Politics

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2020 White House race: U.S. bishops don't want to make news, but it'll be hard avoid it

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You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Religion-beat pros will understand if cliches such as these are being muttered by members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops these days. Why? As Americans prepare to decide who will be their next president this November, members of the Catholic hierarchy are finding themselves in a no-win situation.

Do they speak favorably of President Donald Trump, helping him potentially to win re-election, or do they lend a hand to Democratic challenger Joe Biden helping the former vice president become just the second Catholic to ever serve as a U.S. president? Catholic leaders — be it the pope, cardinals, bishops or your local parish priest — don’t openly endorse candidates for political office.

There is a reason for that. The main reason is that it fosters division among a very large spectrum of people who are all part of the same denomination. IRS rules also forbid nonprofit institutions like churches from engaging in partisan politics — something some pastors avoid by saying they are speaking on behalf of themselves, not the church they represent.

While a few members of other Christian bodies choose to openly back a candidate (for example, some evangelicals and Trump; African-American church leaders and Biden), Catholic prelates see an endorsement as something that could weaken the church’s own authority and belief system.

In other words, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t if you’re a Catholic leader. Still, this election will raise all kinds of unavoidable moral and religious questions for Trump and Biden.

Which brings us to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City. He was the target of outrage on the part of left-leaning Catholics for the way he spoke favorably of Trump following a phone call the president had with several U.S. bishops. Dolan, it should be noted, has also received abuse from the church’s right-wing cheering section for the way he’s handled the issue of gay priests.

Trump, on a call with bishops, called himself the best president in “the history of the Catholic Church.”


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New York Times on young Republicans and African-American voters? Look for familiar ghosts

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What we have here are two New York Times political stories that really needed input from (a) the religion-news desk, (b) polling experts who “get religion” or (c) both.

Both of these important reports are, to use GetReligion-speak, haunted by “religion ghosts.” If you look at them through the lens of politics, alone, then you won’t “get” what is happening with millions of voters who don’t want to vote for Donald Trump in 2020, but believe that they will have no choice but to do just that.

The headline on one story states: “Trump Pushes Young Republicans Away. Abortion Pulls Them Back.”

Oh my. I wonder if religious convictions might have something to do with this? You think?

So let’s do some familiar searches in this text. How about “church”? Zip. Maybe “God”? Zero. Surely “religion” or “religious” will show up? Nyet. How about “Christian”? Nope.

That’s strange. Look at this summary material and I think you will sense the ghost that is present.

Like millennials, who are now in their mid-20s to 30s, members of Generation Z — born after 1996 — tend to lean left. But there are still plenty of young Republicans, and the generational divide that is so apparent between younger and older Democrats is no less present on the other side of the aisle. It’s just less visible.

In interviews with two dozen Republicans ages 18 to 23, almost all of them, while expressing fundamentally conservative views, identified at least one major issue on which they disagreed with the party line. But more often than not, they said one issue kept them committed to the party: abortion.

While polling shows an age gap in opinions on abortion, it is smaller than the gaps on some other issues, and researchers say that for people who oppose abortion, that opposition has become more central to their political choices.


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The Atlantic probes QAnon sect and finds (#shocking) another evangelical-ish conspiracy

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There are times, when reading the sprawling “Shadowland” package at The Atlantic, when one is tempted to think that the goal was to weave a massive liberal conspiracy theory about the role that conservative conspiracy theories play in Donald Trump’s America.

At the center of this drama — of course — is evangelical Christianity. After all, evangelical Christians are to blame for Trump’s victory, even if they didn’t swing all those crucial states in the Catholic-labor Rust Belt.

It’s almost as if evangelicals are playing, for some strategic minds on the left, the same sick, oversized role in American life that some evangelicals assign to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates and all those liberal Southern Baptist intellectuals who love Johnny Cash and Jane Austen.

Let’s focus on this piece: “The Prophecies of Q.” Toward the end, a fervent supporter of Trump and the mysterious QAnon offers her credo. It’s clear that she speaks for, you know, millions of people hiding like terrorist sleeper cells in ordinary pews from coast to coast.

This had been something she was reluctant to speak about at first. Now, she said, “I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction. I feel like if it was deceitful, in my spirit, God would be telling me, ‘Enough’s enough.’ But I don’t feel that. I pray about it. I’ve said, ‘Father, should I be wasting my time on this?’ … And I don’t feel that feeling of I should stop.”

Well, “GOD WINS” and all that.

This leads us to an update on “The Late Great Planet Earth” and legions of similar end-of-the-world classics, only this time the man on great white horse (or whatever) is Trump:

Arthur Jones, the director of the documentary film Feels Good Man … told me that QAnon reminds him of his childhood growing up in an evangelical-Christian family in the Ozarks. He said that many people he knew then, and many people he meets now in the most devout parts of the country, are deeply interested in the Book of Revelation, and in trying to unpack “all of its pretty-hard-to-decipher prophecies.” Jones went on: “I think the same kind of person would all of a sudden start pulling at the threads of Q and start feeling like everything is starting to fall into place and make sense. If you are an evangelical and you look at Donald Trump on face value, he lies, he steals, he cheats, he’s been married multiple times, he’s clearly a sinner. But you are trying to find a way that he is somehow part of God’s plan.”

Author Adrienne LaFrance does note that conspiracy theories exist on the cultural and political left (maybe, kind of), as well as the theological and political right. But it’s clear evangelical Protestantism is the X factor in this growing threat to America and the world.


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Jess Fields meets Ryan Burge: As you would image, they're talking 'nones,' 'evangelicals,' etc.

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So here is the question: Is podcaster Jess Fields just going to work his way through the entire GetReligion team, sooner or later?

I think it would be logical to do that, since Fields is especially interested in topics linked to religion, current events and the impact of journalism on all of that. You can see that with a quick glance at his homepage at Apple Podcasts.

The other day, I spent an hour or so online with him and that podcast link was included in the GetReligion post that I wrote about Fields and his work: “Jess Fields got tired of short, shallow news interviews: So he started doing loooong podcasts.”

You may recall that Fields is a small businessman in Houston who also has worked quite a bit in nonpartisan think tanks linked to state and local governments. He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and that has affected a few of his podcasts.

So now he has had a lengthy chat (very long, even by Fields standards) with social scientist, and progressive Baptist minister, Ryan Burge.

Why not? Burge is all over the place right now — writing and chatting about the tsunami of charts, survey samples and commentary that he keeps releasing, day after day, on Twitter. He also showed up the other day in an NBC special:


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New podcast: Franklin Graham comes to Central Park, earning solid quotes in Gray Lady

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It’s easy to argue about Franklin Graham.

For starters, he is the heir of much of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham, and it’s hard to name a figure in mainstream Christianity who was more beloved than Billy Graham.

At the same time, Franklin Graham has openly aligned himself with Donald Trump, turning away from even the modest criticisms he offered during the primary season before the 2016 shocker. His theological critique of all of this has been blunt, to say the least.

That’s his style, and people love to argue about that. As I said in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), Franklin Graham has rarely used a flyswatter when a baseball bat will do.

But the fact that so many people ARGUE about Franklin Graham implies that there are good things to say about him (from multiple points of view) as well as bad things to say (from multiple points of view). It should be easy to write provocative, balanced news stories about him because there are so many people, with so many different perspectives, who have strong opinions about him.

However, mainstream press coverage of Franklin Graham tends to portray him as — let me state this mildly — the tacky son of a great man who is now one of the bigoted evangelical vandals who want to sack the American Rome (that would be New York City).

This brings me to an interesting, and in many ways admirable, New York Time story that ran the other day with this sprawling two-deck headline:

Franklin Graham Is Taking Down His N.Y. Hospital, but Not Going Quietly

His critics accuse him of discriminating against L.G.B.T. people. “Just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m against them,” he said.

This lengthy story contains quite a bit of material in which Graham defends his organization and his own beliefs. It helps that he came to New York City — there is a lesson here for other religious leaders, especially evangelicals — and was willing to stand in front of microphones and answer questions.

The story, however, doesn’t include much in the way of information about what Samaritan’s Purse does and how long Graham and his team has been doing what they do.

Does that matter?


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What was that all about? New York hipsters, Hasidic Jews and slanted social-distancing rules

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For a week or more, I gathered information about one of the most painful puzzles in the coronavirus crisis in New York City — the clashes between the city government and Hasidic Jewish leaders and their followers.

Did these ultra-Orthodox Jews break the “shelter in place” rules? Of course they did.

Had they made attempts to work with city officials in advance, but then emotions linked to the funeral of a rabbi got out of control? Yes, that appeared to be the case.

Was that infamous tweet from Mayor Bill de Blasio — aimed at the whole “Jewish community” — utterly bizarre? Yes it was.

So what was the real issue here? Hold that thought. First, here is a large chunk of an essential New York Times story — “2,500 Mourners Jam a Hasidic Funeral, Creating a Flash Point for de Blasio“ — as background information for those who didn’t follow this drama.

Soon after a revered Hasidic rabbi died of the coronavirus in Brooklyn … his fellow congregants informed the Police Department of an unexpected decision: Despite the coronavirus restrictions now in place, they would hold a public funeral.

The local police precinct did not stand in their way, a testament to the Hasidic community’s influence in the Williamsburg neighborhood. By 3:30 p.m., police officers began erecting barricades, expecting a small number of mourners to show up. Loudspeakers were put up to help mourners hear while keeping their distance.

But by 7:30 p.m., an estimated 2,500 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men had arrived to mourn Rabbi Chaim Mertz, packing together shoulder-to-shoulder on the street and on the steps of brownstones, clearly violating social distancing guidelines and turning the funeral into one of the most fraught events of the virus crisis for Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Police began to disperse the mourners, some of whom were not wearing masks. Word of the gathering soon reached City Hall, where the mayor decided to go to Brooklyn to oversee the dispersal himself.


The backlash against de Blasio was incredible. Yes, the word “Anti-Semitism” was used.

I kept reading the coverage, wondering: Was this just a New York City story or was there content here that is related to how journalists are covering COVID-19 stories elsewhere in America?


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Journalists should be gearing up for big 'culture war' cases at U.S. Supreme Court

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The COVID-19 emergency shouldn’t divert the media from getting prepared for an unusual pileup of big “culture war” news that will break at the U.S. Supreme Court during the weeks through early July.

Pending decisions the media will need to interpret involve abortion, religious conscience claims, gay and transgender rights, taxpayer aid for students at religious school and (yet again) religious objections to mandatory birth-control coverage under Obamacare. Next term, the court will take up the direct conflict between LGBTQ advocacy and religious conscience, an uber-important problem.

These cases will show us how the newest justices, Neil Gorsuch (age 52, seated 2017) and Brett Kavanaugh (age 55, seated 2018), will be reshaping court edicts on religio-cultural disputes.

Here are the imminent decisions to be ready for.

Espinoza v. Montana (docket #18-1195) — This regards the venerable “Blaine amendments” in many state constitutions that forbid religion-related aid by taxpayers. Does a state violate the U.S. Constitution’s “equal protection” clause if it denies generally available public scholarships to students who attend religious schools?

Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, incorporating Trump v. Pennsylvania (19-431) — Last week, the court heard arguments in this case involving claims of religious rights vs. women’s rights. Did a Trump administration setup properly exempt religious objectors from the Obamacare mandate that requires employers to arrange birth-control coverage?

June Medical Services v. Russo (18-1323) — Louisiana requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, which pro-choice advocates say hobbles women’s access to abortion. In 2016, a Supreme Court with different membership threw out such a regulation in Texas

Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, incorporating St. James School v. Biel (docket # 19-267) — The court heard the argument on this Monday via a COVID-era telephone conference. This Catholic school case from California poses whether under the Constitution’s religious freedom clause schools and agencies can discriminate in hiring workers who are not officially ordained “ministers” but may carry out some religious functions. In a similar Lutheran case in 2012, the high court said yes.


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Talk about burying the lede! Knox officials wanted to 'open up,' while banning Holy Communion?

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If you have been following the ecclesiastical shelter-in-place wars, then you know that the most interesting stories — in terms of journalism and debates in the public square — as moved on to debates about safe worship that includes social-distancing principles.

Evangelicals and other low-church Protestants have a distinct advantage here, with their emphasis on preaching and small-ensemble praise music. It’s harder to distribute Holy Communion from a distance, even if worshipers in liturgical churches are six feet or more apart while sitting in their pews.

Some state and local officials seem to be struggling with these coronavirus issues. This is also true of for journalists, who really need to be listening to shepherds in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches. It may even be possible to interview them.

In a recent “On Religion” column, I noted these interesting remarks by a high-profile archbishop:

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in an online essay, stressed that whenever Catholic priests approach their altars the saints and "all God's people" are spiritually present. He also praised clergy who have found ways to carry on with their work – while following social-distancing guidelines.

"Our parish priests have risen to the occasion, with innovative ways to distribute Holy Communion, expose the Blessed Sacrament for adoration, hear confessions and anoint and visit the sick," noted Dolan. "They assemble at graveside to bury our dead. Our courageous chaplains in hospitals and nursing homes are on the front lines."

I bring this up because of a recent story in my local paper, The Knoxville News Sentinel, that ran with this headline: “Are church services allowed Sunday in Knoxville? Yes, but it's not encouraged.” It described a rather typical conflict between a rather lenient state governor and strict local officials — strict to the point of potential First Amendment clashes.

The problem? Some of the most shocking details were buried — quite literally — at the end of this story. Hold that thought. First, here is the overture:

There is nothing stopping worshipers from congregating for services, but no official is recommending churches, synagogues and mosques throw open their doors right away.


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YouTube thinker: Methodist conservative chats with RNS' Jack Jenkins about religious left

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Every few years, like clockwork, American newspapers roll out pre-election features about a revival of activity on what can accurately be called the “Religious Left” — even if few journalists have granted it the upper-case-letter status of the ominous Religious Right.

From Day 1 here at GetReligion, I have argued that activity on the theological and political left is one of the most overlooked stories of recent decades. I have at least three reasons for saying that:

(1) The demographic implosion of the denominations known as the Seven Sisters of liberal Protestantism — the decline escalated in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s — left room in the American public square for the emergence of modern evangelicalism. Religious progressives, however, maintained crucial high ground in elite institutions of the left and right coasts.

(2) Progressive Catholics have always played a crucial role in the Democratic Party, even as — at the ballot box — it was easy to see a growing divide between liberal “cultural Catholics” and more conservative Catholics who worship once a week or even more.

(3) Journalists tend to focus on religious liberals as a political force, while paying little or no attention to THEOLOGICAL trends on that side of the church aisle (other than changes that affect LGBTQ issues).

Theological questions will be even more important for the Religious Left in the future, as the political left grows more and more secular (think atheists, agnostics and “nones”). How will this affect, for example, crucial ties to African-American churches, which tend to be more conservative on moral issues? And while we are at it, check out this new chart from political scientist (and progressive Baptist pastor) Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor (whose Twitter feed has been on fire the past couple of days).

I bring all of this up because of a fascinating video chat that took place the other day between United Methodist conservative Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and veteran progressive scribe Jack Jenkins — formerly of ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress — who now covers national news for Religion News Service. The subject is a new book by Jenkins with the logical title, “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.”


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