TV-Radio

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Religion story, maybe? Bible Belt Pentecostal preacher bounces into fame on 'The Voice'

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I have never been a fan of reality television, but I will confess that — from time to time — I check out YouTube clips of some of the surprisingly good auditions by performers young and old (this 13-year-old opera singer still gets to me).

Part of the alleged drama of all of this is seeing, every now and then, a person from ordinary America collide with the pop-entertainment Powers That Be. As you would expect, religious faith often ends up being part of the script.

This brings me to a recent Washington Post story about an unusual performer who emerged during the COVID-19 version of NBC’s “The Voice.” This is a pretty good story, but I still thought that the religion angle deserved even more attention than it got. Let’s pick things up near the top:

… Even if things had proceeded normally this season, there’s little doubt that Todd Tilghman still would have won.

On Tuesday night, Tilghman triumphed over finalists Thunderstorm Artis, Toneisha Harris, CammWess and Micah Iverson, winning $100,000 and a record deal. At age 41, Tilghman made show history as the oldest singer to win out of all 18 seasons. And his victory stands out for another reason: He has no professional music background, unusual in a competition series that heavily recruits the best singers it can find.

Looking back at other winners, many had already been in bands or performed as touring artists, some previously had record deals, and one was even nominated for a Grammy Award. But Tilghman — a pastor from Meridian, Miss., and a father of eight — said he never gave serious thought to a music career.

First of all, if the Associated Press Stylebook still has meaning, this winner’s name should have been “the Rev.” Todd Tilghman on first reference.

But that would have let the cat out of the bag early, I guess. It’s news that he is the oldest singer to win this competition. It’s news that he has no professional experience as a singer — other than in church (the launching pad for dozens of greats, including Aretha Franklin).

Still, I found myself wanting to know more about this guy’s ministry and life at home. After all, Tilghman is not just a pastor and he’s not an evangelical pastor. This man is a Pentecostal pastor from a town deep in the Bible Belt. Normally, preachers of this kind are critics of popular culture and music. The relevant word here, in church-speak, is “separatism.” In the past, these are the kinds of folks who burn Madonna discs and question anyone who uses drums in church.

Yet there was Tilghman, bouncing around with great enthusiasm singing one of the classic, sexy seduction ballads in the history of rock ‘n’ roll — Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight.”


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New York Times asks what 'hardcore' New Yorkers miss during pandemic (hint: no steeples)

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It is one of the most famous covers in the long, rich history of The New Yorker.

“View of the World from 9th Avenue,” by illustrator Saul Steinberg, is one of the first images that come to mind when many New Yorkers of a certain age and, perhaps, social class, describe the alpha city they call home. The drawing is also known as “A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World.”

I am not a New Yorker, but I gained a little bit of experience in that world while teaching journalism, religion and mass media there for roughly two months a year over the past five years. This period of my life that is now, sadly, over, and the coronavirus had nothing to do with this departure.

I claim no great insights into New York, but I really enjoyed this experience.

Everything of substance that I learned during that time came from New Yorkers and that shaped what I saw happening around me. But here is one of the most important things I learned from the set of New Yorkers that I came to know — New York City contains some absolutely amazing churches and religious flocks of every size and shape. This website will tell you lots of what your need to know about that: “A Journey Through NYC Religions.”

Now, please notice that this statement undercuts a popular myth among New York haters in other parts of America. Yes, the Big Apple is a rather secular and liberal place, especially in Manhattan. But in reality, it’s hard to tell the story of Manhattan — past or present — without including religious faith in the mix.

Now, with that in mind, look again at the “View of the World from 9th Avenue.” What is missing from this iconic New York City image that is actually present in real life (other than, of course, the existence of the rest of the United States of America out in flyover country)? What is missing from this picture of New York City life that is so popular with a certain brand of New York insider?

Here’s a clue. It’s the same thing that is missing from a recent feature in The New York Times that ran with this double-decker headline:

What Hardcore New Yorkers Really Miss

Wistful words from the actor Alec Baldwin, the comedian Amber Ruffin, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the chef Amanda Cohen, the assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and more.

Note the phrase “hardcore New Yorkers.”

What does that adjective mean? Apparently it refers to people who live in a city with no steeples, no cathedrals, no synagogues, etc.


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Thinking about Little Richard: Mark Kellner with a Seventh-day Adventist look at rock pioneer

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As folks in his native South would say, Little Richard was a piece of work.

One way or another, Richard Wayne Penniman always stressed that he was a work in progress and that, one way or another, God was the author of this story.

This was a man who was driven to shout and scream about all kinds of things. The same rock ‘n’ roll genius who exploded out of radios in the ‘50s, singing songs with lyrics that had to be cleaned up the masses, also went to seminary and devoted decades of his life to preaching, evangelism and Gospel music. He openly struggled with issues of sexual identity, yet never shied away from talking about sin as well as sensuality.

When the news broke about his death, at age 87, I wondered if mainstream obituaries would dig into all of that. I’m pleased that they did. Here’s a key chunk of the obit at The New York Times (the Gray Lady also ran a tribute essay discussing Little Richards’ contributions to popular culture, which discussed his faith):

Little Richard, delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, pounding the piano furiously and screaming as if for his very life, raised the energy level several notches and created something not quite like any music that had been heard before — something new, thrilling and more than a little dangerous. …

Art Rupe of Specialty Records, the label for which he recorded his biggest hits, called Little Richard “dynamic, completely uninhibited, unpredictable, wild.”

And all the people said, “Amen.”

Little Richard burned red hot through the mid-1950s and the retreated from mainstream music. The Times obit clearly describes why:

He became a traveling evangelist. He entered Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) in Huntsville, Ala., a Seventh-day Adventist school, to study for the ministry. He cut his hair, got married and began recording gospel music. For the rest of his life, he would be torn between the gravity of the pulpit and the pull of the stage.

“Although I sing rock ’n’ roll, God still loves me,” he said in 2009. “I’m a rock ’n’ roll singer, but I’m still a Christian.”

With all of that in mind, please note the following Adventist Review tribute by former GetReligionista Mark Kellner — a veteran mainstream journalist who has also served as a Seventh-day Adventist press aide. Here are two samples of that:


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Jess Fields got tired of short, shallow news interviews: So he started doing loooong podcasts

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Jess Fields is a small businessman (ask him about cigars), an Eastern Orthodox family man and a news consumer who is especially interested in stories about religion. He has also worked in nonpartisan think tanks linked to issues in state and local governments. He is enthusiastic about life in Houston (due to personal Texas Gulf Coast history I will have no further comment on that).

All in all, Fields is not a logical guy to start a podcast about religion, politics and other subjects that interest him. So why did he do exactly that?

Well, he told me that he “grew tired of the edited mudslinging that passes for ‘interviews’“ and decided that he “could do better.” His goal is to produce “long-form interviews with guests from multiple perspectives, providing a neutral platform for different views to be heard and considered in a respectful manner.” In other words, his interviews are really long.

Fields got off to a hot start with a newsworthy chat with the Rev. Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church just outside of Baton Rouge, La., the man behind a blitz of coronavirus headlines because of his rejection of “shelter in place” orders. Spell has been arrested and faced all kinds of questions when it appeared, on video, that he backed a church bus dangerously close to a protestor.

That led to this:

#1 — Pastor Tony Spell — On Refusing to Comply with Coronavirus Orders

We interview Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pastor Spell and his congregation are refusing to comply with Louisiana's stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic. He has been arrested for violating the orders, but continues to hold packed church services. This is the most comprehensive interview Pastor Spell has granted.

Pastor Spell has his critics, as you would imagine, so Fields decided to do a lengthy interview with one of them — Rod Dreher (who lives in Baton Rouge).


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Calling BS on NC-17

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The Ringer has published an odd report by Keith Phipps that traces the doomed path of the NC-
17 rating in a time when streaming TV has eclipsed the importance of films. Its headline is an
engaging two-sentence summary: “Thirty Years Ago, Hollywood Won the Battle Against the X
Rating. But It Lost the War.”

Phipps devotes nearly 2,600 words to this topic.

You just know that simple-minded religious people play a major role in this drama. His one reference to cultural conservatives (“a religious right eager to protest whatever they [sic] felt to be an affront to their values”) is as predictable as a media release from Americans United. He adds this:

“They didn’t lack targets and, in fairness, those targets felt closer at hand thanks to neighborhood video stores with curtained ‘adults only’ sections and scandalous music videos just a click away on cable.”

That’s as far as the fairness extends, though. This isn’t hard-news journalism, of course. Still, it would have been nice — interesting even — to see some serious discussions of the views of people on both sides of this issue. Diversity is often interesting.

Phipps makes no effort to demonstrate such eagerness or easily affronted values, but simply notes
these factors as though they were universally established realities.

But here comes an informative turn, as Phipps presents a few examples of films that were
harmed by the dreaded adjective controversial:

Though ultimately more talked about than seen, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1985 film Hail Mary — featuring a modern day retelling of the nativity story — earned protests and the condemnation of Pope John Paul II. But that was a mere prelude to what greeted Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. …


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Hulu and the press give Schlafly top billing in new series. Her Catholic faith? Say what?

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Something else was mobilizing many people in the news media last week other than the COVID-19 virus. It was none other than Hulu’s premiere of “Mrs. America,” a tell-all on conservative icon the late Phyllis Schlafly.

There was no way that Hulu — famed for its dystopian series “The Handmaid’s Tale” about what might happen if biblical literalists took over America — was going to give Schlafly a fair shake. After all, Serena Joy, the sadistic Christian wife figure in “Handmaid” who preaches that women’s place is only in the home, is modeled after Schlafly, according to Margaret Atwood, author of the book on which the movie is based.

Indeed, Serena Joy, has been called “Phyllis Schlafly on steroids.” However, I wanted to see how “Mrs. Amerca” portrayed Schlafly, a larger-than-life personality whose strength lay in her Catholic faith — something nearly ignored, at least thus far, in the series. Maybe she is supposed to be a white evangelical?

Only the first three episodes have been aired (successive ones will be released on Wednesdays) and I’ve watched them all. The show’s creators missed the religious angle by a mile. There’s only a very slight allusion to Schlafly’s faith, other than a grace said before meals. Most Catholic homes in that era — and some even now — would have had some devotional paintings on the walls at least.

There were a bunch of reviews about the show, some of which revealed a major journalistic failing in that the main writer, Dahvi Waller, admits she didn’t bother contacting Schlafly’s family to check for accuracy. She explains to Vanity Fair that she didn’t want the family’s views to prejudice her own. Translation: She didn’t want to be bothered by the facts.

I found Waller argument beyond incredible. Would she have attempted a biopic of Michelle Obama without consulting the Obama family?


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Podcast: Who-da thunk it? Drive-in churches are First Amendment battlegrounds

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It didn’t take long to realize that there would be church-state clashes between independent-minded religious groups — from fundamentalist Baptists to Hasidic Jews — and state officials during the coronavirus crisis.

So that was the big story, at first: Lots of crazy white MAGA evangelicals wanted to keep having face-to-face church, even if it was clear that this put lives at risk in the pews and in their surrounding communities. That was the subject of last week’s “On Religion” podcast.

The real story was more complex than that, of course. The vast majority of religious congregations and denominations (you can make a case for 99%) recognized the need for “shelter in place” orders and cooperated. The preachers who rebelled were almost all leading independent Pentecostal and evangelical churches and quite a few of them were African-Americans.

So that was a story with three camps: (1) The 99% of religious leaders who cooperated and took worship online (that wasn’t big news), (2) the small number of preachers who rebelled (big story in national media) and (3) government leaders who just wanted to do the right thing and keep people alive.

However, things got more complex during the Easter weekend (for Western churches) and that’s what “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

As it turned out, there were FIVE CAMPS in this First Amendment drama and the two that made news seemed to be off the radar of most journalists.

But not all. As Julia Duin noted in a post early last week (“Enforcement overkill? Louisville newspaper tries to document the ‘war on Easter”), the Courier-Journal team managed, with a few small holes, to cover the mess created by different legal guidelines established by Kentucky’s governor and the mayor of Louisville.

That’s where drive-in worship stories emerged as the important legal wrinkle that made an already complex subject even harder to get straight.

Those five camps?


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Faith on film and TV: Five takes on the life of Jesus that you can watch this Easter

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With Easter just ahead and many of us stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic, there is no better time than now to both watch movies about the life and death of Jesus. You should be able to find several on television this weekend.

Christ has been depicted in a variety of ways on film over the last six decades. Some depictions have been better than others. Some of these movies made headlines and some did not. The debate over which portrayal of Jesus was most realistic, authentic or powerful has raged on for years.

In 1997, James Martin came up with his own list, republished two years ago in America magazine. In it, he made some controversial picks, ones that keep this debate going every Easter. For many, movies about Jesus allowed many people who would otherwise not have an interest in Christianity or faith and awaken some religious curiosity.

Easter — Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection — is the most significant event of the Bible, one that changed the course of history. There are a number of movies that have captured that moment in both a touching and stirring manner. At the same time, several actors have portrayed Jesus to great public acclaim. The movies, appealing to Christians of all denominations, are a wonderful way to celebrate Easter and educate younger people to the life and times of Jesus.

This list doesn’t consider edgy pop-culture phenomena such as Jesus Christ Superstar or sacrilegious ones like The Last Temptation of Christ, with its mentally unbalanced and rather depressed messiah who calls himself a sinner. Instead, I have focused on serious interpretations through the years of the life of Jesus. As Christians prepare for Easter, here are five movies about Jesus, both in theaters and on TV, that rise above the rest:


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This week's podcast: Are all those COVID-19 stories about rebel preachers fueled by bias?

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Veteran GetReligion readers will remember that I grew up as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid in Texas and then, as an undergraduate, did a double major in journalism and history at Baylor University, along with a master’s in church-state studies.

Why bring up my Baptist credentials, right now? Well, they’re relevant to the topic that “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s podcast. (Click here to tune that in.)

You see, I have been listening to Bible Belt folks argue about journalism for a long time. My parents backed my career choice, but trust me when I say that I can quote chapter and verse on why many people think that “Christian” and “journalist” are words that don’t go together.

The bottom line: If you ask why so many journalists struggle to do accurate, balanced coverage of religion you’ll hear lots of conservatives in pews (and pulpits) say: “Well, journalists hate religious people.”

That’s a straw-man argument and simplistic, to boot. I have seen, and heard about, some strong examples of prejudice against religious folks in newsrooms, but I have never thought that negative prejudice was the biggest problem that skews religion coverage. For starters, I’ve met some journalists who don’t care enough about religion to, well, hate it. There’s way more journalists who think that there’s good religion and then there’s bad religion and they are pretty sure which is which.

Anyway, I continue to hear from GetReligion readers who are mad about all those news stories on independent preachers who ignore coronavirus crisis “shelter in place” orders requiring them to avoid business-as-usual worship. Here’s a chunk of the GetReligion post that served as the hook for the podcast:

… (The) question looks like this: Why are the few pastors who reject “shelter in place” orders getting so much ink with their face-to-face worship services, while the vast majority of clergy who have moved their rites online — often for the first time — are getting little or no coverage? I have already written about this twice at GetReligion — look here and then here. …

Here is what people are feeling: How come some angry preacher deep in the Bible Belt is getting all this coverage and, well, online efforts by the still massive Southern Baptist Convention are ignored?


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