Politics

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Catholic church vandalism still being ignored, while Amy Coney Barrett's faith remains a big story

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It was just 10 days ago that the U.S. Catholic bishops’ religious freedom chair joined forces with interfaith leaders and called for better protection of churches following this past summer’s vandalism at many houses of worship.

In a letter to congressional leaders on Oct. 5, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami asked for the quadrupling of funding of a federal security grant program for non-profits.

A news release informing journalists of the request, sent along with a copy of the letter to newsrooms across the country, stated the following:

This program provides grants to nonprofits and houses of worship in order to enhance security through improvements to infrastructure, funding for emergency planning and training, upgrading security systems, and some renovation projects. While the program has been popular, lack of funding prompted many applicants for grants to be turned away in 2019. The coalition is calling on Congress to quadruple the total funding for the program to $360 million. From the letter:

“Each of our communities believes that respect for human dignity requires respect for religious liberty. We believe that protecting the ability of all Americans to live out their faith without fear or harm is one of the most important duties of the federal government. … These security grants benefit people of all faiths. At a time of increasing extremism and antagonism towards different religious groups and religion in general, we believe significant increased funding for this important government program in fiscal year 2021 is imperative.”

Other groups joining the letter include the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, National Association of Evangelicals, U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty, The Jewish Federations of North America, National Council of Churches in Christ in the USA, North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventists, Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations, Agudath Israel of America, and The Episcopal Church.

FBI statistics cited in the letter said that 1,244 hate crimes had been committed in 2018 against members of the various denominations in the United States. The letter also comes following a spate of attacks against Catholic churches and statues across the U.S. The acts of vandalism have largely been ignored by the mainstream secular press.

The letter was the latest beat in this ongoing story that was also ignored.

By comparison, the Catholic faith of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has bordered on fixation by the press over the past few weeks.


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Yin-yang of Washington Post on Amy Coney Barrett: Wait. Pope Francis embraces charismatics?

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It would appear that the goal on the cultural and religious left is to find a way to link Judge Amy Coney Barrett to all of that strange charismatic Christian stuff like healing and speaking on tongues while avoiding anti-dogma language that would raise warning flags for Sunday-morning-Mass Catholics. She may as well be a fundamentalist Protestant!

Here is the Big Idea that is right up top, in a story that uses the term “handmaid” 11 times — early and often.

Oh, this will also require tip-toeing around the awkward fact that millions of charismatic Christians are found in Latino and Black pews — Catholic and Protestant.

Will this play a role in the hearings that are getting underway as I type this? We will see.

In the branch of the Democratic Party known as Acela Zone journalism, the key to the news coverage has continued to be a steady drumbeat of references to the word “handmaid,” which in cable-television land calls to mind all kinds of horrible fundamentalist terrors, starting with sexual slaves in red capes and white bonnets.

It’s hard to know what to write about the People of Praise-phobia angle of this story right now, since your GetReligionistas have been on it for some time now. See my podcast and post here: “Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?” Also, Julia Duin’s deep dive here into 40 years of history linked to the People of Praise and charismatic Christian communities of this kind. There there is Clemente Lisi on three big questions that reporters need to face linked to Barrett’s faith.

There are too many elite news stories on the handmaid angle to parse them all, so let’s focus on that recent Washington Post feature from a team led by the scribe who brought you the hagiography of Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

For starters, this would be a good time to remind readers that reporters rarely play any role in the writing of the headlines atop their work. The headline on a piece such as this one primarily tells you the angle that editors thought would launch it into social-media circles among the newsroom’s true believers. Thus we have: “Amy Coney Barrett served as a ‘handmaid’ in Christian group People of Praise.”


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Plug-in: What spiritual ramifications of the fly that landed on Mike Pence's head?

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My journalist son Keaton and I were watching the vice presidential debate Wednesday night when he burst out laughing.

“Is that a fly on Mike Pence’s head?” my 23-year-old son wondered out loud.

I glanced up from the Words With Friends game on my iPad and squinted at the TV.

“It sure looks like it,” I said.

We both rushed to check Twitter. Confirmation of our suspicion came quickly. And suddenly, a nation weighted down by too much heavy news had a reason to giggle again.

The New York Times dutifully reported:

Vice President Mike Pence, his hair perfectly coiffed, never reacted to the fly’s appearance on the right side of his head. It stood out against his bright white hair, standing still for the most part but moving around slightly before, well, flying away.

A local TV news reporter from California clocked the fly’s screen time on Mr. Pence’s head at 2 minutes, 3 seconds.

Despite the buzz that it created, the fly did not respond to an interview request. However, America’s most famous insect did start a viral social media account.

Please don’t whack me with a fly swatter, but that “spiritual ramifications” title at the top of this week’s column was clickbait.

If that bugs you, though, Sojourners’ Jenna Barnett has you covered with “5 Bible verses about flies.” See, there’s always a religion angle. Even with Flygate.

Concerning the actual debate, Pence and California Sen. Kamala Harris clashed briefly over religious belief. Religion Unplugged’s Timothy Nerozzi delves into the specifics.


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That (overlooked) 2020 Al Smith dinner served up blunt appeals to Catholic swing voters

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That (overlooked) 2020 Al Smith dinner served up blunt appeals to Catholic swing voters

During a normal White House race, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner allows the candidates to don formal attire, fire snappy one-liners and make subtle appeals to Catholic voters.

But nothing is normal in 2020. Thus, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump used this year's virtual dinner to preach to Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. The event produced few headlines, coming a mere six hours before Trump announced his positive test for COVID-19.

Saluting Catholic progressive, Biden offered a litany about the pandemic, race, the recession and climate change. He warned that many Americans have lost faith "in one another, in truth, in science and reason."

The current pope, Biden stressed, embraced him during a 2013 White House visit, offering comfort shortly after brain cancer took his son Beau's life.

"Pope Francis took the time to meet with my entire family to help us see the light through the darkness," said Biden. "I live in an amazing country … where an Irish Catholic kid like me from Scranton, Pennsylvania, would one day befriend a Jesuit pope. But that's who we are as a country -- where anything is possible when we care for one another, when we look out for one another, when we keep the faith."

While stressing that he is guided "by the tenets of Catholic social doctrine" -- helping the "least of these" -- Biden didn't mention his vow to codify Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court overturns that decision or his promise to reinstate policies requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to cooperate in providing birth control and abortifacients to staff. He didn't mention his decision to officiate at the same-sex wedding of two White House colleagues, an action clashing with church doctrine.

It was logical for Biden to avoid providing fresh ammunition for critics. But the speech, once again, trumpeted his Catholic credentials.

"Joe Biden's choice to run explicitly on the claim that he is a faithful Catholic squarely places on the table his claim to be a faithful Catholic," stressed legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University, writing on Facebook. He is a Catholic conservative who has also been a consistent critic of Trump.

“No way out of this, folks," he added. "It's not, or not just, Biden's critics who have raised the issue. It's the Biden campaign. …


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Podcast: Political facts about evangelicals make news, but what about all the nones?

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Let’s assume, faithful readers, that you have heard that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Citizen Donald Trump in the 2016 election. It’s been in all the papers.

Now, if you have been reading GetReligion over the past 17 years you are also familiar with another important trend, which is the growing number of Democrats who fit into a very different faith-defined (sort of) political niche. That has been part of our call for increased coverage of the Religious Left, especially on the evolution of doctrine over there (including the whole “spiritual, but not religious” theme).

Of course, we are talking about the famous “nones” — “religiously unaffiliated” is the better term — who crashed into American headlines in 2012, with the release of the “Nones on the Rise” study by the Pew Research team. That launched thousands of headlines, but not many — this is actually pretty shocking — on how this trend has affected life inside the Democratic Party.

That was the subject of our discussion on this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The podcast chat grew out of my post earlier this week with this headline: “How powerful are 'nones' in Democratic Party? That's a complex issue for reporters.”

The talk, as often happens, took us back through quite a bit of GetReligion history, much of it linked to the work and wisdom of pollster and scholar John C. Green of the University of Akron and the now omnipresent political scientist (and GetReligion contributor) Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University (must-follow Twitter handle here).

Here are a few crucial dates on this timeline.

First, there were the studies done by political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce, who were intrigued with the rise — inside the machinery of Democratic Party life — of what they at first called the “anti-fundamentalist voters,” but later changed that to “anti-evangelical.” Here’s a bite of an “On Religion” column from 2004.

Many are true secularists, such as atheists, agnostics and those who answer "none" when asked to pick a faith. Others think of themselves as progressive believers. The tie that binds is their disgust for Christian conservatives.


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How powerful are 'nones' in Democratic Party? That's a complex issue for reporters

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Sorry to bring this up again, but I really have to because of the many religion-news angles unfolding in the final weeks of this year’s presidential race, and lots of U.S. Senate races as well.

Hang in there with me. We are heading toward a puzzling passage in a recent Religion News Service analysis that ran with this headline: “ ‘Humanists for Biden-Harris’ to mobilize nonreligious vote.”

Now, that flash back: Frequent GetReligion readers will recall that, in the summer of 2007, political scientist and polling maven John C. Green spoke at a Washington Journalism Center seminar for a circle of journalists from around the world. The topic was press freedom in their home countries, but most of the journalists — especially those from Africa — wanted to talk about the young Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who was jumping into the White House race.

The bottom line: Obama was speaking directly to Democrats in the black church, but he was also reaching out to an emerging power bloc in his party — a group Green called the “religiously unaffiliated.” These so-called “nones” were poised to form a powerful coalition with atheists, agnostics and liberal believers. They shared, you see, a common cultural enemy on many issues, as in believers in traditional forms of faith. As I wrote in 2012:

On the right side of the American religious marketplace, defined in terms of doctrine and practice, is a camp of roughly 20 percent (maybe less) of believers who are seriously trying to practice their chosen faith at the level of daily life, said Green. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there is a growing camp of people who are atheists, agnostics or vaguely spiritual believers. …

In recent national elections this growing camp of secularists and religiously unaffiliated people have formed a powerful coalition with Catholic liberals, liberal Jews and the declining numbers of people found in America's liberal religious denominations (such as the "seven sisters" of oldline Protestantism). Add it all up, Green said in 2009, and you had a growing camp of roughly 20 percent or so on the cultural left.

The bottom line: This coalition was emerging as the dominant voice in the modern Democratic Party on matters of culture and religion.

In those days, Green was doing quite a bit of work with the Pew Research Center — so this was a foretaste of the information that would create waves of headlines with the 2012 release of the “ ‘Nones’ on the Rise” studies.

At press events linked to the release of that data, Green said, once again:


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A 40-year history of People of Praise that many journalists might like to know

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Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination has brought renewed attention to a part of the American charismatic movement that has been a source of controversy for 40 years. Sadly, very few journalists understand “intentional Christian communities,” or “covenant communities,” which were major fixtures on the American religious scene from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.

Barrett grew up in a family affiliated with one such community -- called People of Praise -- in South Bend. Before her name came to the fore a few years ago as possible Supreme Court material, the only people who knew about these groups were religion reporters who were plying their trade more than 30 years ago.

Even then, People of Praise wasn’t making headlines. You had to be a specialist in Pentecostal-charismatic movements (as I am) to know what they were.

Today, reporters struggle to explain a type of Christianity that was cutting edge during Jesus Movement days but feels very foreign now. And so you get a mishmash of reportage and opinion ranging from the Wall Street Journal’s guest editorial on the benefits of People of Praise to Newsweek’s truly awful story that had to be corrected. There are too many other examples to even survey them.

So, we’re going to get a brief history.

Before I do that, I want to spotlight two outlets that have done a good job of reporting on Barrett, starting with a Vox piece by Constance Grady that correctly explained why the nominee has erroneously been connected to the “handmaids” in People of Hope, a Catholic charismatic group in New Jersey. Grady writes:

One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group she belongs to, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The group isn’t an established inspiration for the book — but the story has developed legs anyway.

Do read the whole of it, because it explains how several publications made stupid mistakes when covering the People of Praise/People of Hope mixup.

The other is a Politico story that takes one on a tour of People of Praise education and ministry sites in South Bend.


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There they go, there they go again: New York Times views #ACB through eyes of conservative women

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I recently raised a few eyebrows with a post that — #TriggerWarning — praised The New York Times for a piece about Judge Amy Coney Barrett and why her nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court was so symbolic for cultural and religious conservatives. The headline on that post: “Speaking of people being praised: New York Times offered solid, old-school story about Barrett.”

Why was that Times report so important?

Well, no surprise here, but it was crucial that the team that produced the story include a religion-beat professional — as opposed to coming from the Donald Trump-era political desk. I also noted:

… Here is the key point I want to make: Unlike many Times stories in recent years, almost all of this material comes from qualified sources (left and right) whose names are attached to their opinions and the information they provided. There are attribution clauses all over the place, just like in Times of old.

Lo and behold, the Times followed up on that story with another religion-team feature that dug deeper on a perfectly valid point that was hinted at in the previous feature. Here’s the double-decker headline on that second story, which drew quite a bit of praise from conservatives on social media:

For Conservative Christian Women, Amy Coney Barrett’s Success Is Personal

Judge Barrett is a new kind of icon for some, one they have not seen before in American cultural and political life.

This is another fine story. However, I have one criticism of it that some may find a bit ironic, or even hard to take seriously.

The story does a fine job of demonstrating that the pro-ACB women are not a simplistic choir of cloned conservatives each with precisely the same point of view in terms of politics and culture. For example, it’s clear that some of these women are not all that fond of Trump the man or even the president. What unites them are commitments to specific values and concerns about specific moral, cultural and political issues.

This is where Judge Barrett comes into the picture. They applaud her because of her personal life, faith and choices, as well as her intellectual prowess and sparkling legal career.

So what is missing? The story briefly mentions the fierce opposition to Barrett, but never digs into the views of progressives — thus allowing Barrett supporters to debate them.

Yes, this is a Times story that needed MORE on-the-record material from the cultural left.


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Plug-in: Do religious conservatives really care what Trump says about them in private?

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Every 24-hour news cycle seems to bring a new alleged scandal involving President Donald Trump.

If you believe the headlines, Trump has referred to Americans who died in war as “losers” and “suckers.” He has avoided paying federal taxes. And he has — according to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic — secretly mocked his Christian supporters. (Click here for tmatt’s “Crossroads” podcast and post on this topic.)

My question is: Does it matter from a political standpoint?

“The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain,” Coppins wrote this week. “In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion.”

But while Trump critics hyperventilate over such stories, voters knew about his propensity to be a jerk before they elected him.

Even in his public statements, the Republican incumbent typically sounds more like a blabbering professional wrestler than a prominent world leader. (Did you catch the debate the other night?)

With all that in mind, I thought Michelle Boorstein, the award-winning religion writer for the Washington Post, had a spot-on response to Coppins’ report.

“What's the evidence that conservative Christians support Trump because of his attitude towards THEM,” Boorstein asked on Twitter, “vs. his willingness to advance his policy priorities?”

“Exactly,” replied John Daniel Davidson, political editor for The Federalist. “Most conservative Christians couldn't care less what Trump thinks about them.”

Which is why, it seems to me, his policies and his nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court (more on that in a moment) matter more to his base than anything he might say.

• • •

One obvious update: Generally, I put the finishing touches on this column on Thursday night.

That was the case this week, so I wrote and scheduled “Weekend Plug-in” before President Donald Trump revealed early Friday morning that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. As The Associated Press put it, the “stunning announcement … plunges the country deeper into uncertainty just a month before the presidential election.”


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