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Gay-rights lawsuit against big seminary ties into '20 elections and pending Supreme Court case

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With 2,900 students, Fuller Theological Seminary in California is one of the world’s largest and most influential clergy training grounds. The evangelical Protestant school believes that biblical teaching requires its faculty, students and staff to limit “sexual union” to marriage “between one man and one woman” while singles observe abstinence.

That moral stance, upheld across centuries in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, now faces substantial legal and political resistance. 

Fuller's policy provoked a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit, high on the developing news docket, that was joined last week by Nathan Brittsan, an American Baptist Churches USA clergyman. Those seeking background can see local coverage here and Religion News Service coverage right here. Fuller expelled Brittsan in 2017, just before he was to begin studies, when it learned about his gay marriage. 

Let’s back up a step. The suit was originally filed last November by Joanna Maxon, a student expelled during her last semester in 2018 after her lesbian marriage came to light. (Click here for Julia Duin’s GetReligion post criticizing Los Angeles Times coverage of Maxon’s complaint.)  

Paul Southwick, the attorney for Brittsan and Maxon, makes a straightforward claim that any religious school that discriminates on the basis of sexual activity by gays and lesbians should be penalized and lose federal aid. He thinks the case “could set an important legal precedent,” and notes that Fuller allowed a student accused of heterosexual sinning to remain enrolled.

Fuller is defended by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The spokesman there said what’s at stake is the right of religions to educate their leaders “free from government entanglement.” There’s potential support in the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2012 Hosanna-Tabor ruling against an Obama Administration bid to deny religious exemption under employment law. 

A different tack against religious schools occurred when the regional accreditation of Gordon College was questioned.


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Mayor Pete evolving into Pastor Pete? Prepare for latest uptick in MSM ardor for religious left

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If you have been paying any attention at all to the 2020 White House race, you were ready for the latest mini-sermon from Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The setting, of course, was the last debate between Democratic Party hopefuls staged before the Iowa caucuses. Here is the key soundbite from Buttigieg, care of CNN, as the frequent churchgoing Episcopalian took yet another shot at Citizen Donald Trump, who — until recently — has been linked to mainline forms of Presbyterianism in great New York City.

Let us attend.

“If he keeps trying to use religion, if a guy like Donald trump keeps trying to use religion to somehow recruit Christianity into the GOP, I will be standing there not afraid to talk about a different way to answer the call of faith,” he said. “And insist that God does not belong to a political party.”

If that kind of language sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that. Consider the top of the recent New York Times feature that ran with this double-decker headline:

Why Pete Buttigieg Has Made Religion Central to His Campaign

The former mayor is not only trying to bridge ground within the Democratic Party, he’s also making a direct appeal to disaffected conservatives who cannot stomach President Trump.

The overture, logically enough, is from a Sunday morning sermonette in which Mayor Pete proclaims:

“Look at what they do,” he said at a campaign stop about 45 minutes outside of Des Moines, calling out Republicans for “using faith as a way to tell some people they don’t belong.”


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What journalists need to look for during Benedict-Francis feud over priestly celibacy

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The movie The Two Popes is a largely fictional account of the doctrinal differences between the retired Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

In real life, those differences were brought to the surface this week when retired Benedict issued a strongly-worded defense for priestly celibacy — countering his successor Pope Francis, who has publicly affirmed this tradition of the Roman rite, but who is also considering allowing older married men to be ordained in the Amazon to deal with a shortage in that part of the world.

The pope emeritus made the surprise comments in a book, excerpts of which were printed in the French newspaper Le Figro, co-authored with Cardinal Robert Sarah (click here for the cardinal’s defense of listing the retired pope as an author of materials in the book).

What journalists covering this ongoing story need to focus on is explaining what it means for a pope to be infallible on matters of doctrine, as talk of schism intensifies. Also, what role does an emeritus pope play? What does clergy celibacy mean doctrinally for Catholicism? All of these factors will have a bearing on what Pope Francis ultimately decides to do regarding doing away with celibacy among men serving congregations in the Amazon region.

Both Benedict and Sarah are doctrinally conservative, while Francis is widely seen — especially in media reports — as a progressive who wants to change many church teachings to deal with changes in the modern world.


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That story that stayed 'til Christmas: Pachamama debates lingered at the Vatican

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The scene during the Vatican's Christmas concert was simple and even childlike, as a young woman from Latin America instructed participants -- including smiling cardinals -- to fold their arms over their chests.

But this was a religious ritual, not a 1990s Macarena flashback.

"You will feel a strong vibration," she said, according to translations of the online video. "That is the heart -- your heart, but also the heart of Mother Earth. And on the other side, where you feel the silence, there is the spirit -- the spirit that allows you to understand the message of the Mother.

"For us indigenous peoples … Mother Earth, Hitchauaya, is everything. It is that Mother who provides food. She is the one who gives us the sacred water. She is the one who gives us medicinal plants and power and reminds us of our origin, the origin of our creation."

The name "Hitchauaya" was new, but battles over "Pachamama" rites had already emerged as one of the strangest Vatican news stories of late 2019. For weeks, progressives and conservatives argued about the relevancy of the first of the Ten Commandments: "You shall have no other gods before me."

Three events in Rome fueled the Earth Mother wars. For some Catholics, they became linked, theologically, to an early 2019 meeting in Abu Dhabi when Pope Francis signed an interfaith document that included this: "The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom."

First, early in the fall Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region, there were rites that included wooden statues of a pregnant Amazonian woman. Some journalists reported that they represented "Our Lady of the Amazon" or were symbols of new life. Outraged Catholics then stole the statues and tossed them in the Tiber River.

Speaking as "bishop of this diocese," Pope Francis apologized and sought "forgiveness from those who have been offended by this gesture." He said the images were displayed "without idolatrous intentions."


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Shane Claiborne finally gets his day in the media sun in the Washington Post Magazine

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Although evangelicals have been the flavor of the month for some time in the mainstream media, it’s rare that you see a thoughtful profile on one of them. Conservative evangelicals are distasteful to much of the media on the Eastern seaboard, so the search has been on to find someone who is more palatable to mainstream media tastes.

And thus Shane Claiborne, one of the more interesting Gen X thinkers out there, was a perfect choice for a recent Washington Post Magazine piece.

He’s spent more than two decades living in inner-city Philly; he got some serious cred traveling to Iraq during the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and doing time in Calcutta helping Mother Teresa. He has hung out with the unglamorous poor and stayed on message for a long time.

On a gloomy Tuesday morning in April, the Christian activist Shane Claiborne was in the studio of WCPN, Cleveland’s NPR affiliate, waiting to go on air. The overhead lights glinted off his thick-rimmed glasses. The 43-year-old had spent the past five weeks on a national tour, living on a retrofitted school bus, speaking at community centers and churches every night, trying to accelerate regional movements against gun violence. His collaborator, Mike Martin, a Mennonite blacksmith from Colorado, was sitting to his left…

The story then refers to the verse from Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Claiborne and Martin had been enacting the verse on tour. They were promoting a book they had written — “Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence” — and at every stop, they were using Martin’s forge to convert a rifle into a garden tool. The point was to give communities a chance to grieve, but also to convince them that change was possible. It all reflected the broader project that has made up Claiborne’s career: promoting what might be called an alternative version of evangelical Christianity, one more concerned with social justice than with personal salvation. Or, as he would put it to me later, a bit wryly: “Getting Christians to connect their faith to issues that I think matter to God and are affecting our neighbors.”…


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Any darkness to report? The cathedral dean (and bishop) who led St. John the Divine to relevancy

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Obituaries are an interesting and unique form of journalism.

On one level, these news features — especially long takes on the lives of the famous — are tributes to people who shaped our culture. There are cases, of course, in which people become famous for negative, as well as positive, reasons. It would be strange to see an obit of former President Bill Clinton that avoided the flaws, and possible crimes, that led to his impeachment.

There are also people whose lives become intertwined with controversial people. It’s hard to imagine, at some point in the future, an obituary for Bob Weinstein that didn’t mention the #MeToo excesses of his brother Harvey Weinstein during their years working side by side. Consider this passage from a New York Times story last fall:

Time’s Up, a Hollywood-based advocacy group begun in the wake of the Weinstein revelations and the #MeToo effort, quickly issued a statement after learning of Bob Weinstein’s new production company.

“There could have been no Harvey Weinstein without the complicity of Bob Weinstein, who for years put profits ahead of people’s lives as Harvey terrorized women throughout the industry,” the statement read.

This brings me to the recent Times feature obit that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

James Parks Morton, Dean Who Brought a Cathedral to Life, Dies at 89

Leading the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for 25 years, he sought to make it central to urban life.

Morton was a liberal Protestant hero who led an Episcopal sanctuary that served as a Maypole around which activists of many kinds danced. However, his career was closely connected with an even more famous liberal Christian hero — Bishop Paul Moore — who was hiding secrets. Hold that thought.

Let’s start with the glowing Times overture.


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Plug-In: 7 tips for covering horrific events in houses of worship (and treating victims right)

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I love journalism. I love my fellow journalists.

But as I pointed out in last week’s column on the media barrage faced by minister Britt Farmer after a deadly shooting at his Texas church, I believe we can do better — much better — in how we treat victims.

To help in that regard, I asked four highly respected news professionals — three of them Pulitzer Prize recipients — for advice. Everyone I’m quoting has extensive experience in this area and in making our profession proud.

Based on what they told me, here are seven tips for covering horrific events at houses of worship:

1. How you approach a victim is everything.

“Many mistakes are usually made in the initial approach when journalists are trying to get that quote or sound bite,” said Joe Hight, a Pulitzer-winning editor who is the Edith Kinney Gaylord Endowed Chair of Journalism Ethics at the University of Central Oklahoma. 

“It just doesn’t work like you’re at a public news conference or interviewing a public figure,” added Hight, who hired me at The Oklahoman in 1993 and oversaw our coverage of victims after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. “You are intruding upon private individuals in their most vulnerable moments. In these tragic situations, you have to ask the victims or family members for permission. You need to say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ and mean it sincerely. You need to put yourself in the victim’s position of grief and despair after such a tragic situation.

“You need to determine whether the individual is even capable of talking to you at this point or whether you need to step away and approach later. How would you feel if you were asked that question? You don’t want to cause further harm or take advantage of someone in grief just for a quote or sound bite. How you approach will often determine what kind of interview you will get. Do it poorly, and you will possibly cause more damage.”

2. Think long and hard about your call to a victim (and if you really need to make it).

Sensitivity is so crucial.


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Something completely different from Ryan Burge: Atheists love cats, while believers love dogs?

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Tired of all those statistics about white evangelicals and Citizen Donald Trump?

Tired of charts about soaring “nones” and imploding Mainline Protestants?

This time around, political scientist and progressive Baptist pastor Ryan Burge has served up something different. I mean, who doesn’t want to read a Religion News Service essay with this headline: “Atheists prefer cats, Christians love dogs, study shows.” Click here for a .pdf of the original academic paper.

Let me interject, as a personal confession, that my wife and I have had our share of cats and dogs, even in the same household. However, as an adult, I developed a strong allergy to cats — except for a beloved black cat. Go figure.

But back to this week’s dose of Burge material, in the text of the RNS piece:

Dogs are the most popular household pet. In fact, there’s no religious traditi­on in which fewer than half of adherents own a dog. 

However, there are some interesting differences among faith groups. Evangelicals and Catholics are more likely to have dogs than are mainline Christians. Mainliners are more likely than evangelicals and black Protestants to own cats. Jews prefer dogs to cats. Jewish families are also more likely than other traditions to own a small mammal or a bird.

Those who claim no religious identity are most likely to have a cat.


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Playoffs weekend NFL think piece: Ray Lewis, Eddie George and the faith ties that bind

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Over the years, there have been two or three sports fans who have worked at GetReligion.

I have even seen evidence that several dozen (cough, cough) GetReligion readers are interested in sports. Maybe there’s something about people who care about religion and journalism that blocks an all-American interest in sports? Beats me.

Anyway, from time to time some of us (looking at you, Bobby Ross, Jr.) have soldiered on, producing posts about mainstream coverage of sports stories that skips over (that’s putting it mildly) relevant religious content in the lives of star players and sometimes entire teams. I could write a whole book on ESPN and Baltimore Sun stories about the Baltimore Ravens that contain massive God-shaped holes, in terms of important facts about the lives of players, coaches and staff members.

Now it is time for round two of the National Football League playoffs and this round of games includes a renewal of one of the fiercest rivalries in the league, dating back to when the Ravens and the Tennessee Titans were in the same division. Yes, this means that one of my two NFL teams will knock the other one out of the Super Bowl race tonight.

With that in mind, let me recommend a story at The Athletic website (which is really worth its modest price) with this headline: “ ‘We gotta tell this story’: Eddie George, Ray Lewis and a friendship fueled by rivalry, marred by tragedy, saved by love.”

That last word — “love” — is linked to faith-based ties that bind.

We are, of course, talking about iconic players here. It also helps to know that quite a bit of this long story focuses on ties between George, Lewis and the late, murdered quarterback Steve McNair, who played for both franchises. Here is the overture, set in the present:


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