GetReligion
Friday, April 11, 2025

NPR

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Religion and race: NPR targets sins and struggles of Southern evangelicals -- alone

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National Public Radio has been running a lot of content about racial injustice in the past seven weeks since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Some of their pieces have been about religion and race and what’s slowing up response from many evangelicals.

To focus on Southern evangelicals is an interesting choice, in that other groups: Jews, mainline Protestants, Muslims (who have their own race issues) aren’t covered in this NPR project. The three presentations I listened to all focused on evangelicals in the South, as if that’s the only region where you will find real racists.

There are plenty of evangelicals elsewhere: New York, Denver, Los Angeles, who would have a different read on this, so why NPR front-loaded their stories by only visiting southern locales is a mystery. A June 6 presentation by Tom Gjelten illustrates the disconnect.

For evangelical Christian leaders, however, crafting a response to Floyd's killing is complicated by their view of sin in individual, not societal, terms and their belief in the need for personal salvation above all. Evangelical theologians have long rejected the idea of a "social gospel," which holds that the kingdom of God should be pursued by making life better here on earth.

Most evangelicals are old enough to remember what happened last time American denominations focused on social change. Mainline Protestants embraced the civil rights movement, abortion rights, demonstrations against the Vietnam War and when the dust cleared, they were losing members by the millions. Followers wanted to hear about God’s power from the pulpit, not politics.

When I was a teenager at an Episcopal parish in the Baltimore-Washington suburbs in the late 1960s, I saw this first-hand. After one of the priests preached on the evils of American involvement in Vietnam, people left the church.

A June 12 broadcast by Rachel Martin shows the stunning cluelessness of evangelicals on this issue, specifically Todd Wagner of Watermark Church in Dallas.

Considering how controversial this church is, Wagner is an odd choice, if the goal is understanding what mainstream evangelicals are doing or saying.


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New England city votes for polyamory: Does religion have anything to do with this news story?

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So what does “conservative” mean in American these days, when journalists are talking about cultural debates in the public square? How about the term “culture wars”?

While there are moral libertarians out there, I would assume that they are rarely called “conservatives.” There are people — think Andrew Sullivan — who are liberal on most social issues (not all), but journalists tend to identify them as conservatives because they defend basic First Amendment rights for all, even “conservatives.”

Too see what that looks like in practice, check out this new Sullivan commentary at NPR:

I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be remembered tomorrow. I believe in its indivisibility, in the intimate connection between the newest bud of spring and the flicker in the eye of a patient near death, between the athlete in his prime and the quadriplegic vet, between the fetus in the womb and the mother who bears another life in her own body.

I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion.

That sound you hear, on left and right, is people saying: “But what about … ?”

This brings me to a haunted (click here for context) news story that ran the other day in The New York Times with this epic double-decker headline:

A Massachusetts City Decides to Recognize Polyamorous Relationships

The city of Somerville has broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include relationships between three or more adults, expanding access to health care.

This raises all kinds of questions, including this one: “How did these public officials define ‘relationships’?” The lede simply notes that this “left-leaning Massachusetts city expanded its notion of family to include people who are polyamorous, or maintaining consenting relationships with multiple partners.”


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Time capsule as Italy approached edge of cliff: Rome and art in the time of coronavirus

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EDITOR”S NOTE: This weekend’s think piece is a kind of time capsule, written and published earlier this month as the coronavirus crisis appeared on the horizon in the city of Rome.

This piece was written by the veteran religion writer previously known as Roberta Green, best known for her work at The Orange County Register. She was living in Rome for several months, as she will explain, while researching and writing a book on art, faith and the importance of beauty. That’s the kind of topic that sends a writer to Rome. She returned to the United States on one of the last flights out.

This was published on March 9th at Religion Unplugged. I have made no attempt to update it, in terms of the COVID-19 statistics. I find it kind of sobering to read this essay and then think of all that has happened in the relatively short time that has passed since this was written. (tmatt)

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ROME — When my husband and I decided to move to Rome for the first half of this year to escape distractions and try to write books we’ve been working on for years, we had no idea that we’d be living in one of the centers of a global epidemic.

At the time we left California in January, coronavirus had surfaced in China and the World Health Organization was yet to name the disease it caused COVID-19. We didn’t expect to encounter it in Rome. But we did.


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There he goes again: New York Times Editor Dean Baquet on journalists getting religion

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There he goes again: New York Times Editor Dean Baquet on journalists getting religion

There he goes again.

Yes, the GetReligionistas noticed the online hubbub caused by that Chuck Todd remark the other day on Meet the Press, when he read part of a letter to the editor sent to The Lexington Herald-Leader that took a shot at, well, a certain type of Bible reader that went to the polls in 2016.

The problem, you see, is not a matter of politics — strictly speaking.

The problem is with that these knuckle-draggers have the wrong religious views, when it comes to the Bible. Here’s the key language, as it ran in Newsweek:

"[Why] do good people support Trump? It's because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales," the letter read. "This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good. ... The more fairy tales and lies he tells the better they feel. …

“Show me a person who believes in Noah's ark and I will show you a Trump voter."

Well now, that was certainly a quote worth discussing in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

I argued that this Meet the Press exchange was, in a way, a modern version of the classic shot at Richard Nixon voters that was reported in the classic Joe McGinnis book, “The Selling of the President.” Old folks like me will remember that quote, which said Nixon was “the president of every place in this country which does not have a bookstore.”

In other words, there are smart people and dumb people and people whose biblical views do not match those of NBC News are in the second camp.

As I have been saying for years, religious conservatives are wrong if they think that many elite journalists are anti-religion. That’s a simplistic thing to say. Many journalists believe that there are good religious people and bad religious people and that one of the duties of the press is to advocate for the views of the good religious people. Journalists get to tell us which doctrines are true and which ones are false.


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CBS offers a love song on 'polyamory,' which is not that religious thing called 'polygamy'

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Not that long ago, I asked a media-savvy friend to quickly name the first thing he thought of when he heard the word “polygamy.” As you would expect from someone here in the Bible Belt, he responded: “Mormons.”

The guy was being honest. He knew that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints long ago changed its stance on that issue. But that was still what he thought of, first. It was a religion thing.

Then I asked him to do the same thing with this term: “polyamory.” Just as quickly, he responded: “NPR.”

Well, that has been a logical choice in the past. Now, reporters who follow updates on the Sexual Revolution can look to CBSN Originals for the latest one-sided coverage on that topic. Oh, and this new feature — “Not just ‘one big orgy’: Fighting the stigma of consensual non-monogamy” — avoids any religious questions that might be linked to love, sex, marriage and family life (other than hints at conservatives with hangups).

The big idea: There are lots of ordinary Americans who have been forced to hide in closets because they want to love who they love, while creating new kinds of families without fear of legal and cultural complications. They need government recognition.

That sort of sounds like three- or four-person marriages, but CBS never really goes THERE. Check out this passage:

It is illegal in all 50 states to be married to more than one person — which is known as polygamy, not polyamory. Polyamorous people who try different kinds of arrangements — such as a married couple with steady outside partners — run into their own legal problems.

There is no legal framework for polyamorous families to share finances, custody of children or the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage. Likewise, there are no legal protections against people facing discrimination for being in a non-monogamous relationship.

So the “legal framework” goal is civil unions of some kind, as opposed to marriage?


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One-sided story about Pence needing to find his conscience is true enough -- for today's journalism

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A snippet from Mike Pence’s life as vice president has appeared twice in recent major-media writing about him, both times at the end of a piece and both times as though this information offers keen insight into an empty soul.

As has become too common in journalism today — especially when The New York Times discusses Donald Trump’s White House — journalists need to look carefully at the origins and attribution of one person’s subjective experience.

This story seems the most damning in the version passed along by Peter Baker of the Times, reviewing reporter Tom Lobianco’s book “Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House”:

When an evangelical pastor who once prayed with Pence in his congressional office ran into him at a ceremony last year, he told him: “You know, Mr. Vice President, more than anything, we need you to find your conscience, the country desperately needs you to find your conscience.”

“It’s always easier said than done,” Pence replied cryptically, and then walked away.

The mind reels. Who was this unnamed evangelical pastor who once prayed with Pence? Franklin Graham? Pat Robertson? Fellow Catholic-turned-evangelical Larry Tomczac? Did this language about Pence finding his conscience have a context? Was it focused on a specific moral issue? Would readers like to know if this pastor is a conservative or progressive evangelical?

Maureen Groppe, describing the same book 20 days earlier for USA Today, named the pastor and grounded the confrontation in a specific event:

Robert Schenck, who had prayed with Pence in his congressional office years before, watched his old friend administer the oath of office in 2018 to Sam Brownback, Trump’s new ambassador for religious freedom.


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More news about old churches being sold and flipped: Does it matter why this is happening?

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Trigger alert: News readers are going to be seeing more and more stories about churches closing down and going up for sale.

There’s a good reason for this: Lots of churches, in lots of zip codes (but some zip codes more than others) are closing and being put up for sale. This is an obvious local story hook and often comes with colorful art, as these sanctuaries are turned into pubs, condos, art galleries, mansions, etc., etc.

However, these local stories also have valid national angles, because some flocks (think Seven Sisters of oldline Protestantism) are closing more churches than others. Also (think Catholic parishes in New York City), some of these churches are sitting on ultra-prime real estate in older downtown neighborhoods.

So here is my question: Is the fate of the church bodies that formerly occupied these holy spaces an essential element in all of these stories? In the old journalism formula “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why” and “how,” does the “WHY” element remain important?

It would appear not, based on many of the stories that I am seeing.

Consider this new NPR report that does with a very broad headline: “Houses Of Worship Find New Life After Congregations Downsize.” See the implied question there? Why are so many congregations downsizing or even closing?

So what facts made it into the story? Here is the overture:

When Lisa and Dan Macheca bought a century-old Methodist church in St. Louis back in 2004, they didn't think much about the cost of heating the place.

Then the first heating bill arrived: $5,000 for a single month.

"I felt like crying," Lisa Macheca said. "Like, 'Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into?' "

Over the course of a decade, the Machecas, who both have hospitality backgrounds, renovated the 115-year-old church into a bed and breakfast. Repurposing these buildings — known as adaptive reuse — is becoming increasingly common as the religious preferences of Americans shift.

So what is going on here?


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Tourism to Israel is up, and it's obviously because of President Trump, right? Well, let's talk about that ...

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If you want an in-depth explanation of why “correlation does not imply causation,” you’ll need a more educated source than me.

But here’s what I will say about NPR’s weekend report linking evangelical support of President Trump with rising tourism numbers in Israel: Evidence to support that storyline seems a little squishy to me.

Or maybe a whole lot squishy. I’ll explain in a moment. But first, here’s how NPR sets the scene:

President Trump's evident desire to identify who's most "loyal" to Israel has a clear winner: U.S. evangelicals.

Not only do they outpace U.S. Jews in their support for policies that favor the Israeli government, but U.S. evangelicals have also become the fastest-growing sector of the Israeli tourism market. The developments may even be related.

"I'd say close to 100% of our travelers come back extremely pro-Israel in their political views," says Andy Cook, a pastor who leads evangelical tours of the Holy Land twice a year.

OK, that description of evangelicals as “the fastest-growing sector of the Israeli tourism market” certainly sounds authoritative. However, unless I missed it, NPR doesn’t provide any internet links or other hard data to back up that characterization.

Does actual data exist?

Or is that description attributable to a tourism official eager to tout evangelical travel to a reporter clearing wanting to make that connection?

Let’s read a little more:


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NPR: Female missionary to Uganda story brings out 'no white savior' syndrome

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There’s a curious story on NPR’s site about an American woman who moved to Uganda years ago, set up a Christian charity to help malnourished kids and now is being sued by two Ugandan women who claimed that her negligence led to their children’s deaths.

Renee Balch, who moved back to west-central Virginia after it was clear things were going south in Africa, is fighting back, claiming she had nothing to do with these deaths.

There’s enough about this story that raises a lot of questions about the high rates of death in certain African countries; about foreigners who travel to Africa to do what they can to help and whether they should be held liable for any of these deaths. The story picks up with an anecdote (which I am skipping) about a critically ill child whom Bach (allegedly) nearly killed through lack of medical knowledge.

Ten years ago, Renee Bach left her home in Virginia to set up a charity to help children in Uganda. … Bach was not a doctor. She was a 20-year-old high school graduate with no medical training. And not only was her center not a hospital — at the time it didn't employ a single doctor.

Yet from 2010 through 2015, Bach says, she took in 940 severely malnourished children. And 105 of them died.

Now Bach is being sued in Ugandan civil court.

One in nine kids dying is not a good ratio. But, would these kids have died anyway? Was Bach’s facility the only one that was available?

Uganda has an infant mortality rate of 49 deaths per 1,000 people, but when Bach moved there, it was around 83.4, which is very high.

How could a young American with no medical training even contemplate caring for critically ill children in a foreign country? To understand, it helps to know that the place where Bach set up her operation — the city of Jinja — had already become a hub of American volunteerism by the time she arrived.

A sprawling city of tens of thousands of people on the shores of Lake Victoria, Jinja is surrounded by rural villages of considerable poverty. U.S. missionaries had set up a host of charities there. And soon American teens raised in mostly evangelical churches were streaming in to volunteer at them.

Bach was one of these teens. On her first trip, in 2007, she worked at a missionary-run orphanage — staying on for nine months.

Once back home in Virginia, Bach — now 19 years old — came to a life-changing conclusion: She should move to Jinja full time and set up her own charity.

I googled “missionary groups in Jinja” and sure enough, there’s a bunch.


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