Conspiracy Theories

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Podcast: Searing Free Press commentary on autism haunted by true religion ghosts

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Podcast: Searing Free Press commentary on autism haunted by true religion ghosts

If you look up the term “mash-up” in an online dictionary, you will find lots of definitions — including various mass-media riffs. For example: “a movie or video having characters or situations from other sources.” Or maybe: “a Web service or application that integrates data and functionalities from various online sources.”

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) is a kind of GetReligion mash-up.

Let me explain. As a rule, this website focuses on critiques — positive, negative and in between — of mainstream coverage of religion news or other hard-news stories that are “haunted” by religion “ghosts” that journalists either missed, ignored or messed up.

However, we also run various kinds of “think pieces” drawn from the work of political scientist Ryan Burge and a variety of other news sources that address trends that affect news coverage. And religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling writes Memos in which he looks ahead at newsy religion events and trends.

This week’s podcast focused on a painful, blunt, first-person essay that ran at the important news and commentary website known as The Free Press. It was written by a non-journalist — National Council on Severe Autism President Jill Escher — and the double-decker headline proclaimed:

The Autism Surge: Lies, Conspiracies, and My Own Kids

Rates of autism are skyrocketing. The question isn’t just why — but what we need to do about it right now, and what’s holding us back.

This commentary wasn’t “news,” but it contained waves of information that news-consumers would want to see. This wasn’t a feature that directly addressed religious issues or themes, but I was struck by how many questions it raised that are already affecting religious believers and institutions.

The bottom line: America’s mental-health crisis will inevitably crash into religious congregations, schools, medical institutions, etc. The decisions that these religious groups make, or refuse to make, will create important news stories for religion-beat journalists.

The podcast, and this post, are a kind of tmatt Memo about the stories that are ahead. I wrote this, in part, because I have already seen the importance of this topic in the lives of many people that I know and love in religious congregations that I know well.


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Gazing into a niche-media future: How politicized might evangelical radio become?

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Gazing into a niche-media future: How politicized might evangelical radio become?

During the heat of the election campaign, the Salem Media Group staged an 11-day “Battleground Talkers” tour that covered politically potent Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Purpose: To boost conservative voter turnout and nudge undecided voters on what “may be the most important election in the history of our country. … The war for America’s soul is on the line.” The rallies’ Republican and conservative flavor was no surprise, since they featured Salem radio personalities Mike Gallagher, Sebastian Gorka, Hugh Hewitt, Charlie Kirk, Eric Metaxas, Dennis Prager and Brandon Tatum, among others.

Salem Media, a publicly traded firm founded and chaired by Edward G. Atsinger III (469-586-0080), is based in Irving, Texas. It boasts of being “America’s leading Christian media company” — in this context “Christian” means pretty much evangelical Protestant — with radio networks, local stations, syndicated programs, websites, podcasts, marketing services, event planning and Regnery, a major conservative book house.

The “Battleground” personalities appear on the company’s Salem Radio Network, which employs a “conservative news talk” format. Salem says market research indicates such programming “is highly complementary to our core format of Christian Teaching and Talk” heard on other Salem outlets because “both formats express conservative views and family values.”

A thoroughly-reported, 70-inch New York Times examination of the politics of the Salem “juggernaut” October 18 (paywalled here) said, among many other things, that the company consistently promotes “ballot fraud conspiracy theories.”

Such a mix of the sacred and the profane would have astonished the 20th Century founding preachers of conservative Protestant radio such as William Ward Ayer, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Percy Crawford, M.R. DeHaan, Charles Fuller, Aimee Semple MacPherson, Walter Maier or Paul Rader.

Though TV gets the glamour, radio has arguably been more important in building the U.S. evangelical subculture and shaping its substance since World War II.


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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

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Podcast: A growing post-Roe divide between 'Jesusland' and the 'United States of Canada'?

Over the past week or so, I have received several emails — while noticing similar messages on Twitter — from people asking: “Why is The Atlantic publishing the same story over and over?” Some people ask the same question about The New York Times.

It’s not the same SPECIFIC story over and over, of course. But we are talking about stories with the same basic Big Idea, usually framed in the same way. In other words, it’s kind of a cookie-cutter approach.

The key word is “division,” as in America is getting more and more divided or American evangelicalism is getting more and more divided. A new Ronald Brownstein essay of this kind at The Atlantic — “America’s Blue-Red Divide Is About to Get Starker” — provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

The villains in these dramas are, of course, White evangelicals or, in more nuanced reporting, a radical wing of the White evangelicals. Just this week, I praised the New York Times for running a feature that offered a variation on one of these templates: “Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics.” That piece showed progress, in part, because it undercut the myth of the evangelical political monolith on issues such as Donald Trump, COVID vaccines, QAnon, etc.

Let me make this personal. There is a reason that all of these stories written by journalists and blue-checkmark Twitter stars sound a big familiar to me. You see, people who have been paying attention know that the great “Jesusland” v. the “United States of Canada” divide is actually at least three decades old. It’s getting more obvious, methinks, because of the flamethrower social-media culture that shapes everything,

So let’s take a journey and connect a few themes in this drama, including summary statements by some important scribes. The goal is to collect the dots and the, at the end, we’ll look at how some of these ideas show up in that new leaning-left analysis at The Atlantic.

First, there is the column I wrote in 1998, when marking the 10th anniversary of “On Religion” being syndicated (as opposed to the 33rd anniversary the other day). Here’s the key chunk of that:

… In 1986, a sociologist of religion had an epiphany while serving as a witness in a church-state case in Mobile, Ala.


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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

If you stop and think about it, the latest New York Times feature about those dreaded White evangelicals includes a few signs of progress.

The good news is that the story focuses on the many ways White American evangelicals are divided, these days. That’s progress, since it undercuts the dominant news narrative of the years since 2016. You know the one: That White evangelicals from sea to shining sea just love Donald Trump and that’s that.

The truth was always more complex than that, but many blue-checkmark experts on Twitter really needed someone to blame for Trump. White evangelicals were the answer, of course, since it would have required a great deal of introspection to blame the Democratic Party for nominating Hillary Clinton — perhaps the only opponent that scared millions of depressed Americans more than Trump.

But back to the key truth in this Times report — which is that White evangelicals are divided, which is true, and that is certainly not the same thing as the myth of monolithic unity. For background, see this 2018 post: “Complex realities hidden in '81 percent of evangelicals' love Trump myth.”

At the heart of this story is a character that will be familiar to some news consumers — a conservative religious leader whose beliefs would normally cause heart attacks in blue-zip-code newsrooms, but this leader is shown to deserve sympathy because believers who are much worse are attacking him/her. (The irony in this case is that this particular pastor seems very familiar to me since he appears to represent the evangelicalism in which I was raised and that I greatly respect.)

The headline: “As a ‘Seismic Shift’ Fractures Evangelicals, an Arkansas Pastor Leaves Home.” Here’s the overture:

FORT SMITH, Ark. — In the fall of 2020, Kevin Thompson delivered a sermon about the gentleness of God. At one point, he drew a quick contrast between a loving, accessible God and remote, inaccessible celebrities. Speaking without notes, his Bible in his hand, he reached for a few easy examples: Oprah, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks.

Mr. Thompson could not tell how his sermon was received. The church he led had only recently returned to meeting in person. Attendance was sparse, and it was hard to appreciate if his jokes were landing, or if his congregation — with family groups spaced three seats apart, and others watching online — remained engaged.

So he was caught off guard when two church members expressed alarm about the passing reference to Mr. Hanks.


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Finally, another Overby Center program: Why religion was one big factor in vaccine wars

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Finally, another Overby Center program: Why religion was one big factor in vaccine wars

I have strong memories, to say the least, of the first Overby Center program in which I was able to participate, as a senior fellow for the center and as editor of GetReligion.

The topic was the role that religion would play in the 2020 presidential election. Religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling was there and both of us stressed that, while journalists were pouring oceans of ink into coverage of (#TriggerWarning) white evangelicals, Catholic voters would play the pivotal role in swing states. I also noted the little-covered 2016 impact of Latino evangelicals and, especially, Pentecostal believers in Florida. I didn’t think to predict a starring 2020 role these Latino voters in Texas.

When was that program? Here’s a clue. As I drove home, I stopped for lunch in Jackson, Tenn. As I pulled back onto the interstate headed east, I heard a radio report noting that the mysterious virus that was causing havoc in Wuhan, China, had now been detected in Europe and, perhaps, in New York City.

Days later, the whole world turned upside down.

With social-distancing, masks and vaccines in mind, we recently gathered in Oxford for a forum addressing a logical topic — why religion was a key factor (but not the only one or even the dominant one) in America’s wars over COVID-19 vaccines. Click here to watch the event on YouTube.

In addition to Center founder Charles Overby, I was joined by three logical voices on this subject.

First, political scientist (and GetReligion contributor) Ryan Burge Zoomed in with several crucial charts full of relevant info. Take this post, for example: “Thinking about white evangelicals, COVID-19 vaccines and VERY popular headlines.” Then there was Marquita Smith of the University of Mississippi faculty, a journalist I came to know while she was teaching at John Brown University on the edge of the Ozarks. She is now the assistant dean of graduate programs at the Ole Miss J-school.

The final panelist was the Rev. Daniel Darling, who was recently named director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Then again, Darling may be better known in religion-beat circles because of this New York Times headline: “Fired After Endorsing Vaccines, Evangelical Insider Takes a Leadership Role.”


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Hot Takes: Ryan Burge on return of debates about evangelicals and QAnon (etc.)

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Hot Takes: Ryan Burge on return of debates about evangelicals and QAnon (etc.)

Well, Bobby Ross, Jr., is taking the week off.

Thus, I went looking for another list of religion-news material featuring short punchy takes on lots and lots of different topics.

I settled on this VICE News chat with GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge — that must-follow guy on Twitter who is also well known for his work at the Religion in Public weblog.

To say that this punchy little video report includes some Hot Takes is an understatement. Yes, there is a flashback to the whole QAnon and evangelicalism wars.

However, let me stress that there are some producers at VICE News who are sincerely interested in the complex world of American evangelicalism and they are doing their homework. I know this because I sent about three hours with one of their production teams several months ago and I know the wide range of materials that we covered.

That video is still in a vault somewhere. It would be interesting if they turned bites of it into a bullet-list collection of takes similar to this one with the always quotable Burge.

So what shows up in this Burge blast? He put this list out on social media:

Things I discuss in this Vice News video:

QAnon

John Darby

Dispensationalism

Thomas Jefferson as the anti-Christ


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Lots of Mississippi folks don't want COVID-19 vaccines: They're white evangelicals, right?

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Lots of Mississippi folks don't want COVID-19 vaccines: They're white evangelicals, right?

One of the snarkiest things an editor can say to a reporter — after reading a story that has been turned in for editing — is this: You really need to read your own newspaper.

Most of the time, this means that a reporter has produced a story about a topic the newspaper has already covered, yet the new story failed to engage with some of the previously reported information. Maybe the new material even clashes with an earlier story. That may be good, but the earlier reporting still needs to be acknowledged.

I thought about this while reading a New York Times piece that ran with this double-decker headline:

Why Mississippi Has Few Takers for 73,000 Covid Shots

The good news: There are more shots available. The challenge is getting people to take them.

Now, what I’m about to say may sound strange, in light of what I argued in last week’s “Crossroads” podcast, the one linked to the post with this headline: “New podcast: Familiar splits among white 'evangelicals,' only now they're about vaccines.”

That post/podcast focused, in large part, on a recent Times piece that claimed believers inside the dreaded white-evangelical monolith were America’s biggest pandemic problem, in terms of flyover-country people who are refusing to get their COVID-19 vaccine shots. A quotation linked to that thesis said:

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.

The story cited a poll indicating that 45% of white evangelicals planned to refuse their shots, while 55% planned to cooperate with anti-pandemic programs. I noted that these numbers were solid evidence of a DIVISION inside white evangelicalism, not a sign of unity in opposition to vaccines.

What is the big problem in Mississippi, where there are lots of empty slots on the lists where people sign up for appointments to get shots?


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Hey journalists: Can you name three or more Ramadan news angles linked to COVID-19 vaccines?

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Hey journalists: Can you name three or more Ramadan news angles linked to COVID-19 vaccines?

I don’t mind admitting it. I thought I had read just about every religion-angle COVID-19 vaccine story that there was to read (and I say that just before heading out the door to drive deep into the Cumberland Mountains to get shot No. 1 at a small-county health clinic).

The Detroit Free Press published a long, long story the other day that certainly proved me wrong on that. The headline: “Vaccine-mobile brings COVID-19 shots to Dearborn mosque, helping to convince the hesitant.”

The key to the story was mentioned in an email from the GetReligion reader who (thank you readers who take the time to do this kind of thing) sent us the URL for this story. Here is part of her note:

What I really liked about this article was the way it presented vaccine concerns of the Metro Detroit Muslim community in the context of how the mosque met those concerns. Some of the concerns are unique to the Muslim community (such as the relationship of vaccination to the Ramadan fast) and others are more broad, but the article shows how this religious community is addressing them. The article quotes a variety of actual community members, which I always appreciate.

The Ramadan angle?

That’s the connection that I admit had not occurred to me. The key is explaining the specific link between the strict rules of the Ramadan fast and the simple act of getting a shot of vaccine. We are not talking, at this point, about conspiracy theory talk about the vaccine formulas containing traces of pork.

Here is the crucial part of the story, quoting Mirvat Kadouh, vice chair of the Islamic Center of America's Board of Trustees.

"We are trying to vaccinate as many people as we can before Ramadan," Kadouh said early Monday morning, spreading a plastic tablecloth over a folding table in a large conference room, where the Islamic Center's first COVID-19 vaccine clinic was about to begin.


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Protestants in pulpits say that the QAnon era is creating tension in many pews

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Protestants in pulpits say that the QAnon era is creating tension in many pews

Having reached the vice president's chair in the U.S. Senate, the self-proclaimed QAnon shaman, UFO expert and metaphysical healer removed his coyote-skin and buffalo horns headdress and announced, with a megaphone, that it was time to pray.

"Thank you, Heavenly Father … for this opportunity to stand up for our God-given inalienable rights," proclaimed Jake "Yellowstone Wolf" Angeli (born Jacob Chansley), his face painted red, white and blue and his torso tattooed with Norse symbols that his critics link to the extreme right.

“Thank you, divine, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love," he added, in a prayer captured on video by correspondent working for The New Yorker. "Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. …

"Thank you, divine Creator God for surrounding and filling us with the divine, omnipresent white light of love and protection, of peace and harmony. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government."

Many phrases in this rambling prayer would sound familiar to worshippers in ordinary churches across America, said Joe Carter, an editor with The Gospel Coalition and a pastor with McLean Bible Church near Washington, D.C. But the prayer also included strange twists and turns that betrayed some extreme influences and agendas.

"This is a man who has described himself as pagan, as an ordained minister, in fact," said Carter, reached by telephone. "The alt-right has always included some pagan influences. But now it's obvious that leaders with QAnon and other conspiracy theorists have learned that if they toss in some Christian imagery, then they'll really expand their base and their potential reach 100-fold."

Law-enforcement officials will soon present evidence attempting to prove who planned key elements of the illegal riot that crashed into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, after the legal "March to Save America" backing former President Donald Trump's claim that fraud cost him the White House.

This is just the latest example of how conspiracy theories, on the left and right, have soaked into public discourse about COVID-19 vaccines, Big Tech monopolies, sinister human-trafficking networks and, of course, alleged illegal activities in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

There is no way to deny that this digital tornado has shaken many Protestant churches, according to a new Lifeway Research survey that asked clergy to respond to this statement: "I frequently hear members of my congregation repeating conspiracy theories they have heard about why something is happening in our country."


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