Supreme Court

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Funny press release or valid news? Becket team salutes its 2022 public-square Scrooge

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Funny press release or valid news? Becket team salutes its 2022 public-square Scrooge

Religion-beat reporters (and columnists) get lots of strange press releases and letters from folks trying to get their pet issues covered.

My all-time favorite, during my Denver years, was a 50-page (at least) handwritten treatise on why superstar Barbara Streisand was the Antichrist. That created a steady stream of amused editors to my desk. I should have had the courage to write about it.

Most press releases are written by people who have absolutely no idea what newsrooms consider to be news or even what topics the reporter/columnist targeted with the release has written about in the past.

Christmas is a HUGE time for religion-beat press releases. This is logical because some newsrooms — those without religion-beat pros, ironically — struggle to find holiday story angles, year after year after year.

This year, I received one release that made me laugh out loud, in a good way. It came from a legal think tank that has made lots of news, in recent decades, with successful arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court. I have, for a decade-plus, received variations on this release from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, but this one (#GASP) really should have received some coverage.

It was about this year’s winner of the “Ebenezer Award,” saluting the “most outrageous and scandalous offenders of the Christmas and Hanukkah season.” This year’s winner: The government powers that be in King County, Washington. (Click here for previous winners.)

Here’s some of the press-release background:

King County's "Workforce Equity Manager" for the Department of Human Resources, Gloria Ngezaho, recently authored and issued a memo, titled "Guidelines for Holiday Decorations for King County Employees," where she states that workers may not "appear to support any particular religion" and bans them from displaying religious symbols in any "virtual workspace." …

King's County has refused to back down on their outlandish efforts to squash the religious expression of their employees during one of the most sacred times of the year for people of faith.

Did this story receive any mainstream press coverage?


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What's up in 2023? The Guy offers a first draft of a religion-beat agenda

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What's up in 2023? The Guy offers a first draft of a religion-beat agenda

The new year could be climactic for two aspects of LGBTQ issues, first, the rights of religious and conservative dissenters within liberalized western culture, and second, the ongoing conflicts within church groups.

What should journalists be prepared to cover?

By June, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the 303 Creative case, in which a website designer — based on First Amendment claims — seeks exemption from Colorado’s anti-discrimination law to avoid work on postings that celebrate same-sex weddings (background here). The Court might broadly define what rights various forms of religious traditionalists have in a host of legal conflicts facing e.g. U.S. religious colleges, social-service agencies and individual businesses now that same-sex marriage is legalized.

Inside a specific religion brand, this could be a pivotal year for the global Anglican Communion with its 46 national branches and some 85 million baptized members. A mid-January meeting of bishops in the “mother” Church of England may well decide dioceses can permit same-sex weddings. That historic change would then need approval from clergy and lay delegates at the February 6–9 General Synod.

Such a move would add explosive potential to the April 17-21 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (“GAFCON”), long vexed by liberal moves in England, the United States and elsewhere in declining First World churches. GAFCON unites the heads of 10 Anglican branches, three of which alone (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda) encompass half the world’s Anglicans. GAFCON’s chairman, Archbishop Foley Beach (admin@anglicanchurch.net and 724-266-9400), heads a church of conservatives who’ve left the U.S. Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada.

Already, key archbishops have boycotted global Anglican confabs, continuing a slow-motion breakup that began decades ago. Will the maneuvers in England and elsewhere provoke a huge, definitive break from the London-based Anglican Communion by churches in GAFCON and the related Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches?

The United Methodist Church could be on the brink of the biggest U.S. Protestant split since the Civil War. That’s a huge story at the local, regional, national and global levels.


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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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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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Religion News Service, and AP, offer the latest news from the left side of Christian higher ed

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Religion News Service, and AP, offer the latest news from the left side of Christian higher ed

It’s another day, with yet another Religion News Service story about Christian higher education that fails to add one or two sentences of crucial material about ongoing clashes between centuries of Christian doctrine and the Sexual Revolution.

The setting for this news story, once again, is Seattle Pacific University — a Free Methodist institution in the progressive Pacific Northwest. Click here for flashbacks to GetReligion posts about news coverage of what is clearly a bitterly divided campus.

Once again, RNS readers never learn whether students and faculty on this campus sign — at enrollment or employment — what is usually called a “doctrinal covenant” or “lifestyle agreement.” This is a document in which members of a voluntary community pledge to support, or at the very least not openly oppose, a private school’s beliefs on a variety of moral and theological issues.

Many faith-based schools (on the religious left or right) have these covenants, but many do not. Thus, it’s crucial for news readers to know if students and faculty involved in a doctrinal conflict have chosen to sign covenants and, of course, the details of what is contained in the documents. This brings us to this RNS update, with a double-decker headline:

SPU board members seek dismissal of lawsuit over LGBTQ exclusion

The lawsuit, board members say, is an effort to 'intimidate and punish leaders of a religious institution for the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.'

This is a short story, based on documents linked to the lawsuit. Here is the overture:

Members of Seattle Pacific University’s board of trustees are asking a Washington state court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the body by a group of students and faculty at the school, arguing that the suit is an effort to “intimidate and punish leaders of a religious institution for the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.”


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Plug-In: Religious liberty vs. gay rights -- LGBTQ debates escalate around the world

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Plug-In: Religious liberty vs. gay rights -- LGBTQ debates escalate around the world

The latest clash of religious liberty versus gay rights at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friction over LGBTQ issues in traditional faiths around the world, from the global Anglican Communion to the vast Muslim world.

Final congressional passage of a bill to protect same-sex marriage rights.

No doubt, there’s a common theme to some of this past week’s top headlines.

At The Associated Press, Jessica Gresko and Mark Sherman report:

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded sympathetic Monday to a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples, the latest collision of religion and gay rights to land at the high court.

The designer and her supporters say that ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs. Her opponents, meanwhile, say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

Meanwhile, AP’s global religion team partners with its Lilly Endowment grant partners — Religion News Service and The Conversation — to examine LGBTQ belief and belonging around the world.

Among the specific stories:

• Friction over LGBTQ issues worsens in global Anglican church (by AP’s Chinedu Asadu and David Crary and RNS’ Catherine Pepinster)

• Across vast Muslim world, LGBTQ people remain marginalized (by AP’s Edna Tarigan, Mariam Fam and David Crary)

• LGBTQ students wrestle with tensions at Christian colleges (by AP’s Giovanna Dell’Orto and RNS’ Yonat Shimron)


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News coverage of LGBTQ issues enters mop-up phase in the religion marketplace

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News coverage of LGBTQ issues enters mop-up phase in the religion marketplace

It has been a big week for the ongoing LGBTQ+ story. Even as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case about how much to tolerate personal dissent against same-sex marriage, the U.S. House, the House this morning passed nationwide codification of the gay marriage right that the Court enacted by 5-4 in the 2015 Obergefell ruling.

The new law effectively concludes phase one in the unusually rapid upending of a central societal structure dating from antiquity. The next few years, the media will be covering the mop-up phase facing religious groups and individuals that uphold traditional teachings about marriage, over against anti-discrimination assertions by government, Hollywood, corporate America and private actors.

The current Supreme Court case (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, docket #21-476) involves a Colorado website designer who does not create pages that celebrate same-sex weddings — though she serves gay customers otherwise. Her free-speech claim is opposed by, for example, Reform Judaism, many liberal Protestants and other social liberals.

Observers figure that the Court, with a more traditionalist makeup than in 2015, will back this designer’s plea and ultimately look kindly upon further religious claims under the Bill of Rights. If so, the future conflict may focus on the Carborundum tactic as the LGBTQ+ movement grinds down conservatives’ energy, time and money in long-running legal maneuvers, meanwhile building cultural pressure to marginalize conscientious objectors as simple bigots.

An opinion-page complaint against religion’s “encroachment” upon society, posted by NBC News and written by Stanford University journal editor Marcie Bianco, neatly encapsulates where this culture war appears to be heading. This is the voice from the cultural left:

Dig a bit deeper, and what this act really represents is the inflexibility of our nation’s institutions and the national entrenchment — despite constitutional assurances to the contrary — of religion.


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Separation of coven and state? Journalists should ask religion questions in this Las Vegas case

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Separation of coven and state? Journalists should ask religion questions in this Las Vegas case

Attention journalists: Here is an important theme that runs through First Amendment conflicts about the freedom of believers to practice the tenets of their faith in real life — always consider the ramifications of a new case on believers on the left, as well as the right, on believers in minority faiths, as well as those in the major world religions.

For a prime example of this principle, see this week’s Julia Duin post: “Christian web designer at the Supreme Court: How reporters covered 303 Creative case.”

This leads me to a fascinating headline the other day from the Las Vegas Review-Journal — “Pagan nurse files religious discrimination lawsuit against UMC.” Ready for the plot twist? This is a pagan believer demanding the right to refuse a COVID-19 vaccination mandate.

Once again, we face a common religion-beat issue: Do journalists understand basic facts about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the big themes that courts explore in these kinds of First Amendment cases?

We know what this looks like with, let’s say, wedding-cake artists in Colorado. But to consider coverage of the pagan nurse’s case, I would like readers to consider, once again, that mirror-image scenario that I created years ago, and tweaked recently:

… Let's say that there is a businessman in Indianapolis who runs a catering company. He is an openly gay Episcopalian and, at the heart of his faith (and the faith articulated by his church) is a sincere belief that homosexuality is a gift of God and a natural part of God's good creation. This business owner has long served a wide variety of clients, including a nearby Pentecostal church that is predominantly African-American.

Then, one day, the leaders of this church ask him to cater a major event — the upcoming regional conference of the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. He declines, saying this would violate everything he stands for as a liberal Christian. He notes that they have dozens of other catering options in their city and, while he has willingly served them in the past, it is his sincere belief that it would be wrong to do so in this specific case.

Now, about that Las Vegas story.


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