In addition to spending some social-distanced time around a grill, this is a good day for a bit of extra reading. Please consider this a kind of “think piece” package to mentally munch during a relaxing day.
Yes, I realize that some of the topics are a bit heavy. It’s #2020.
For starters, here is a heavyweight Commonweal essay from retired Newsweek religion-beat pro Kenneth Woodward: “Religion & Presidential Politics — From George Washington to Donald Trump.”
As is usually the case with Woodward, there is plenty to think about in this lengthy piece and a few things to argue about, as well. In other words, it’s must reading. Here is the lengthy overture.
Sen. Eugene McCarthy, one of the few theologically sophisticated men ever to seek either party’s presidential nomination, liked to say that only two kinds of religion are tolerated along the Potomac: “strong beliefs vaguely expressed and vague beliefs strongly affirmed.” McCarthy had two particular presidents in mind: Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. But he could have been describing most of the men who have occupied the White House. Franklin D. Roosevelt would have understood what McCarthy meant. When he decided to run for president in 1932, his press secretary asked him what he should tell the press about his religious convictions. Roosevelt could have justly claimed that he was a warden of his Episcopal parish, prayed often, and regularly attended Sunday services. But all he said was: “Tell them I am a Christian and a Democrat, and that is all they need to know.” And it was. And so, with rare exceptions, it has always been in presidential elections.
Having written about religion and its relationship to American culture and politics for more than half a century, I am not inclined to minimize the effects of religious belief, behavior, and belonging on American public life. But I think it’s abundantly clear that religion has rarely been a significant factor in our presidential politics, and isn’t likely to be in the upcoming election. On the contrary, to treat religious identity as an independent variable, as many journalists, academics, and pollsters do, inflates the influence of religion on our politics and masks the ways in which politics has come to shape American religion, rather than the reverse. Still, after the returns are in next November, the media will carry stories about how Catholics, liberal Protestants, and Evangelicals — especially “non-Hispanic white” Evangelicals — voted. Why do we insist on connecting presidential choices with religious identity?
Let me give my answer to that question: We connect the two because candidates and their political parties take stands on moral and cultural issues that directly connect — for SOME (I cannot emphasize “some” enough), certainly not a majority, of voters. And at this moment in time, key groups that are part of the Democratic Party and Republican Party base can be viewed in terms of the religion they embrace or the religion that they reject.
In other words, while the specific faith of the presidential candidates is often not that important — whether it’s the evolving liberal Catholicism of Joe Biden or the reality-TV materialism of Donald Trump — there are groups of voters whose religious beliefs are connected to crucial issues in public life. This is, of course, especially true in an era in which the U.S. Supreme Court is the ultimate authority in American life.
Woodward does a brilliant job of mapping the vague mushiness in the middle of the American religious marketplace. But there are people on the left and the right — defined in doctrinal religious terms, not political — who actually have beliefs and traditions that matter to them.
So I see Woodward’s essay as a great commentary on candidates and the political parties — while it’s possible to argue with him about some issues linked to individual flocks of believers.
But everyone will learn something from this essay’s take on the news media’s obsession with “white evangelicals.” Here’s an interesting take on the impact of the born-again Jimmy Carter:
Paradoxically, Carter’s awakening of the white Evangelical vote soon gave rise to the Religious Right. Until his campaign, most Protestant fundamentalists and conservative Evangelicals — especially those belonging to independent and non-denominational churches — voted in presidential elections but abjured party politics as too worldly. Journalists and political commentators often lose sight of the fact that the Religious Right was not the creation of Evangelical Christians themselves. It was essentially the work of two Catholics and a Jew: the direct-mail wiz Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, and Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. Seeing how a born-again Democratic governor from the South had energized fundamentalists and conservative Evangelicals, this trio of conservative political operatives determined to win them over to the GOP. They interviewed likely movement leaders, then picked Jerry Falwell to lead an organization they named “The Moral Majority.”
In short, the Religious Right represented the deliberate politicization of a previously apolitical segment of the population, and when they finally entered the political arena, they did it with cleats on.
Now, let’s move on to Bobby Ross and his regular scan of some of the best religion-beat stories from the previous week, written for the Religion Unplugged website and shared here at GetReligion.
1. Questions about QAnon: The apocalyptic internet movement “is gaining followers by the thousands, and churches are slow to respond,” Emily Belz reports in a cover story for the evangelical magazine World.
Belz offers an insightful look at the movement while noting that Christians she interviewed “wanted to make sure their loved ones were portrayed with compassion and respect.”
2. Kenosha prayer vigil at ELCA church calls for confession, lament and justice for Jacob Blake: Out of necessity, much news reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic occurs via telephone, email and Zoom.
But it’s helpful when journalists can report from the scene — as Emily McFarland Miller, a Chicago-based national correspondent for Religion News Service, demonstrates with her colorful, detailed report from Wisconsin.
Also, check out Milwaukee Journal Sentinel religion writer Sophie Carson’s story on people in Kenosha turning to faith and art to start healing from a violent, destructive week.
3. A white mom marched alone to say ‘Black lives matter.’ Her Black son urged her to do more: Officially, Jaweed Kaleem is a former religion reporter for the Miami Herald and the Huffington Post.
But still, Kaleem — a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times — keeps finding compelling religion angles. His latest dispatch highlights the role of faith in the story of a Black son and a White mother. …
Let’s end this part of our think-piece package with a plug for one of Bobby’s own stories:
Last December, I covered the deadly shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, west of Fort Worth.
This week, I reported on that church making an emotional return to its newly renovated worship center.
“When you first walk in, it’s almost overwhelming,” said Glenda White, whose husband was one of two church members killed in the shooting.
Finally, here is a short essay at Reason.com that is not specifically about religion-beat coverage.
However, it’s about how Americans are being divided by their news choices — divided into concrete bunkers of images and information coming from competing advocacy media sources. This frequently affects coverage of religion-news and major stories that are haunted by religion.
Right now, Americans have radically different views of what is happening in #BLM related protests and riots, in large part because they are seeing radically different YouTube (and cable television) images of these events.
As it turns out, there is a reason for that. The headline on that Reason.com piece proclaims: “ 'You're Not Allowed To Film': The Fight To Control Who Reports From Portland.”
On one side, there is a group that calls itself the “Independent Press Corps.” When watching the news, look for these activists with the word “PRESS” on their helmets or jackets.
Who are these people? Journalist Nancy Rommelmann writes:
As it turned out, dozens of other young PRESS people happened to work for the same outfit, which I at first assumed was a fancy way of saying "I want to report stuff and stream it on my Instagram."
This turned out to be naive. The IPC is an organized group in league with the activists, and it is usually their footage you see streamed online and recycled on the news: mostly innocent protestors being harassed and beaten by police.
The police indeed have tear-gassed and beaten people; there has been brutality. It is equally true, but featured less prominently in the news coverage, that activists spend hours every night menacing and setting fires to police stations and other institutions: City Hall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, and last week Mayor Ted Wheeler's apartment building (until he agreed to move out). With the PRESS crew recording part of the story and the "YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FILM!" crew harassing other journalists, the result can be a misleading view of the protests. It's a revolution via the cellphone video they allow you to see.
The IPC team has produced a list of journalists whose work they embrace and with whom they cooperate, since these journalists are sympathetic to their cause. It includes freelance reporters and others whose bylines are currently seen in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Do all of these images and smartphone videos matter?
For weeks now, I have been asking why Americans have not been seeing more coverage of protests led by veteran civil-rights leaders and clergy from various traditions, especially the black church. I have assumed that the messages, and the visuals, from these protests would be rather different from the violent chaos seen at night.
Does that matter whether these kinds of events are being held?
Well, watch this video from Memphis, right after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yes, there were riots after King’s death. My point is that courageous civil rights leaders were still able, with discipline and careful planning, to hold a giant protest worthy of their leader’s legacy.
Now, look at those visuals again. Listen to the words, too.
Do they produce a different set of emotions and responses than these images from 2020?
It matters what we are seeing and hearing, right now. It also matters what journalists allow us to see and hear.
Which of these two videos contains images and thoughts that are likely to win the hearts of people of good will in the middle of American life? Are news consumers getting an accurate and complete set of images and reports from our troubled streets?