Terry Mattingly

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Podcast: Women in ministry remains a hot topic in SBC life, especially at the pulpit level

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Podcast: Women in ministry remains a hot topic in SBC life, especially at the pulpit level

Any controversy linked to the Rev. Rick “Purpose Driven Life” Warren is, by definition, going to be a big news story. I mean, that mega-bestseller has been translated into 100-plus languages and is so omnipresent that it’s most famous quote ended up in a Marvel Comic Universe movie.

Meanwhile, any controversy that involves conservatives opposing the ordination of “moderate” or “progressive” Baptist women is going to be a big news story, because — for most mainstream journalists — that is a good vs. evil story, and that’s that.

Thus, it’s no surprise that there has been quite a bit of ink about the vote by the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee declaring that the giant Saddleback Church, founded by Warren, is no longer “in friendly cooperation” with America’s largest non-Catholic flock.

Yes, that’s SBC lingo. We are dealing with a “convention” of autonomous congregations, not a “denomination,” and it’s primary source of national giving/income is called the “Cooperative Program.” So, has Saddleback been “ousted,” “expelled” or “kicked out” of SBC life for good? We will see.

GetReligion readers will not be surprised that we ended up discussing all of these issues during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). The good news, in this case, is that the most important stories about this case were written by experienced religion-beat pros. Here’s the top of the Associated Press report:

The Southern Baptist Convention … ousted its second-largest congregation — Saddleback Church, the renowned California megachurch founded by pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren — for having a woman pastor.

The vote by the convention’s Executive Committee culminates growing tension between the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — which officially opposes women as pastors — and a congregation whose story has been one of the biggest church-growth successes of modern times.

The committee cited Saddleback’s having “a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor,” an allusion to Stacie Wood, wife of the current lead pastor of Saddleback, Andy Wood.

But the controversy began in 2021, when Warren ordained three women as pastors, prompting discussions within the denomination about possibly expelling the megachurch.

What is going on here? There are several important clues in that material.


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Yo, journalists: It's time for a big update (or two) on the old, old Anglican wars timeline

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Yo, journalists: It's time for a big update (or two) on the old, old Anglican wars timeline

Scribes who have been covering the Anglican Communion wars since, oh, the late 1970s or so (there are a few of us Jurassic journalists left) know that this has been a long, complicated road.

In most recent elite-press coverage, this timeline has been radically truncated, turning battles over a wide range of doctrines and church-history issues into a simple good vs. evil clash over LGBTQ rights. In this version of history, this global doctrinal war began in 2003 with the consecration of a non-celibate gay bishop in the tiny, shrinking Diocese of New Hampshire here in America.

Here at GetReligion, I have long referred to this fallacy as “Anglican timeline disease.” Hold that thought, because we will come back to it.

The key, right now, is that journalists need to radically update this timeline, in the wake of some major global developments that are receiving little elite coverage. Here is the dramatic double-decker headline for the major report in The Wall Street Journal:

Conservative Anglican Leaders Call for Break With Church of England Over Same-Sex Blessings

Archbishops from Africa and elsewhere repudiate the Archbishop of Canterbury’s historic role as spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide

The overture for this solid story included several bites of information that are worth noting:

Conservative Anglican archbishops on Monday said the Church of England had forfeited its traditional leadership role in the worldwide Anglican Communion by approving the blessing of same-sex relationships earlier this month, opening a historic rift in one of the world’s biggest Christian denominations. 


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Still curious about the closing of a pro-LGBTQ Christian school in Kansas City? An update

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Still curious about the closing of a pro-LGBTQ Christian school in Kansas City? An update

Every now and then, I see an email or comment from a reader who says something like: “If you guys keep seeing big holes in stories, why don’t you do some work and try to fill them?”

Truth is, we are a commentary website, not a hard-news operation. Some holes can be filled with a few clicks of a computer mouse, and we have been known to do that. Others would require direct contacts with sources involved in the original story.

A trickier issue is when people involved in stories CONTACT US and offer their own takes on what was published. Also, your GetReligionistas never assume the reporter named in the byline was responsible for every detail or wording that appeared in the final story. Trust me, it really ticks off a reporter to be blamed for a flaw in a story — when it was the result of an editor’s work.

All of that is a prelude to this unusual post, which is an update on this one: “Kansas City Star shows a curious lack of curiosity about pro-LGBTQ Christian school's closing.” In this case, a religion-beat veteran decided to run the Star report as a wire feature, but was curious about some of the same issues that caught my attention.

Let’s start at the end of my post:

What is the painful reality that this story is striving to avoid? To answer that question, we would need to know something about the churches on both sides of this debate.

Here is my suggestion: Talk to the leaders of nearby African-American evangelical, Pentecostal and Baptist congregations, especially those linked to parents who were sending their children to this school.

To be blunt, there was a very obvious “reality” that the Star report — “KC Christian school lost donations after supporting LGBTQ rights. Now it’s closing” — avoided. What was it? Readers will need to see that information in context. So, yes, hold that thought.

The big question: Why did parents, donors and church leaders cut their support for this idealistic urban school? The Star said it was the candid change in the school’s doctrinal statement on LGBTQ issues — period.


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Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark new firestorm on sex, sin and Eucharist

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Pope Francis and a liberal U.S. cardinal spark new firestorm on sex, sin and Eucharist

When popes talk about sex, it tends to make headlines.

This was certainly true when Pope Francis told the Associated Press, "Being homosexual isn't a crime." He said the Catholic Church opposes criminalizing homosexuality and that, "We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are." The pope then noted that homosexual activity is "not a crime. Yes, but it's a sin."

The pope immediately responded to questions from Outreach.faith, a website serving LGBTQ Catholics. Francis explained: "I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin. … This is to speak of 'the matter' of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin."

The timing was striking since the AP interview ran on January 25 -- one day after the Jesuit magazine America published a controversial essay by Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego, who Pope Francis selected as a cardinal last year.

"It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities," concluded McElroy. "The church's primary witness in the face of this bigotry must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation. The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not."

The cardinal linked this "pastoral" approach to another hot-button issue -- offering Holy Communion to Catholics divorced and remarried outside the church. Previously, he had claimed that the "Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare" by bishops attempting to withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who publicly promote abortion rights.


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Bonus podcast: Thinking (yes, again) about journalism 'religion,' as well as Super Bowl ads

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Bonus podcast: Thinking (yes, again) about journalism 'religion,' as well as Super Bowl ads

On the day after the Super Bowl, what was the hot topic in your social-media feeds?

Was it bad lip syncing or a visible pregnant superstar?

Maybe the first-ever showdown between two Black starting quarterbacks? Or was it that each of these quarterbacks paused for rather lengthy moments of private prayer before the game began?

Advertisements? Naked avocados? The usual parade of beers? Deadly-serious triangular snacks? Electric vehicles that are not on sale yet? Or how about that sonogram of an unborn child with a thing for Pringles?

Now, do you think your answers could be connected to the presence of religious topics in your search-engine history files? Which of the angles listed above were most likely to get covered in “mainstream” news sources and which probably showed up in “religious” or “conservative” news?

This is another way to say that, one way or another, the odds are good that Americans are going to end up arguing about hot-button topics linked to religion.

That search-engine question was directly linked to the discussions at the end of a podcast that I did the other day with the Acton Institute social-media team. The main topic (#surprise) was my recent essay for their journal Religion & Liberty: “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.”

To be blunt, I think this is the most important thing I’ve written about the religion beat since my 1983 cover story for The Quill: “The Religion Beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets.” Thus, GetReligion has already offered quite a bit of digital ink (and a podcast of our own) on this topic. Think “RIP American Model of the Press? It appears that online financial realities killed it ...” And also, “It's just good business? The growing debate about America's news-silo culture.”

Thus, here is the Acton description of the podcast material:


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Podcast: Is the Asbury revival a 'news' story? Let's seek journalism advice from Screwtape

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Podcast: Is the Asbury revival a 'news' story? Let's seek journalism advice from Screwtape

Throughout this week, I have been following the online reports about the remarkable day-after-day revival gatherings that are taking place at Asbury University in Kentucky.

If you know about Methodist and Holiness movements, it isn’t surprising that this kind of spiritual earthquake would take place — again — at this location (here are some Asbury library resources on the history of earlier revivals).

Years ago, I went to Asbury for a speaking engagement. I noticed that there were tissue boxes placed a regular intervals along the sanctuary prayer rail-kneeling area. In other words, this is a campus in which it is normal for worshippers to kneel in sorrow/joy (often part of the same experience) while offering prayers of petition or repentance. This is part of the spiritual DNA of this community.

While reading social-media offerings about the revival, I also ran regular Google News searches (sample here) to see if journalists — including those at elite publications — have been covering this event.

The pickings have been rather lean, for reasons we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). I found myself, in a kind of time-travel experience, imaging myself attempting to convince a newspaper editor that this mysterious, spiritual outbreak was a BIG. NEWS. STORY.

This led me, believe it or not, straight to “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis, the famous Oxford scholar and Christian apologist. In this classic, global bestseller a master demon writes letters to his nephew Wormwood, an apprentice in need of advice on how to lead a human soul into hell. The relevant text, in my musings on the “news value” of this Asbury revival, is Letter 25. The key passage states:

“The real trouble about the set your patient is living is that it is merely Christianity. … What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity AND.’ You know –– Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring.”

In other words, national journalists may be trying to figure out what the “AND” is in this story.


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Christian nationalism? Try discussing that serious topic in crisp, punchy Twitter terms

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Christian nationalism? Try discussing that serious topic in crisp, punchy Twitter terms

Every now and then, I envy Bobby Ross, Jr.

Why? He has such a knack for writing short, crisp introductions to punchy posts.

You know, posts that open with a few blunt sentences.

Then they jump to a headline and a URL, like this: “Poll: A third of Americans are Christian nationalists and most are white evangelicals.”

Then Ross is off and running.

What comes next? Frequently, he embeds several relevant tweets on the topic. That’s helpful, since it shows readers who is saying what.

That’s that.

So let’s try that with a very complicated Twitter storm linked to that Religion News Service headline mentioned earlier. This report is built on the results of a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution: “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture.”

This story led to some fascinating discussions on Twitter — including links to information about the funding for the RNS project to expose Christian nationalism.

Try to write something short and punchy about that. Ah, but I can point to the Twitter sources.

First, here is the top of that RNS story:

(RNS) — A new survey finds that fewer than a third of Americans, or 29%, qualify as Christian nationalists, and of those, two-thirds define themselves as white evangelicals.


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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

For a minute or two, I thought that the Washington Post was going to publish a fair-minded news feature about the complex issues involved in “school choice” legislation.

Alas, it soon became clear that this was another business-as-usual piece that was, for the most part, committed to featuring the voices of activists on one side of the story. The story also avoided a key church-state legal term that is shaping recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on this subject.

Thus, it’s time — once again — for readers to grab some highlighter pens. Hold that thought.

You can sense what’s going on in the headline: “More states are paying to send children to private and religious schools.”

Ah, but private schools are private schools, too. Some are secular, some are openly religious. Some of the religious schools are on the left, in terms of doctrine, and some are on the right. But they are all “private” schools. Are all private schools created equal? Did the Post team “get” this angle of the story and include some diversity in the sourcing?

The bottom line: What we have here is another one of those “highlighter pen” stories that GetReligion digs into every now and then. What readers need to do is print a copy of the story and then grab three pens with different colors — maybe red, blue and some variation on purple. The goal is to mark quotes representing voices on the cultural left, right and, maybe, even in the middle.

But first, here is how the story opens:

For years, school-choice advocates toted up small victories in their drive to give parents taxpayer money to pay for private school. Now, Republican-led states across the country are leaving the limitations of the past behind them as they consider sweeping new voucher laws that would let every family use public funds to pay for private school.


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A modern, urban pastor comes to terms with his backwoods mountain family roots

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A modern, urban pastor comes to terms with his backwoods mountain family roots

Growing up in West Virginia, the Rev. Michael Clary always wondered about some of the archaic language his elders used, words like "yonder" and "reckon."

Then he learned that his grandfather -- a steel-mill worker and country preacher -- had memorized the classic King James Bible by listening to tapes during his long drives to the factory. He had a sixth-grade education and, if he couldn't spell something, he could still quote a verse that contained the word and then find it in his Bible.

All that scripture soaked in -- deep. Thus, "I reckon" wasn't just another way to say "probably." It was New Testament language, such as: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

These Appalachian roots caused pangs of shame during graduate school, said Clary, who leads Christ the King Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Cincinnati.

Soon after that, "I was pastoring a fast growing church in an urban environment, and a spirit of elitism had infected us," he wrote, in a Twitter stream that went viral. "The people we felt free to mock were conservative, uneducated, backwoods fundies. … They lacked the theological sophistication and cultural insight I had acquired while doing campus ministry and studying at seminary."

The bottom line: "I had moved on. I was better than them. I was more learned and cultured. I had 'seen the world' and they hadn't."

Clary said he wrote those "words with tears in my eyes." Reached by telephone, he explained that he was facing the kinds of church tensions that arise while defending traditional doctrines in a flock located a few blocks from the University of Cincinnati. It's hard to be "winsome" -- a buzz word today -- while trying to remain faithful in a bitterly divided culture.


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