#blacklivesmatter

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Old Southern Baptist stereotypes? Journalists need to update some information

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Old Southern Baptist stereotypes? Journalists need to update some information

Anyone looking for Baptists should head to Greenville, S.C.

"People here say you can throw a rock in one direction and hit a Southern Baptist church and if you throw a rock in the other direction you'll hit an independent Baptist church," said Nathan A. Finn, provost of North Greenville University.

Finn's school -- with strong Southern Baptist ties -- isn't the only brand of "Baptist" life in town. There's the progressive Furman University, as well as the independent Bob Jones University, known for its rock-ribbed Baptist defense of fundamentalism.

The Baptist world is extremely complex and hard for many outsiders to navigate. Some of this confusion, said Finn, affects life inside the most prominent Baptist flock -- the Southern Baptist Convention -- and perceptions of SBC conflicts.

"Lots of people need to understand that Southern Baptists are far more diverse, ethnically and culturally, than they think we are," he said, in a telephone interview. "At the same time, we're more uniformly conservative that we often appear, especially since we spend so much time fighting with each other over some of the small points of theology on which we differ."

With some of these stereotypes in mind, Finn recently fired off a dozen Twitter messages describing different images of real "Southern Baptist" churches that are common today. The goal, he said, was to create "composites of what different kinds of SBC congregations look like" and he gave them "names that are common with certain types of real churches."

There is, of course, a "First Baptist Church" which Finn described as "a downtown church that runs 500 in worship. The church is affluent, which is reflected in their beautiful building. The worship service is traditional. There are lots of programs & committees" and the congregation is known for big donations to the SBC's shared "Cooperative Program" budget.

Then there is one of the megachurches that have dominated the American religious marketplace in recent decades. While the word "Baptist" is missing in its name, Finn noted: "CrossWay Church is a suburban church that runs 1400 in two services. The 'feel' of each service is laid back & contemporary. CrossWay has excellent recreational facilities" and its leaders are "considering launching a second campus."

These big churches frequently make headlines.


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Which issue drew more ink? SBC on Trump-era rifts, race, #ChurchToo abuse, gay marriage

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Which issue drew more ink? SBC on Trump-era rifts, race, #ChurchToo abuse, gay marriage

Here’s a question for GetReligion readers, including journalists: Are you surprised that the Southern Baptist Convention still believes sex outside of marriage is sin and, yes, that marriage is defined — by two millennia of Christian teaching — as the union of man and woman?

All of you who are surprised, please raise your hands.

There shouldn’t be many hands in the air on that one.

Now, would you say that SBC action on that question is, well, sexier than the decision by the national convention’s executive committee to oust two congregations for violating guidelines on sexual abuse, following in the wake of many #ChurchTwo revelations (especially in major Texas newspapers)?

Meanwhile, SBC President J.D. Greear offered up a blistering speech to the executive committee in which he addressed what he called demonic attacks on SBC unity, attacks centering on two hot-button topics — racism and (to be blunt) Donald Trump-era politics.

Of these four issues, want to guess which drew mainstream-press headlines? That’s the question that host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in or head over to iTunes to subscribe.

According to the Associated Press, the biggest news was that totally predictable decision linked to marriage and sex. Meanwhile, I am happy to report that The New York Times produced a story that, while the headline was predictable (“Southern Baptists Expel 2 Churches Over Sex Abuse and 2 for L.G.B.T.Q. Inclusion”), was updated to become a solid look at the tensions surrounding Greear and some of these issues. We will come back to both of those stories.

But first, I think GetReligion readers need to read a large chunk of the (edited) text from the Greear broadside. (Click here for Baptist Press coverage and, most of all, here for a file that includes the full video.)

The key: Greear sets out to affirm the 1980s SBC move to the right on issues of biblical authority, while repudiating what he calls the “leaven of the Pharisees” emerging on the SBC’s right flank. The following is long, I know, but essential to understanding what is happening right now in America’s largest Protestant flock:


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Yearenders-palooza -- Bobby Ross Jr. with positive, poignant ways to look at 2020 religion news

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Yearenders-palooza -- Bobby Ross Jr. with positive, poignant ways to look at 2020 religion news

A church shooting. Deadly twisters. Racial justice protests. And the biggest news in this tumultuous year: COVID-19.

These were among the most memorable stories that I covered in 2020.

Here is my personal year-end Top 10 list, mostly in chronological order:

• Texas church shooting: A gunman opened fire at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, killing two worshipers before an armed member fatally shot him. While the attack occurred at the end of 2019, it remained an important story in 2020. In the immediate aftermath, I covered a members-only prayer vigil, recounted minister Britt Farmer’s experience and explained why Farmer chose to talk to me. I profiled victims Richard White and Tony Wallace. Later, I moderated a panel discussion on church shootings. And I wrote about the church’s emotional return to its auditorium.

• Women in the church: My Christian Chronicle colleagues and I produced an in-depth package of stories on women’s roles in Churches of Christ. I focused on two distinct congregations: an Arlington, Texas, church that embraces traditional gender roles and a Los Angeles church that has added female elders.

• Tennessee tornadoes: On my last flight before COVID-19 grounded me, I traveled to Middle Tennessee to report on tornadoes that cut an 80-mile swath of death and destruction. I highlighted the leading role that Churches of Christ played in the disaster relief effort. I interviewed a church teen who was serving her community while grieving her 4-year-old friend, Hattie Jo Collins. I covered the funeral for a Christian family killed in the storm. And I reflected on how sadness gave way to gladness on the Sunday after the tornadoes.

• COVID-19: As of this moment, the global pandemic has killed 1.8 million people around the world.


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Of course the pandemic was top 2020 religion-news story: But which COVID-19 story?

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Of course the pandemic was top 2020 religion-news story: But which COVID-19 story?

There was never any question whether the global coronavirus pandemic would be named the most important religion-news story in 2020.

The question was which faith-driven COVID-19 story -- out of a dozen or so -- would top the Religion News Association's Top 10 list.

According to journalists who cover religion, this was the year's biggest story: "COVID-19 pandemic claims lives of many religious leaders and laity, upends death rituals, ravages congregational finances, spurs charitable responses, forces religious observances to cancel or go online and stirs legal fights over worship shutdowns."

But there was a problem on my ballot. The RNA list included another coronavirus item focusing on religious liberty. In some cities and states, officials created pandemic regulations that claimed many institutions -- from grocery stores to casinos -- provided "essential services." Meanwhile, other institutions -- like churches and synagogues -- were deemed "non-essential."

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that religious institutions shouldn't face tougher rules than secular groups and activities. It was wrong, for example, to ban masked priests from hearing confessions -- outdoors, 10 feet away from masked penitents -- while consumers were lined up at liquor stores.

These conflicts continued. In a symbolic pre-Christmas press conference, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam explained why he thought religious groups should be willing to move their activities online and stay there -- for now.

"This year we need to think about what is truly the most important thing," Northam explained, in a Richmond press conference. "Is it the worship or the building? For me, God is wherever you are. You don't have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers."

Bishop Robert Barron of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles was not amused. The problem with this"secularized, Protestant-ized" view of worship, he said, is that it doesn't work for believers with ancient traditions that don't work online, such as offering communicants consecrated bread and wine.


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Final #2020 podcast: The year when religion news went viral, and that was a bad thing

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When you have been studying the Religion News Association’s Top 10 religion stories poll for as many years as I have (starting around 1980), it’s easy to spot patterns.

In normal years, religion-beat specialists tend to place several familiar items at or near near the top of the poll. You can see that by looking at Internet-era polls (click here). Like what?

* Whatever the pope did or said that drew headlines, especially if there was a USA tour.

* Religion affecting American politics (especially following the birth of the Religious Right after Roe vs. Wade). Big Supreme Court decisions often fit into this niche.

* Major religion-related wars or acts of terrorism around the world.

* What happened with liberal Protestantism — especially Episcopalians — and the whole God vs. the Sexual Revolution thing?

* For a decade or so, Southern Baptist warfare was a year-to-year story (stay tuned for future developments).

* Sex scandals involving bad conservative religious groups or leaders (since hypocrisy is more newsworthy than mistakes made by good liberals as they evolve).

As always, the year’s final “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on the results of the RNA poll and what might happen in the year ahead. My own “On Religion” column about the 2020 poll is running in mainstream newspapers this weekend and it will be posted here and at Tmatt.net in a day or so.

This was not, as you would expect, a “normal” year in the poll — unless you want to say that, instead of wars or acts of terrorism, the world experienced a pandemic. COVID-19 showed up twice in the RNA poll and even those two items understated the size and complexity of this story.

Looking forward: How many congregations and clergy will we lose in the next few years because of the impact — in terms of stress, as well as finances — of this pandemic?

Anyway, I thought GetReligion readers might want to see my own ballot in this poll, which was similar to the poll final results (click here for those) — but with some crucial variations. For starters, I took the two RNA coronavirus pandemic stories and turned them into items 1(a) and 1(b) by placing them at the top.

I have added a few bites of commentary to this list. Let me stress that this list is my ballot, but features the RNA-poll wordings that describe each “story” or trend.


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Behind the #WhiteJesus wars: Lessons to learn from ancient Christian iconography

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Behind the #WhiteJesus wars: Lessons to learn from ancient Christian iconography

For modern skeptics, the 6th-century icon hanging in the Orthodox monastery in the shadow of Mount Sinai is simply a 33-by-18-inch board covered in bees wax and colored pigments.

For believers, this Christ Pantocrator ("ruler of all") icon is the most famous image of Jesus in the world, because the remote Sinai Peninsula location of St. Catherine's Monastery allowed it to survive the Byzantine iconoclasm era. The icon shows Jesus -- with a beard and long hair -- raising his right hand in blessing, while holding a golden book of the Gospels.

This Jesus does not have blond hair and blue eyes. "Christ of Sinai" shows the face of a wise teacher from ancient Palestine.

"When you talk about ancient icons, you are basically talking about images of Jesus with long hair, a beard and some kind of Roman toga. That's just about all you can say," said Jonathan Pageau of Quebec, an Eastern Orthodox artist and commentator on sacred symbols.

In the early church, he added, believers "didn't ask other questions -- about race and culture -- because those were not the important questions in those days. … Once you start politicizing icons there's just no way out of those arguments. You get into politics and dividing people and then you're lost."

In these troubled times, said Pageau, many analysts are "projecting valid concerns about racism and Europe's history of colonization and the plight of African-Americans back into issues of church history and art that are centuries and centuries old. It's a kind of category error and everything gets mixed up."

But that's what happened when debates about some #BlackLivesMatters activists toppling Confederate memorials -- along with attacks on Catholic statues and even insufficiently "woke" Founding Fathers -- veered into #WhiteJesus territory.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy," tweeted Shaun King, author of "Make Change: How to Fight Injustice, Dismantle Systemic Oppression, and Own Our Future."

The popular Internet scribe later added: "All murals and stained-glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. … We can debate [whether] or not Jesus was real all day long. What I do know, is that white Jesus is a lie. And is a tool of white supremacy created and advanced to help white people use the faith as a tool of oppression. Also, they never would've accepted a religion from a Brown man."


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Podcast: Portland Bible (or Bibles) was just 'kindling' for fire, saith The New York Times (#SoThere)

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Podcast: Portland Bible (or Bibles) was just 'kindling' for fire, saith The New York Times (#SoThere)

Let’s say that it’s a cold summer night and you need to start a fire during your #AltRight demonstration that includes quite a bit of violent behavior.

There are, of course, television cameras present.

How many Qurans would you need to burn — just as “kindling” — to create a news story worthy of coverage by what used to be called the mainstream press? You are, of course, going to burn an American flag, as well, since it is a symbol of the liberal state that is your enemy. You are flying your own banners — such as a Rebel battle flag from the War Between the States.

Do you need to burn one Quran to create headlines around the world? How about two? You are, of course, not showing hostility to Islam. You just need some kindling to start a fire. It also helps to open the cover up so that the camera catches the title page of the holy book.

This was one of the questions discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). We were discussing that recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “A Bible Burning, a Russian News Agency and a Story Too Good to Check Out.”

The setting for this drama, of course, is Portland. Here’s a key passage:

The story was a near-perfect fit for a central Trump campaign talking point — that with liberals and Democrats comes godless disorder — and it went viral among Republicans within hours of appearing earlier this month. The New York Post wrote about it, as did The Federalist, saying that the protesters had shown “their true colors.” Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, said of the protesters, “This is who they are.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, tweeted that antifa had moved to “the book burning phase.”

The truth was far more mundane. A few protesters among the many thousands appear to have burned a single Bible — and possibly a second — for kindling to start a bigger fire. None of the other protesters seemed to notice or care.

Were the Russians tipped off about the random Bible burning? Where were the CNN cameras? Fox News pros weren’t there to join the conspiracy?

Let me be clear: I have no doubt that advocacy media on the right jumped on this story. That is what they do in this new era of biased news on both sides of America’s cultural divide. I have no doubt that Russian operatives seek to cause division.


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Christian in NBA suffers horrible, funny injury: Was cruel ESPN tweet a news story or not?

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I realize that few GetReligion readers seem to care much about sports. But what about a mixture of race, religion and sports?

With that in mind, let me ask a serious journalism question linked to those three topics.

Would it be a news story — a hard-news story — if an ESPN personality (or the social-media team working with his show) asked if it was funny if an athlete who backs #BlackLivesMatters suffered a horrible, painful injury soon after making a high-profile statement about how his convictions were rooted in his faith?

Wait. We know an ESPN host and/or the show’s social-media team would never do such a thing.

But what if a conservative media star — Tucker Carlson, let’s say — asked that same question?

It’s safe to say that this would explode into mainstream news coverage.

That brings us to this headline in the New York Post (a conservative paper, of course): “ESPN’s Dan Le Batard posts poll wondering if Jonathan Isaac’s torn ACL is funny.”

Dan Le Batard issued an apology for his ill-advised poll Monday afternoon.

The ESPN radio host’s show, “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz,” ran a poll on Twitter poking fun at Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, who tore his ACL Sunday night.

Isaac was the first player in the NBA bubble not to kneel during the national anthem, and also did not wear the “Black Lives Matter” warm-up donned by the rest of his teammates.

“Is it funny the guy who refused to kneel immediately blew out his knee?” the poll asked.

Oh, right. I turned that question around, didn’t I?

Isaac is a black Christian — he is ordained, in fact — who made headlines by linking his faith to his decision not to take part in the official NBA pre-game rites. He wasn’t protesting the protests, exactly. He had a larger point that he wanted to make, one rooted in his work as a minister.


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Sports Illustrated gets theological in its slam-job on Giants pitcher who would not kneel

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As a rule, editors and writers at major sports publications rarely make spiritual judgements about the actions of professional athletes.

This are not, however, ordinary times in America and, apparently, journalists have decided all bets are off when it comes to damning those who are not woke.

I am referring to that controversial — and quietly evolving — Sports Illustrated story that ran with the following headline (which needed three decks of type to pack everything in):

Giants’ Sam Coonrod Explains Not Kneeling for Moment of Unity: ‘I’m a Christian’

In Friday’s Hot Clicks: a Giants pitcher hides behind his religion. …

Taking a stand against inequality shouldn’t be controversial

First things first, let me note that — as an old-school First Amendment liberal — I have no problem with players kneeling whenever they want to kneel.

One could make a case that players who kneel during the national anthem are showing respect, which is one interpretation of kneeling in other circumstances. Some have said that they are praying, while they kneel. They could kneel and recite batting averages and I would back their right to do so. The same thing goes for players who choose not to kneel. I’m pro-free speech, including symbolic speech.

But back to the theological judgements woven into that SI piece about Coonrod, which was written by Dan Gartland — who is identified as a writer/editor on LinkedIn. I mention that because I could find no evidence that he is a columnist who is paid to make editorial comments about players and the games they play. Then again, that’s old-school journalism talk.

Doing a critique of this piece is complicated by the fact that there are two versions to discuss — the original and the edited version that has quietly take its place. There are screen shots and Twitter comments that capture some of the original wording.

However, the key phrase remains in the headline, at least the one I copied as I started work on this post. I’m referring to the “hides behind his religion” wisecrack.


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