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Attention reporters: New poll examines trends among 'Catholic voters' heading into '20 elections

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With less than a year before the 2020 presidential election, a new poll of U.S. Catholics found that they largely favor a host of Democratic challengers to President Donald Trump.

But the survey also found that 58% of devout Catholics, those who say they accept all church teaching, were “sure to vote” for Trump next year — compared to 34% of all Catholics and 32% of respondents overall who were asked the same question.

The survey — conducted in cooperation between the Eternal World Television Network and RealClear Opinion Research — offers updated insights into the minds of American Catholics ahead of the upcoming Democratic primaries and the November general election. 

“With few exceptions, for generations, tracking the preferences of the Catholic vote has proven to be a shortcut to predicting the winner of the popular vote — and I expect 2020 to be no different,” said John Della Volpe, director of the poll. “Like the rest of America, the 22% of the electorate comprising the Catholic vote is nuanced and diverse. And like America, the diverse viewpoints based on generation, race, and ethnicity are significant and prove that no longer are Catholic voters a monolith.”

There’ s also the notion of who exactly are these Catholic voters who support Trump? Here at GetReligion, tmatt has argued — quoting a veteran priest in Washington, D.C. — that there are actually four types of Catholic voters in America: Ex-Catholics, Cultural Catholics, Sunday-morning Catholics and “sweats the details and goes to Confession” Catholics. The poll doesn’t dig into any of these factors.

Since the days of John F. Kennedy, Democrats who are also Catholic have tried to reconcile the church’s teachings with their party’s politics.


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Washington Post and ReligionUnplugged both land stories on Mormon $100 billion slush fund

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Well, it was a race to the finish as to who’d land the story Monday night about a secret –- and possibly illegal - -$100 billion fund made up of Mormon tithes

We think the Washington Post made it to the finish line first, but it was neck-in-neck with Paul Glader, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who now oversees Religion Unplugged. It should be noted that GetReligion and Religion UnPlugged do share some content, but I’m not privy to how Glader got the story other than his note atop his piece that says a source called him in November.

Glader was working solo for the past month or so; the Post had three people on this story plus another two helping out, not to mention the former IRS official they pulled in for advice. I am glad that the Post didn’t just rely on its business reporters but pulled Michelle Boorstein, its senior religion-beat writer, onto the story.

I am curious why the two Salt Lake newpapers totally missed this story as did the Journal, which is usually on top of financial scandals but has continues to lag way behind on breaking religion news.

We will start with ReligionUnplugged:

NEW YORK — A whistleblower complaint filed at the Internal Revenue Service in November by a knowledgeable church member alleges that a non-profit supporting organization controlled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used member tithes to amass more than $100 billion in a set of investment funds and the Church misled members about uses of the money.

The complaint may be the most important look at LDS finances in decades, a window into one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the United States and the world. Details of the IRS filing reveal financial assets largely hidden from the church’s membership (often known as “Mormons”) and the public view.


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The Washington Post's long quest to explain Buttigieg's race problem while ignoring religion

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The Washington Post had a front-page story this week on Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s “long quest to bridge racial gap,” as the print headline put it.

The online title: “Inside Pete Buttigieg’s years-long, and often clumsy, quest to understand the black experience.”

You get the idea.

According to the Post article, the surprise 2020 contender’s struggle to connect with African Americans goes back to his college days.

Even though the piece tops 3,000 words — a novel in the world of newspapers — one crucial factor is hardly mentioned. Given that this is GetReligion, it probably won’t take you long to guess what.

If you’ll forgive me for sounding like a broken record, I’ll refer back to a post I wrote earlier this month asking, “Serious question: Is Buttigieg being gay a reason for his low support among black voters in the South?”

In that post, I noted:

The stories get into poverty and other crucial issues, but I’m going to focus on a specific point raised in all three articles: the connection, if any, between Buttigieg’s sexual orientation and his low support among black voters in the Bible Belt.

I keep waiting for a major newspaper reporter (perhaps a Godbeat pro is available?) to explore that question. So far, it hasn’t happened. Or if it has, I missed it (in which case I’d welcome a link).

As for the Post story, it offers some interesting anecdotes on Buttigieg’s life experiences with African Americans, opening with his time as an intern for a black reporter in Chicago:


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Is this a 'big' story? NBC Out team celebrates ordination of trans pioneer on Lutheran left

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Once again, we need to pause and try to explain some of the X factors that enter into journalists deciding why a specific event or trend is a “story,” or even a “big story.”

Some “stories” seem to be similar, but they are not. In some cases, events or trends that touch the lives of several thousand people may draw little or no coverage, while events that involve a dozen or so people end up on the front page or at the top of a television newscast. Is this fair?

Several years ago, I described the puzzle this way:

A suburban megachurch builds a massive family-life center and it isn’t news. The same evangelical church builds a new parking lot that — in the eyes of its neighbors — clashes with zoning laws and the story goes straight to the front page. Meanwhile, the historic Episcopal parish in downtown decides to change a single window in its sanctuary (the original has been there since the facility was built, of course) and the story runs on A1 on a Sunday, with multiple photos.

I raise this issue, again, because of a recent NBC News story that caught the attention of a GetReligion reader. The headline proclaimed: “Transgender Latina makes history as Evangelical Lutheran pastor.” The reader’s question: Why did the ordination of this pastor of a small congregation deserve national attention?

For starters, it helps to know that this story was produced by the “NBC Out & Proud” team. That does raise questions about advocacy journalism. Can anyone imagine the existence of an “NBC Born Again & Proud” in that newsroom? How about “NBC Catholic & Proud”?

Here is the overture to this particular story:

Before coming out as transgender, Nicole Garcia prayed daily that God would “fix” her.


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After Brexit, will United Kingdom become an untied kingdom? If so, what about its churches?

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The British election December 12 was as dramatic as America’s in 2016. Some claim the smashing triumph of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives over Jeremy Corbyn and Labour means Donald Trump will be re-elected if U.S. Democrats likewise go hard left. Or not.

Whatever the U.S. ripples, the inevitable “Brexit” from the European Union is epochal for the U.K. 

Journalists should be pondering an equally historic possibility. Philip Jenkins, a Baylor University historian of religion whose Christian Century columns about overseas trends are always worth reading, posed the following on Patheos.com days before the Brits balloted.

What if Brexit turns the United Kingdom into an untied kingdom? What if the nation with the world’s fifth largest economy dissolves? What happens to ties between some of the churches that are involved?

In terms of history, not long ago we saw the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia break into assorted nation-states, and before that the Czechs and Slovaks split up.

England dominates the four segments of the nation officially named The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Jenkins contends that today’s supposed “British” government sees itself "only in terms of England” and he predicts in coming years “the nation of Great Britain will have ceased to exist.”

A crackup’s first stage would be the departure of Scotland after 312 years. In a 2014 referendum, an impressive 45 percent of Scots voted to quit the U.K. The potential break was further demonstrated in the Britain-wide referendum that backed Brexit when a lopsided 62 percent of Scots voted to remain in the European Union. The pro-independence Scottish National Party surged in last week’s voting. Jenkins claims Scotland’s breakaway is now “just a matter of time.”  

Northern Ireland likewise voted to remain in the European Union, by 56 percent.


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CNN's religion editor delves into Salvation Army's effort to change its 'anti-LGBTQ' reputation

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“As Chick-fil-A capitulates, should press characterize Salvation Army and FCA as anti-LGBTQ?”

That was the title on a post I wrote last month after news broke that Chick-fil-A would stop donating to certain groups deemed anti-gay, including the Salvation Army.

Chick-fil-A’s decision has continued to make headlines since then, including an interesting story last week in World magazine. The evangelical news publication noted that despite the recent severed ties, most of the fast-food chicken chain’s charitable giving still goes to Christian ministries.

The chicken sandwich brouhaha is a part — but not the whole, um, chicken enchilada — of a big report out today by CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke.

Instead, Burke focuses on the bigger issue of the Salvation Army and its effort to change its “'anti-LGBTQ” reputation, as CNN describes it:

(CNN) Salvation Army bell ringers, the folks you see jingling bells by red kettles at Christmastime, will be carrying a new prop this year: A card explaining the Christian church and charity's approach to LGBTQ people.

Designed to help bell ringers answer questions from passersby, the cards include a link to online testimonials from LGBTQ people helped by the Salvation Army's array of social services, from homeless shelters to rehab clinics and food pantries.

"For years, Facebook posts, forwarded emails and rumors have been leading some people to believe the Salvation Army does not serve members of the LGBTQ community," the cards read. "These accusations are simply not true."

To many Americans, the Army's social services may be far more familiar than its politics or theology. Ranked number two in the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of "America's Favorite Charities," it raised $1.5 billion in donations last year. The Red Kettle campaign began 129 years ago, when a Salvationist put out a pot for the needy on Market Street in San Francisco.

But to some in the LGBTQ community, the Salvation Army has another reputation. For decades, they've accused Salvationsts of denying some services to same-sex couples, advocating against gay rights and adhering to a traditional theology that considers gay sex sinful. At times, LGBTQ activists have dropped fake dollar bills or vouchers protesting the Salvation Army in the red kettles.

First off, kudos to Burke for noting way up high that the Salvation Army is a church as well as a charity. Many people don’t know that.


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Sad puzzle: Washington Post crime story mixes politics, religion, tolerance and personal pain

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I love a good detective story.

The Washington Post ran an incredible feature story recently that was, first and foremost, a detective story that offered piece after piece of a complex puzzle that mixed politics, religion, crime, clickbait news and an agonizing family drama.

I’ve been thinking about “The confession” for some time now, trying to figure out what to say when praising it. First of all, this story itself is about crime that rocked a rural heartland community and the struggles of the gay organist who faked an attack on the tiny liberal church that had hired him to help lead worship, even though he was not a believer.

The story of Nathan Strang and why he did what he did is, of course, at the heart of this feature. But what haunted me was what this story reveals about America life right now and all of the forces that are making tolerance and public discourse so difficult.

This is a must read and I will not dwell on all the details. What I want to set up is the pivotal moment — part politics, part religion — when a detective takes the first big step in solving the crime. Here is the overture:

BEAN BLOSSOM, Ind. — The knock on Nathan Stang’s door came just after 1 p.m. Stang, a doctoral student in music at Indiana University, answered the soft rapping that Friday wearing a blue bathrobe. Standing outside his apartment was a clean-shaven man dressed in beige slacks and a pink, checked shirt. 

“Hi, Nathan,” said Brian Shrader, a deputy with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department. “Remember me?” 

“Yeah,” Stang replied. It was Shrader who had interviewed him after an appalling act of vandalism at St. David’s Episcopal Church, where Stang played the organ and directed the choir.


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Academic gadfly Robert Lopez gets pegged as 'antigay' no matter what he does

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I’ve said before that normally, I like what I read in Inside Higher Education except when they attempt to report on cultural wars issues, particularly religion. At which point, the snark gets a bit overwhelming.

Sadly, much of the commentary that’s appeared in GetReligion in the past year or two about Inside Higher Education has been negative. There’s this piece about the University of Iowa that ran earlier this year; this 2017 piece on Biola University that I also found fault with and tmatt’s critique of their Baylor coverage in September.

The latest piece is a he-got-what-was-coming-to-him piece about a conservative professor who was chased out of California State University of Northridge, only to run into similarly bad behavior at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

If the name Robert Oscar Lopez sounds familiar, it might be because he clashed with his prior institution, too. In 2015, Lopez, then an associate professor of English at California State University at Northridge, said that institution was targeting him because he disagreed with letting gay parents adopt children. He faced a related complaint that a conference he’d organized and invited students to attend pushed antigay views (he denied this).

Lopez held other views outside the conservative mainstream, such as that homosexuality was inexorably linked to pederasty. Some called it hate speech. He said he based his insights on personal experience, and that being raised by a bisexual mother and her female partner made him socially awkward and led him to the “gay underworld” for a time.

Is the reporter sure that view is outside the conservative mainstream?

Eventually, Lopez left California and secular academe for Southwestern. The Texas institution doesn’t have tenure, but he thought he had found a permanent place among like-minded, socially conservative academics.

Things went well for Lopez for a while. But he couldn’t have predicted the events to come. In 2018, amid the Me Too movement, the seminary’s then president, Paige Patterson, was accused of covering up sexual abuse allegations within the Southern Baptist Convention. An earlier audio recording of Patterson counseling prayer to women with violent husbands also surfaced, as did reports that Patterson had gravely mishandled two rape cases involving woman at the seminary, in 2003 and in 2015.

The article explains all the complexities of the Patterson case and then links it to the fortunes of Liberty University, an evangelical institution several states away.


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Thinking about St. Benedict: Emma Green looks at one extreme option in Kansas

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Several years ago, I took a copy of The Atlantic Monthly with me on a non-stop flight from Baltimore to the Los Angeles area. I was still reading it when the plane landed on the West Coast. And that was before Emma Green arrived.

As I have stated before here at GetReligion, Green’s work is magazine-style analysis, yet she is also doing hard reporting as part of that mix — reporting that often drives hard-news beat reporters to have to consider expanding their sources and the points of view included in their work. At times, it seems like we could feature Green in this “think piece” slot every weekend.

This time around, she headed to a state that I am beginning to frequent for family reasons. Kansas is not for everyone, but it is an interesting and unique culture — a real place. It’s as far south and west as you can go and still be in the Midwest, with it’s strong emphasis on family and community. How many public parks are there in Wichita? (The answer is 144.)

Here is the headline on Green’s new piece:

The Christian Withdrawal Experiment

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

The big idea, of course, is that these believers are withdrawing, as much as is possible in this hyperlinked world, from one culture in order to defend another. At the heart of it all is faith and family.

But is this specific community the emerging norm? Here is the overture:


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