Surveys & polls

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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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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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Two Orthodox podcasts: Fake news and blunt talk about parish life after COVID-19

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Let’s just call this a podcast day — period.

This week’s “Crossroads” GetReligion podcast will be posted later, focusing on an often overlooked religion-related niche in American politics. Think “nones” and the 2020 White House race and related issues.

n the meantime, here are two rather strange — for GetReligion readers and listeners — Orthodox media podcasts that may still be of interest to some people, including religion-beat pros.

Both of these chats are directly related to newsy topics that come up here all the time. What makes them different is that the topics are framed in ways that appeal directly to an Eastern Orthodox Christian audience, as opposed to be handled straight on as topics linked to mainstream news coverage.

In the first, I was invited on the national Ancient Faith Today podcast hosted by Father Tom Soroka, who serves at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in McKees Rocks, Penn.

The topic for this hour-long show was “Media Bias,” with a focus on explaining to clergy and laypeople the complex nature of news in the age of the Internet. How did we end up with a blurred line between news and the op-ed pages? How can news consumers stay sane in an age when elite, high-quality newsrooms produce solid, old-school journalism on some topics and then, on the very next “page,” offer agitprop on other topics, especially those linked to religion and culture?

Click here to tune that in. At the heart of the discussion was the varying ways that professionals and laypeople struggle to define the term “fake news.” That will sound familiar to GetReligion readers (“Fake News? The Economist team doesn't know where Liberty University is located.”

This podcast is one of the flagship offerings of Ancient Faith Ministries, which started out long, long ago as a trailblazing online radio ministry — years before podcasts and other related podcasts were the norm. (Trivia: I donated an early slogan for this crew — “Ancient faith: All digital.”)


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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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Podcast: Anyone surprised that a rich Yankee Republican laughs at Bible Belt folks?

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First things first: This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was recorded before the stunning news that President Donald Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19.

As you would expect, Twitter was immediately jammed with thoughts (of all kinds), prayers and more than a few curses. Quite a bit of the friction was linked, of course, to Trump’s many connections with religious conservatives of various kinds.

As it turned out, host Todd Wilken and I had talked about a subject that is directly related to all of that. I am referring to the advocacy journalism blast at The Atlantic that ran with this double-decker headline:

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

This was the article that I received more email about during the previous week than any other. As a rather old guy — in terms of decades of exposure to coverage of religion and politics — this piece sounded so, so, so familiar.

The bottom line: Lots of country-club people at the top of the GOP food chain have always — behind closed doors — viewed religious conservatives with distain and distaste. That’s big news? Does it surprise anyone that Trump is even more raw in his humor about certain types of religious people (hold that thought, we’ll come back to it) than others in his New York City-South Florida social circles?

Here are two key chunks of this McKay Coppins essay:

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. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion.


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Many journalists are not pursuing crucial religion angles in Black Lives Matter coverage

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As with most human activities, there are significant religion angles on the Black Lives Matter phenomenon, but they’re often missed in the lavish media attention.

As a generalized cry for racial justice and action against police misconduct, the cause enjoys wide support, so one obvious aspect to cover is the extent to which church folk — Black and White — are providing support.

Pew Research says 55% of Americans sympathize with the movement as of Sept. 13, though that’s down from an impressive 67% in June, presumably because criminal mayhem and radical hostility toward policing in general mingled with the street protests. (Among Whites, support fell from 60% to 45%.) Remember the early efforts, often led by church leaders, to have police and protesters pray together?

Little press attention has focused on another religious problem. Pundit Andrew Sullivan branded the Black Lives Matter organization “explicitly atheist (and neo-Marxist).” Televangelist Pat Robertson denounced its “anti-God agenda.” A Catholic priest in Michigan, the Rev. Paul Graney, called it “anti-Christian,” “anti-family” and downright “evil.” Southern Evangelical Seminary declared that, of course, “black lives matter” (lower-case) because “all human lives are sacred,” but beliefs of the official Black Lives Matter organization and related “critical race theory” conflict with “foundational tenets of the Christian faith”

The media may have downplayed this controversy. At some point, during recent weeks, the BLM organization removed the “What We Believe” platform from its website. It it, the group complained about “patriarchal” practices and said “we disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”

There’s also a big problem for religious believers who dissent from the LGBTQ cause. The BLM platform decried discrimination on the basis of “actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression” and vowed “to dismantle cisgender privilege.” It said “we foster a queer-affirming network” to break away from “the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

A related angle journalists could pursue is the way in which some leaders, including executive director and co-founder Patrisse Cullors, foster a new blend of non-Christian faiths and compete with the nation’s historic Black Protestant churches.


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Going, going: Whatever happened to 'Mainline' Protestantism in America's public square?

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THE QUESTION:

Whatever happened to U.S. “Mainline” Protestantism over the past half-century?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

What’s known as “Mainline” Protestantism was pretty much America’s culture-defining faith till well after World War II.

Fifty years ago, these church groups still maintained high morale and together boasted at least 28 million members. But by the latest available statistics they’ve shrunk 45%, to 15.5 million. During those same decades, the U.S. population increased 61%.

Across U.S. religious history, nothing like this has been seen before. What happened?

We’re talking about several small denominations included with several larger bodies in the familar “seven sisters” — American Baptist Churches USA, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and the largest, the United Methodist Church.

The Religion Guy recently culled his basement library and came across two remarkably prescient books from a half-century ago, “The Gathering Storm in the Churches” (1969) by sociologist Jeffrey K. Hadden at Case Western Reserve University (and later the University of Virginia), and “Why Conservative Churches Are Growing” (1972) by the Rev. Dean M. Kelley, director for civil and religious liberty at the National Council of Churches (NCC).

Mainline groups share several key traits: predominantly white memberships, origin in Colonial times through the early 19th Century, ecumenical affiliations with the NCC and World Council of Churches, and pluralism that tolerates liberal religious thinking in contrast with the strictly conservative white “evangelical” Protestants. (Black Protestants often share evangelical traits but embrace a distinct subculture.)

Hadden’s book reported on his pioneering survey of 7,441 pastors in five Mainline Protestant groups (plus the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), and incorporated survey data on lay Protestants in California as reported in 1968 by Rodney Stark and Charles Glock.

He said churches faced a dangerous and “widening gap” between lay members and clergy who were pursuing civil-rights activism (Vietnam War protests emerged later) and downplaying or shedding traditional religious beliefs. For example, only 49 percent of the Methodist clergy believed in “Jesus’ physical resurrection as an objective historical fact.”

Clergy revisionism on doctrine was strongly associated with devotion to liberal politics, but not so with lay members.


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Feeling Godforsaken? A dark night for people who care about religious issues in public life

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At some point during the primaries leading up to the 2016 election, I decided that I was going to stop watching the alleged “debates” between the candidates.

It was better for my health — physical and spiritual — to tune them out and then read transcripts, if there was anything relevant that I needed to know on issues crucial to me. Yes, I am talking about the First Amendment and religious liberty.

During that campaign I went further and decided that I would not allow Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton onto my television screen. I was trying, you see, to take anger and emotions out of the process, as much as I could. I’m not joking.

Based on what I am reading — and saw last night in about 30 minutes of Twitter — this remains a solid strategy.

So the big news last night had to do with Joe Biden and Trump downplaying the radical fringes of their tense coalitions?

Trump did a “Proud Boys” call out, while refusing the clearly condemn the alt-right. Biden basically said that antifa was an “idea,” not a network of organizations that, in the dark of night, has been violently hijacking demonstrations about race and justice.

Did I get that right? Help me out here.


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