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Friday Five: Astros blunder, Chick-fil-A, SBC women profs, Ugandan justice, Jesus (really) saves

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Before we dive into the Friday Five, a few updates to earlier posts:

• I followed up Thursday on my analysis last week of The Associated Press’ haunted obituary of Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Kudos to AP for a new piece that delves into the important role of the black church in Cummings’ life.

• Earlier this week, I highlighted the bush-league PR response by the Houston Astros to a foul-mouthed, female-sportswriter-bullying assistant general manager named Brandon Taubman. Welp, the Astros eventually did the right thing and fired Taubman, a Houston Chronicle sports columnist writes.

• Also this week, I asked “What’s the real story?” concerning plans to close the first-ever international Chick-fil-A? The location at British mall apparently will shut down after six months amid protests by gay-rights activists. In that post, I mentioned a lawsuit over the San Antonio airport refusing to allow a Chick-fil-A. Now, the San Antonio Express-News reports that the Chick-fil-A could wind up opening there after all.

Now, on to the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: Here’s a “story of the week” that actually hasn’t hit the mainstream press yet, assuming my Google News search skills are adequate.

Separate stories emerged this week, both concerning female professors and Southern Baptist seminaries, but the only reports I’ve seen were in the religious press: One involves the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, voting to affirm women colleagues amid attacks from some critics.


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Tampa Bay Times project details the making of world's first 'Scientology city' in Clearwater

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Writing about Scientologists is always a tough assignment, as the group isn’t fond of the media and does what it can to hamper critical reporting.

Which is why the Tampa Bay Times has done an amazing job in putting together a lengthy piece about how the church or members of the church are buying up downtown Clearwater, Fla., the site of their international headquarters.

Together with some cool graphics from GoogleEarth that show Scientology’s stranglehold on local properties, the story reminds us all that the Church of Scientology has been threatening to take control of the city since 1975. In the past three years, it’s doubled its footprint downtown. Here’s how it starts:

THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY and companies run by its members spent $103 million over the past three years buying up vast sections of downtown Clearwater.

They now own most commercial property on every block within walking distance of the waterfront, putting the secretive church firmly in control of the area’s future.

Most of the sales have not previously been reported. The Tampa Bay Times discovered them by reviewing more than 1,000 deeds and business records, then interviewed more than 90 people to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the transactions.

Even city leaders said they didn’t know the full extent of the purchases until they were shown maps created by the Times.

The church, its members and companies they control now own 185 properties that cover 101 acres in the center of downtown.

Finding all this out took lead reporter Tracey McManus six solid months working full time on this story. She found out some creepy details about how the property sales took place.


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After haunted obit, AP produces solid piece on black church's role in Rep. Elijah Cummings' life

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I wrote last week that The Associated Press’ obituary on Congressman Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland was haunted by religion ghosts.

I pointed to the strong role of faith in Cummings’ life and noted that publications such as the Washington Post and Cummings’ hometown Baltimore Sun reflected it.

I voiced hope that AP would recognize that angle in its later coverage.

As the Rolling Stones put it, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

But hey, sometimes you can.

AP produced a solid piece out of Detroit this week on how the “Black Baptist church shaped Cummings’ commitment”:

DETROIT (AP) — To many black clergy, Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings was more than a formidable orator, civil rights champion and passionate public servant, he was also one of them — in practice, if not profession.

His upbringing, as “a preacher’s kid” gave him a comfort level with ministers and clergy to the point they “almost regarded him as a preacher,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II, senior pastor of Detroit’s Historic King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church.

Cummings, the son of a sharecropper and pastors who died last Thursday at 68, was among a generation of lawmakers, civil rights leaders and social justice advocates who grew up under the influence of the African American church. From Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, the black church is intertwined in African American history and the struggle for equality. It was the primary institution for organizing demonstrations, providing training and selecting leaders. Part of the role was instilling in those leaders a commitment to speaking for those who could not speak for themselves, giving one’s life in service to the community and standing against injustice.

Black pastors and historians alike remember Cummings, who will be buried in Baltimore Friday, as a man who absorbed the lessons of the church and exemplified its teachings in serving his constituents.


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What happened to ObamaCare and trans rights? Let's look at that headline in a mirror

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Headlines are really hard to write, and I say that as someone whose first full-time journalism job was on a copy desk in a daily newspaper.

If you think that it’s hard to write news stories that offer some sense of fairness and balance on complicated issues, you should try doing the same thing in a headline — with punch and maybe even a few terms that appeal to search engines. Copy editors have nightmares about being asked to write big, bold one- or two-column headlines for hot stories on A1 (back when there was such a thing as A1 and it mattered).

So I rarely respond when readers send me angry notes about headlines. But this time I will make an exception. This one begs for what your GetReligionistas have long called the “mirror image” treatment. What would the headline look like if you flipped it around?

The headline at The Hill proclaims: “Federal judge overturns ObamaCare transgender protections.”

That led to this email from a GetReligion reader:

OK, I guess that's one way to look at it. But how about this way: "Federal judge rules that doctors can't be forced to violate their consciences"?

Which is more accurate? I would argue the latter since the rule wasn't really about "protections" since there are doctors willing to do the surgeries and prescribe the medications.

That’s a good point — that reference to pro-LGBTQ doctors and networks being willing to back the trans positions on these issues. Is this a case in which doctors with traditional religious beliefs can, or should, be forced to lose their jobs?

What would that headline look like when viewed in a mirror?


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Major survey of U.S. young adults has startling data on Protestants' two-party system

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The Religion Guy confesses that, like so many writers, he has tended to depict U.S. Protestantism’s two-party system of “Mainline” vs. “Evangelical” mostly in terms of newsworthy LGBTQ issues. In more sophisticated moments, he might briefly note the underlying differences on Bible interpretation. But maybe something even more basic is occurring.

While scanning an important new research work, “The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular lives of American Young Adults” (Oxford), The Guy was gobsmacked by a graph on page 32.

You want news?

How about the prospect that U.S. Protestantism does not just involve that familiar biblical rivalry but could be evolving toward a future with two starkly different belief systems.

All U.S. religion writers and church strategists are anxiously watching the younger generation, and there’s been important research both here (care of Princeton University Press), here (make that Oxford University Press) and finally here (Oxford, again).

The project published as “The Twentysomething Soul,” led by authors Tim Clydesdale (sociology, College of New Jersey, clydesda@tcnj.edu) and Kathleen Garces-Foley (religious studies, Marymount University, kgarcesfoley@marymount.edu), surveyed an unusually large sample of Americans ages 20 to 30 and could fully categorize religious identifications, beliefs and practices.

The graph that grabbed The Guy involved who God is.

In this question’s option one, he is “a personal being, involved in the lives of people today.” Hard to think of a Christian belief more basic than that. In other options, God is “not personal, but something like a cosmic life force,” a fuzzy New Age-ish idea. Or God only created the world “but is not involved in the world now,” what’s known as Deism. Or the respondent lacked any sort of belief in God.


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This week's religion charts: Are young folks the only problem in empty sanctuaries?

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For the past 17 years, your GetReligionistas have written about a growing trend in religion polls (here’s the late George Gallup Jr., 15 years ago) that has obvious implications for American life in general.

Here it is: When looking at the spectrum of American life — in terms of religious beliefs, as seen in the practice of faith — the number of “traditional” believers is remaining remarkably stable, while the number of atheists, agnostics and the religiously unaffiliated has risen sharply.

What’s vanishing is sort-of believers in the middle of the spectrum.

Young people in that cohort tend to grab the headlines, since that is the future.

But check out this week’s charts from political scientist Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University (who is also a progressive Baptist pastor. Religion-beat pros and news consumers need to bookmark the Religion in Public website — especially to dig into the details of the General Social Survey data that he uses, along with other polling sources.

So, let’s ask fearful religious establishment leaders: Are the kids the only problem out there? Maybe the infamous Baby Boomers have something to do with all of this angst?

Read on.


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Amid bush-league PR operation, Houston Astros could use some good -- er, God -- news

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God and baseball.

Both are favorite subjects of mine, and sometimes, they intersect.

We eventually will get to the religion angle in this post, so please hang with me for a moment. But first, let’s set the scene with a little unfortunate background: It’s been a rough few days for the bush-league PR operation of the Houston Astros.

Even as attention should be focused on the team’s feel-good pursuit of its second World Series title in three years, a foul-mouthed, female-sportswriter-bullying assistant general manager named Brandon Taubman managed to rile even local Astros fans.

Major League Baseball is investigating what happened after the Astros’ pennant-clinching win on Saturday night, as CBS News notes:

The Houston Astros lost Game 1 of the World Series Tuesday night against the Washington Nationals, but it's drama off the field that's making headlines. Major League Baseball is investigating the expletive-filled celebration of a controversial player that an Astros executive apparently directed to a group of female reporters.

Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein wrote that Astros assistant general manager, Brandon Taubman, turned to the female reporters, one of whom was wearing a domestic violence bracelet, and yelled: "Thank God we got Osuna! I'm so f— glad we got Osuna!"

He was referring to pitcher Roberto Osuna, picked up by the Astros after he was arrested on domestic violence charges in 2018 for allegedly assaulting the mother of his young child. The Astros had initially been criticized for acquiring Osuna after he had been accused of domestic violence. 

The Poynter Institute’s Tom Jones — in a daily briefing that highlights “The Astros’ sexist mistake” — runs down the team hierarchy’s bungling of Taubman’s tirade all along the way:


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When it comes to John MacArthur, Beth Moore and Russell Moore, let's ask tougher questions.

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By now, many of you may have heard of the harsh comment that the Rev. John MacArthur, an extremely conservative evangelical pastor, made about Beth Moore, possibly the most famous woman in Southern Baptist life today.

MacArthur, who is very old school even among evangelicals, has led Grace Community Church north of Los Angeles for 50 years. To say he dislikes women preachers would be an understatement.

There are a lot of people out there protesting his unkind comments, including Relevant magazine, which produced an article listing several leaders across the theological spectrum critical of MacArthur.

MacArthur, by the way, has been even more scathing about charismatics over the years, so the Beth Moore crowd may be getting an idea of what the Pentecostal/charismatic crowd has been putting up with for a number of years.

First, according to Religion News Service, here’s what MacArthur said.

During the “Truth Matters Conference,” held Oct. 16-18 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where he is pastor, MacArthur and other panelists were asked to give their gut reactions to one- or two-word phrases.

Asked to respond to the phrase “Beth Moore,” the name of a well-known Southern Baptist Bible teacher, MacArthur replied, “Go home.”

Sounds of laughter and applause could be heard in response during a recording of the session, which was posted online.

MacArthur — a leading proponent of Reformed theology and of complementarianism, the idea that women and men have different roles to play in the church and in society — was apparently responding to a controversy this past summer when Moore noted on Twitter that she spoke at a megachurch on a Sunday morning.

Her tweet led to accusations that Moore was undermining Southern Baptist teaching, which bars women from holding the office of pastor in churches.

One voice that has been absent on this latest flare-up has been the Rev. Russell Moore (no relation to Beth) who is the head of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. The last interview with him that I saw occurred in August when Newsweek’s Nina Burleigh called him the “rebel evangelical.”

It was a very weak, even clueless, interview. The questions were vapid and Moore, who is no fool, slid past them with little difficulty. Most of the questions were about racism and sex abuse within the SBC, but they weren’t tough questions by any chance.

Meanwhile, is Russell Moore really a “rebel evangelical?” For that matter, so is Beth Moore? Are we talking about doctrine here or politics?


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Washington Post keeps following 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick story -- into Newark and New York

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The Washington Post religion desk, to its credit, continues to dig into the long, complicated story of all of the sexual abuse accusations against former cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.

This is fitting, since he was a national media figure during his years as archbishop in Washington, D.C. You can get the gist of the latest revelations from the story’s long headline: “At least 7 more people told the Vatican they were sexually abused as boys by Theodore McCarrick, according to sources.”

What is really interesting, at least to me, about this must-read Post story is the degree to which it tells a story that centers on events in Uncle Ted’s career in and around New York and New Jersey.

For me, this raises an interesting question. Readers with detailed memories will recall that the McCarrick meltdown kicked into overdrive with a story in The New York Times. Remember this Gray Lady headline from July 16, 2018? “He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests. Then He Became a Cardinal.” That story was driven by accusations filed with investigators, including laypeople, with the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

So here is my question: Why are readers seeing chapter after chapter of the McCarrick drama unfold at The Washington Post, if the key events took place in zip codes near The New York Times?

Just asking.

So let’s go back to praising the Post. Here is the overture of the latest story:

Theodore McCarrick, a former D.C. archbishop and cardinal who was defrocked this year amid allegations that he sexually abused two minors and sexually harassed seminarians, is facing new accusations that he abused at least seven boys from about 1970 until 1990, according to three sources, including a person with direct knowledge of the claims U.S. church officials sent to the Vatican in January.

In addition, six allegations of sexual abuse by seminarians and former seminarians also were sent to Rome, according to this last person.


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