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Five Catholic storylines journalists will need to follow closely as we enter 2023

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Five Catholic storylines journalists will need to follow closely as we enter 2023

There are only a few days left to go in 2022. It was a busy news year — loaded with stories with strong religion angles.

Many of those stories had Catholic angles that were important to highlight and report on. A year ago, I took a look at the top Catholic angles journalists needed to focus on heading into 2022. I was prescient in my outlook, highlighting the Supreme Court decision regarding abortion among the top things to focus on.  

This is what I wrote a year ago looking ahead to 2022:

Issues around politics and religion will likely dominate once again in 2022. The abortion issue and a pending Supreme Court decision regarding access to it will be a big story in the coming year. The Catholic church, a major part of the abortion debate in this country for decades, will play a major role in news stories that will be written over the coming months.   

As we prepare to ring in 2023, I want to highlight five big storylines and trends to look for over the next 12 months:

(5) Catholic politicians vs. bishops

The culture war that has embroiled many societies, especially in the United States and now Western Europe, will continue to pit Catholic bishops and politicians. It will be especially pronounced when it involves Catholic lawmakers.

We’ve already seen this with President Joe Biden and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both are practicing Catholics who have butted heads with many bishops who keep noting public remarks and actions by these politicians that directly clash with centuries of Catholic doctrines on a great number of moral issues.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently elected a new president. As conference president, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese of the Military Services will have to focus on many hot-button issues. Above all, fights over issues surrounding abortion and contraception will continue, including questions about whether politicians who openly clash with church teachings should receive Holy Communion.


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Final 2022 podcast: What parts of the Roe v. Wade story deserved additional coverage?

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Final 2022 podcast: What parts of the Roe v. Wade story deserved additional coverage?

Everyone had to know that the fall of Roe v. Wade would be the top pick in the Religion News Association’s annual poll to determine the Top 10 religion-beat stories of 2022. That would have been the case, even if the RNA hadn’t created two lists this year, one for U.S. stories and one for international stories.

Why? I’ve been following this poll closely since the late 1970s and once interviewed the legendary George Cornell of the Associated Press about his observations on mainstream religion-news coverage trends during his decades on the beat.

Let’s briefly review some of the factors that shape this list year after year, since this topic was discussed during the final 2022 “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). This episode was recorded while we wrestled with rolling power blackouts here in the frigid hills of East Tennessee. See if you can guess where we had to do a patch and start again!

First of all, the RNA top story will almost always be a hot political event or trend — with a religion angle. Politics, after all, is REAL news. Think White Evangelicals and Bad Man Orange. Second, it helps if stories feature clashes between religion and sex, usually in one of the progressive Mainline Protestant churches or, ideally, Roman Catholicism. Think Joe Biden, Catholic bishops and just about anything (especially if Pope Francis is involved). After that, you have slots for wars, natural disasters and newsy papal tours.

The fall of Roe v. Wade had it all, putting a core Sexual Revolution doctrine at risk, to one degree or another, depending on the blue, red or purple state involved.

I will not run through the contents of the whole RNA list. However, it’s interesting to note the wordings in some poll items, paying attention to what is included and what is NOT included therein. For example, here is No. 1 in the U.S. list:

The Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent and says there is no constitutional right to abortion, sparking battles in courts and state legislatures and driving voters to the November polls in high numbers. More than a dozen states enact abortion bans, while voters reject constitutional abortion restrictions in conservative Kansas and Kentucky and put abortion rights in three other states’ constitutions.

What is missing in that complex item?


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Plug-In: Religion-beat pros share links to their best features from throughout 2022

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Plug-In: Religion-beat pros share links to their best features from throughout 2022

Earlier this week, veteran religion journalist Kimberly Winston invited me to talk about the year’s top religion stories for an upcoming feature on Interfaith Voices’ “Inspired” radio show.

Our discussion turned to the Religion News Association’s ballot for the top 10 national and international religion stories of 2022.

I boldly predicted that the overturning of Roe v. Wade would be the No. 1 national story and that Russian’s war on Ukraine would be the No. 1 international story.

Actually, those stories were obvious — not daring — choices. Sure enough, they topped RNA’s list of top stories announced after my recording session with Winston.

As I type this, I’m devouring my mom’s homemade fudge and watching Christmas movies. So rather than pick the week’s best reads and top headlines in the world of faith, as I normally do, I asked some of the nation’s top religion writers to share their favorite or most important story they wrote during 2022.

It’s a holiday week, so I didn’t catch up with everybody. But I sure appreciate my Godbeat colleagues who responded.

Power Up: Journalists share their best reads of 2022

• Liam Adams and Cole Villena, The Tennessean: Williamson County, the suburban “new frontier” for American evangelical Christianity, published Aug. 31.

• Cheryl Mann Bacon, Christian Chronicle: A final song, a familiar end, part of a year-long special project, published March 30.

• Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service: Amy Grant, ‘queen of Christian pop,’ feted at Kennedy Center Honors with sidebar Faith in the spotlight on Kennedy Center red carpet and stage at annual Honors gala, published Dec. 5.

• Deepa Bharath, Associated Press: Asian faiths try to save swastika symbol corrupted by Hitler, published Nov. 27.


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This Christmas, lots of church leaders need to pause and think about widowers

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This Christmas, lots of church leaders need to pause and think about widowers

There was no way that Christmas was going to be easy for Daniel Brooker and his two young children after his wife Lyndsie lost her 10-year battle with cancer.

At their church, friends cautiously asked if Brooker and one of his kids wanted to play a role in the Christmas service -- making their story part of a season of new life.

"My church saw ME, as a person" that first Christmas, said Brooker, a 37-year-old marketing specialist for a team of financial advisors near Atlanta. It was crucial that this offer "gave us something to do, something that didn't ask us to hide what was happening. … They offered us this opportunity and let me think about it. They didn't force anything."

That positive experience became part of the process that led Brooker and an all-volunteer team of widowers, mentors, pastors and friends to create Refuge Widowers, a ministry for men who have lost their wives, especially young men with children.

This work grew out of the conviction, he said, that religious congregations have long demonstrated the ability to rally around widows -- in part because women often play crucial roles in hospitality and care-giving ministries.

"Women are gifted at this. They know what to do," said Brooker, who has since married a widow, Brittany, with three children of her own. "As much as I love the church, I've learned things are often different for widowers. … Church people aren't trained to step in and fight through grief with a man."

Yes, the faithful brought food and gift cards after his wife's death. Some people volunteered with child-care as he tried to create new patterns for work and home life. Before long, however, many assumed that the best way to help was to funnel Brooker into the singles group. "Folks really didn't know what to do with me," he said.

Eventually, he met another young widower, and began building a support network.


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What's is behind the symbolism of shepherds and wise men worshipping newborn Jesus?

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What's is behind the symbolism of shepherds and wise men worshipping newborn Jesus?

THE QUESTION:

What’s signified by shepherds and wise men worshipping the newborn Jesus?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The world’s most-read and most-recited narratives are quite likely the two independent and contrasting accounts of Jesus’ birth that begin the biblical Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

A particularly striking difference is that Matthew has a Jewish flavor yet features Gentile “wise men from the East” of high status and Luke, aimed at a Gentile audience, tells us of humble Jewish shepherds. Intriguingly, neither Gospel knows of the other’s visitors who came to worship the baby of Bethlehem.

Several decades later, the Book of Acts records, the earliest Christians were busily converting not only Jews but a visiting Ethiopian official, hated Samaritans and Roman occupation soldiers, and then multicultural Gentiles across the Mediterranean region.

In the Christian understanding, the birth in Bethlehem fulfilled God’s promise in calling Abraham that “by you all the families of the earth will bless themselves” (Genesis 12:3) and the revelation to the prophet Isaiah that Israel would be “a light to the nations” (42:6, 49:6, 60:3).

By the early 50s A.D., the greatest of the early missionaries to Gentiles, St. Paul, would cite the universal call of Abraham as he taught believers that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:6-9 and 28-29).


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Hey! The Gray Lady noticed the Christmas on Sunday debates. Let's dig into that (again)

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Hey! The Gray Lady noticed the Christmas on Sunday debates. Let's dig into that (again)

It’s almost Christmas.

At least, it’s almost Christmas if you are one of those strange people who think “Christmas” is the same thing as the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. However, thinking about this holy day in those terms requires negotiating a maze created by school calendars, travel, office parties, family traditions and, yes, worship services. And then there is the cultural steamroller called “The Holidays,” led by the powers that be in government, shopping malls and mass media.

I bring this up because of that New York Times story that ran a few days ago: “O Come All Ye Faithful, Except When Christmas Falls on a Sunday.” It’s a story well worth reading and we will get to it shortly.

However, if you follow the GetReligion podcast, you know that I’ve been expecting the hot social-media debates about the whole “Christmas on Sunday” kerfuffle to eventually bleed over into the mainstream press. Check out this “Crossroads” episode: “Is Christmas 'news'? Not really, unless it is a case of 'Christmas AND ...' “

Before that, I wrote an “On Religion” column hooked to a new study by Lifeway Research. Here’s that headline: “When is Christmas? That depends on the person asking.” If you dig into those numbers, you’ll see a bright red line running between two different brands of Protestantism — those with roots in traditions that include some form of liturgical calendar and those that do not, especially the rapidly growing world of nondenominational evangelical and charismatic/Pentecostal churches. He’s a key chunk of that column:

In churches with centuries of liturgical traditions, the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ is Dec. 25, following the quiet season of Advent (Latin for "toward the coming"). This year, Christmas falls on Sunday and, for Catholics, Anglicans and others, the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass is one of the year's most popular rites. This opens a festive season that continues through Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. Many Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the ancient Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, after Nativity Lent.

In the United States, some kind of Christmas Eve service remains the big draw, according to almost half (48%) of Protestant pastors contacted in a new study by Lifeway Research. The frequency of high-attendance church events builds until Christmas Eve, then declines sharply.


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Buried story of 2022? The persecution of Christians keeps surging around the world

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Buried story of 2022? The persecution of Christians keeps surging around the world

You want news?

The 2022 report from the Open Doors organization (CLICK HERE) says “persecution of Christians has reached the highest levels” since it began accumulating data for its annual “World Watch List” three decades ago. Hostile incidents have increased by 20% since just 2014, and some 360 million Christians, or 14% of the worldwide total, are said to have faced persecution, harassment, or discrimination.

Open Doors reports that it has documented the murders in one year’s time of 5,898 Christians for their faith (up 24% from the prior year); attacks on 5,110 local churches (up 14%); 3,829 abductions (a new high, up 124%); 6,175 victims held without trial; 24,678 subjected to beatings, death threats and other abuse; 6,449 with homes or businesses attacked; and 3,147 women targeted for rape or sexual harassment. 

Since that report was issued, the Nigeria-based civil rights group Intersociety reports that in just that one nation 4,020 additional killings and 2,315 abductions occurred from January through October, 2022.

The Memo therefore proclaims this international upsurge the Buried Story of the Year, a major, newsworthy global scourge widely featured by religious media — yet all but ignored by much of the “Mainstream Media.”

Journalists will have another peg for remedying this sin of omission when Open Doors issues its 2023 report early in the new year.

One noteworthy media exception, timed for Christmas a year ago, was a thorough New York Times survey of widespread harassment of Christians in India. Also, Reuters this month produced a massive investigation of 10,000 forced abortions conducted by the military in chaotic Nigeria, indicating rape is a widespread tactic used to terrorize Christian women.

On a broader time frame, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that 1 million Christian martyrs were killed in the first 10 years of the 21st Century.


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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

In the past decade of so, your GetReligionistas have written a steady stream of posts about how America’s rapidly growing flocks of nondenominational believers have made the vague and complicated world of evangelical/charismatic Christianity even harder for journalists to understand and, thus, cover with some degree of accuracy.

That was complicated, wasn’t it? For more info, surf this massive file of URLs linked to the work of chart-master Ryan Burge and then this recent Memo from religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, “Story of the Year: Rise of the 'Nons' — put them alongside Nones, NIPs, Nonverts, etc.”

This trend has affected some incredibly important news stories, such as the Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol and attempts to find justice for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

This brings me to an email that I received the other day from a journalism professor friend that addressed an essential issue in this important NBC News report: “Florida pastor and his son are arrested in alleged $8 million Covid scam.”

This jprof asked this question: “What made him a pastor?” That isn’t an irrelevant question, since this man’s ministerial status is mentioned in the headline and the lede. Here’s the overture:

A Florida pastor and his son were arrested … on charges of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World. 

Evan Edwards, 64, and his son, Josh, 30, were taken into custody five months after an NBC News report raised questions over why they hadn’t been charged in the alleged scam, which federal prosecutors first identified in court papers in December 2020. 

No one really knows the number of scams that were linked to the billions and billions of government dollars spent in COVID-19 relief programs. It’s a huge story with untold local, regional, state and national angles. International angles? Don’t go there.

Scams linked to religious ministries deserve coverage, obviously, in part because of the hypocrisy angle that reporters may not attach to similar scandals involving businesses and secular nonprofit groups. That word — “pastor” — is crucial.


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Lots of bad news about Dave Ramsey has been published. Now's the time for fresher stuff

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Lots of bad news about Dave Ramsey has been published. Now's the time for fresher stuff

A lot has been written about Dave Ramsey, the Franklin, Tennessee-based Christian finance guru whose multi-million-dollar company, Ramsey Solutions, attempts to keep track of the private sexual activities of its employees — as a matter of religious doctrine.

For the longest time, Bob Smietana, former religion editor for The Tennessean and now a national writer for Religion News Service, has been pumping out stories about Ramsey’s antics.

As one of Smietana’s stories stated earlier this year, “Ramsey Solutions, former employees and their spouses say, is run more like a church than a business.” And, he wrote, it’s not only the sex stuff that can get you in trouble. It’s whether you have consumer debt, if your spouse makes a withering comment about the company on social media or whether you gossiped about life inside the company.

There was blowback, of course. When Smietana covered these stories, he got personally attacked.

Now it looks like Liam Adams, who came onto the Tennessean’s staff in mid-2021, is picking up the mantle with more ink about Ramsey’s “righteous living” rules. It takes time to get the sources to put together such an article and I’m guessing it took more than a year for Adams to find an cultivate his own whistleblowers.

 The piece, which ran in USA Today as well, began:

After rededicating his life to Christ following a yearlong struggle with addiction, the man saw Ramsey Solutions as a company where he could grow and live out his faith-inspired values.

When he started working there, “We were seeing the faithfulness of God … begin to restore our son’s life back to our family, back to Him and the values he was raised with,” the employee’s mother said in a letter to Dave Ramsey, Ramsey Solutions CEO and the driving force behind the Franklin-based personal finance company.

Everything changed for the employee when his bosses learned his wife was pregnant.

“The issue is that they just got married,” said one executive in an email to colleagues.

After some math, the executives concluded the employee and his wife conceived their child before getting married. Sexual intercourse outside of marriage violates the company’s “righteous living” policy and warrants termination.

This poor employee must have quickly realized this and regretted saying anything about his personal life to his bosses.

They fired him.


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