Soon after I left the newsroom of the Rocky Mountain News to teach at Denver Seminary, in the early 1990s, a general-assignment reporter was asked to do a story about a trend in religion. It was something to do with prayer, if I recall, and editors wanted to run it on Easter.
The reporter went to three or four nearby churches in downtown. As you would expect, these were old flocks linked to Mainline Protestantism and one Catholic parish. All were, to one degree or another, both historic and struggling, in terms of attendance and membership. The city’s biggest churches were in the suburbs, especially in the booming territory between Denver and Colorado Springs — already a nationally known evangelical power base. The state included at least five internationally known centers on spirituality and prayer, one evangelical, one charismatic Episcopal, one Buddhist and two Roman Catholic.
The story ended up with voices from the dominant flocks of Denver’s past, when liberal Protestant voices were the statistical norm.
Many times, through the years, religious leaders have asked me: Why do the oldline Protestant churches receive so much news coverage? During my Denver years, Episcopalians and United Methodists did make lots of national news — as doctrinal wars escalated about sex and marriage.
These were subjects that editors considered news. Evangelical Presbyterian churches growing to 6,000-plus members in their first five years of existence? That might be worth a column. It’s not big news.
I thought of these discussions the other day when I read a Religion News Service — a long feature with lots of valid material — that ran with this headline: “As a pandemic peaks at Christianity’s Easter climax, churches adapt online.” Here’s the opening anecdote:
On Palm Sunday (April 5), the Rev. Ted Gabrielli, a bespectacled Jesuit with a bushy beard, stood in the bed of a roving pickup truck that traveled through Boyle Heights, a mostly Latino neighborhood on Los Angeles’ east side.
Gabrielli, a pastor at Dolores Mission Church, greeted neighbors from the truck and blessed the homes, alleys and streets he passed. He greeted many by name. One neighbor, caught on a Facebook livestream of the procession, stood from her home waving palms, the symbol of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem in the week before he was crucified.
“We’re at your orders,” he told passersby in Spanish. “May God bless you all this Palm Sunday.”
Gabrielli, one Facebook commenter wrote, was “bringing Jesus to our streets.” The church called it the Blessing of the Barrio.
Gabrielli’s colleague at the mission, the Rev. Brendan Busse, offered the blessing as an example of how Dolores Mission is improvising this Holy Week during a pandemic that has prevented Jews from gathering for Passover and Christians from attending the solemn liturgies that lead up to Easter, the holiest day of the church’s calendar.
The first time I read that, I missed the word “Jesuit” in the lede and wondered about the denominational identity of the “Dolores Mission Church.” As it turns out, RNS could — maybe should — have put “Catholic” in that church name.
This was a perfectly valid opening for the story. Latino Catholics are certainly a major part of the future of American religion. That’s news. A reporter could, of course, write an entire story about how Catholics — from coast to coast — have wrestled with online worship and the coronavirus crisis.
As I read on I was struck by the other sourcing. For example:
At All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, the 3,000-member congregation traditionally gathers Holy Saturday on the lawn to light the Paschal candle, which will burn during services for the remainder of the Easter season’s 50 days.
Also:
The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, published a video recently calling on her fellow Lutherans to join with other denominations in small acts of Christian witness in the upcoming days.
Also:
The “church universal that changes so slow changed overnight,” said the Rev. Jes Kast, pastor of Faith United Church of Christ in State College, Pennsylvania.
Then back to the Episcopalians, and a very popular voice with journalists:
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, whose prerecorded sermon will be included in the cathedral’s Easter service, ventured that “more people are actually going to church” in the current virtual climate than attend on a normal Sunday.
Then there was:
“The first Sunday we had 6,000, the second Sunday we had 8,000, the third Sunday we had 25,000 people,” said the Rev. James Howell, pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Later on there was this:
At Urban Village Church, a UMC church in Chicago’s trendy Wicker Park neighborhood, the Rev. Hannah Kardon said that online services have even drawn a number of former congregants who have moved away from the church.
Toward the end, there were short quotes from leaders at two Southern Baptist congregations in North Carolina, including The Summit, which is led by the Rev. J.D. Greear, who is the current SBC president.
All of the material quoted was valid, but this long feature story did leave the impression that “normal” churches in America are mainline Protestant and urban Catholic, contrasted with a few bytes of white megachurch Baptist life.
The churches that are struggling the most to cope with online worship are, of course, smaller churches — especially rural — in all denominations. I would also say that ancient liturgical, sacramental forms of worship are harder to capture with a smartphone and Facebook Live than services featuring a sermon and one or two pop-rock musicians. (I confess that I say that as an Eastern Orthodox choir member.)
It is true that the mainline Protestant establishment — mostly liberal hierarchies leading more conservative people in the pews — remains a crucial part of the American religious marketplace. However, it’s also true that the “Seven Sisters” of the mainline world have, since the glory days of the 1960s, lost millions of members.
Remember this stunning chart from political scientist Ryan Burge (GetReligion post here)? Using decades of statistics, he has projected that the “mainline” churches will be down to about 4% of America’s population by 2030.
So what is my point? I would not have flinched if this RNS story had been, let’s say, sourced this way — 33% Catholic, 33% evangelical and 33% oldline Protestant. That would have been overplaying the “mainline” element, but it would have been a bit more balanced.
Why did the liberal churches get nearly all of the ink in this look at the challenges of online worship?
Well, they are the brand names that are best known in big newsrooms.
So who needed to be featured, to some degree, in this RNS story? Look at the video at the top of this post. Look at the faces and the names of their congregations.
These people are now a major chunk of the American ecumenical mainstream. That’s the bottom line.
A quarter of a century ago, I wrote an essay responding to my critics who wondered why Episcopalians received so much news coverage: “Why journalists love the Episcopal Church.” It ended like this:
I believe the Episcopal Church draws more than its share of media attention because its leaders wear religious garb, work in conveniently located buildings, speak fluent politics and promote a mystical brand of moral liberalism.
Episcopalians look like Roman Catholics and act like liberal politicians. Clearly, this is a flock that will continue to merit the attention of America's media elite.
In other words, they are the “good guys.”
Sorry! How could I say that in gender-neutral terms?