses on the bigger issue of the Salvation Army and its effort to change its “'anti-LGBTQ” reputation, as CNN describes it:

(CNN) Salvation Army bell ringers, the folks you see jingling bells by red kettles at Christmastime, will be carrying a new prop this year: A card explaining the Christian church and charity's approach to LGBTQ people.

Designed to help bell ringers answer questions from passersby, the cards include a link to online testimonials from LGBTQ people helped by the Salvation Army's array of social services, from homeless shelters to rehab clinics and food pantries.

"For years, Facebook posts, forwarded emails and rumors have been leading some people to believe the Salvation Army does not serve members of the LGBTQ community," the cards read. "These accusations are simply not true."

To many Americans, the Army's social services may be far more familiar than its politics or theology. Ranked number two in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of "America's Favorite Charities," it raised $1.5 billion in donations last year. The Red Kettle campaign began 129 years ago, when a Salvationist put out a pot for the needy on Market Street in San Francisco.

But to some in the LGBTQ community, the Salvation Army has another reputation. For decades, they've accused Salvationsts of denying some services to same-sex couples, advocating against gay rights and adhering to a traditional theology that considers gay sex sinful. At times, LGBTQ activists have dropped fake dollar bills or vouchers protesting the Salvation Army in the red kettles.

First off, kudos to Burke for noting way up high that the Salvation Army is a church as well as a charity. Many people don’t know that.


Please respect our Commenting Policy