Congress

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Let us attend: Mark Kellner offers readers a visit from the ghost of church-state past

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Let us attend: Mark Kellner offers readers a visit from the ghost of church-state past

Every now and then, religion-beat readers are granted a visitation from the ghost of church-state past.

In this case, we are dealing with a Washington Times report by former GetReligionista Mark Kellner, who has spent enough time inside the D.C. Beltway to understand that mass transit is the true public square for most citizens.

Thus, spot the classic church-state ghost in this headline: “Christian group, ACLU sue Metro over rejected bus ads featuring a praying George Washington.”

Need a hint? Who were some of the major players in the broad coalition that backed the near-unanimous votes in the U.S. Congress for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993?

OK, here is Kellner’s overture:

A Texas-based Christian education group has filed a free-speech lawsuit backed by the ACLU over the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority‘s rejection of the group’s ads that feature images of a praying George Washington.

WMATA earlier this year rejected the ads from WallBuilders, an Aledo, Texas, organization founded by evangelical author David Barton to communicate “the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation” of the United States. The ads would have been displayed on Metro buses.

Wallbuilders was joined in the suit by the American Civil Liberties Union and its D.C. chapter, the First Liberty Institute and the law firm of Steptoe LLP.

Wait a minute. The ACLU and a conservative Christian group are on the same side in a First Amendment free speech/religious liberty case?

Of course, there was a time when this kind of broad church-state coalition was common, as in the RFRA era. But, these days, it’s tempting to think that this kind of First Amendment logic can only be achieved with the help of a time machine (or a case involving a small, sympathetic religious minority group).


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How a veteran Catholic congressman evolved into a political heretic

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How a veteran Catholic congressman evolved into a political heretic

WASHINGTON — As a veteran Chicago-land Democrat, Rep. Daniel Lipinksi knew what to expect when facing newspaper editors during pre-election endorsement season -- hard questions about his support for centuries of Catholic teachings on abortion.

But the Chicago Sun-Times stressed a different question in 2020 -- same-sex marriage. Lipinski said the Supreme Court had settled that issue, so he didn't expect to face it in Congress. The follow-up was blunt and personal: But do YOU support legalized same-sex marriage?

Lipinski said he supported his church's teachings on marriage and sexuality.

"They didn't just see themselves as newspaper editors interviewing candidates in a political race. ... They saw themselves as inquisitors seeking an admission of heresy," said Lipinski, who lost that close primary race with a rival backed by liberal Democrats.

During his 16 years in Congress, Lipinski voted with his party 90% of the time and his convictions never changed, especially on economic and labor issues. Nevertheless, by 2018 New York magazine had floated this headline: "House Democratic Leaders Rally to Defend Their Illinois Heretic."

By 2020, he had reached "political leper" status, in part because of social-media attacks on his beliefs that bled into mainstream news, he said, addressing the recent "Journalism in a Post-Truth World" conference in Washington, D.C. The event was sponsored by Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and the Eternal Word Television Network.

The old days of tough questions and bipartisan debate were one thing, said Lipinski. At this point, American politics have stormed past tribalism into bitter sectarianism, with politicos, activists and journalists embracing "partisanship as a fundamentalist pseudo-religion" that strictly defines good and evil.

What is happening? In the past two decades, he noted, researchers have documented a stunning rise in "religiously unaffiliated" Americans. In 2020, Gallup reported that membership in houses of worship sank to 47% -- below the 50% mark for the first time. In 1999, that number was 70%.

It's possible, said Lipinski, that many citizens are now searching for "for meaning, or a mission, or truth, somewhere else," which only raises the stakes in public life.

"Partisanship has become not just a social identity, but a primary identity considered to be more important than any other," he said. "We all identify ourselves as belonging to different groups -- our families, our religions, our favorite sports teams, our professions. But more and more Americans are defining who they are by the political parties that they choose."


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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

It’s almost always news when a public official testifies before a congressional committee. Such was the case when Attorney General Merrick Garland faced the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

As expected, it was an important, and often heated, four hours of testimony that was highlighted by the back-and-forth exchanges between Garland and Republican senators on the panel. You can read Garland’s opening remarks on the DOJ website. 

Beyond his prepared remarks, there were plenty of potential storylines tied to religion that surfaced in the hearing. However, depending on which news organizations one follows, these storylines either made it into the news coverage or they were never mentioned. 

The Garland hearing comes at a time of heightened polarization, something made worse by the Supreme Court decision that rolled back the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The aftermath of that decision has resulted in increased vandalism of Catholic churches, pro-life pregnancy centers and even a now-retracted FBI memo that targeted some traditional Catholics. 

The content of the coverage of the questions asked and the contents of Garland’s responses depended on what reporters, editors and news organizations deemed important. This has been the case for decades, but the shift has changed dramatically in more recent years as news organizations divide themselves into political camps depending on the beliefs of their faithful audiences. 

Did valid religion angles, especially those involving Catholics, make it into the coverage of national legacy media outlets? 

Here is a hint: Prayers by protestors at abortion facilities appear to be considered much more dangerous, and thus newsworthy, than vandalism, or even arson, at Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers. News coverage of this Senate hearing seemed to have been produced by journalists living in parallel universes. Once again, this is the dominant news trend in the Internet age.

Here is the top of the New York Times report on the Garland hearing: 

WASHINGTON — Republicans subjected Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to a four-hour grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, a harbinger of the fights that loom ahead as the party targets the Justice Department in the months leading up to the 2024 election. 


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Plug-In: After the death of Benedict XVI -- questions about his legacy and his funeral

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Plug-In: After the death of Benedict XVI -- questions about his legacy and his funeral

I’m your Weekend Plug-in columnist, and I’m excited to launch the fourth year of this newsletter.

Plug-in aims to highlight the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith. In 2023, we’re tweaking our format to make it even smarter and more concise.

Let’s jump right in!

What To Know: The Big Story

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died Saturday at age 95. Clementi Lisi recounts the life of the first pope in 600 years to resign.

Pope Francis presided over the funeral Mass for his predecessor, as Lisi reports. But some found fault with Francis’ brief homily for Benedict, according to The New York Times’ Jason Horowitz and Ruth Graham.

For more coverage from the Vatican, follow The Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield, the National Catholic Reporter’s Christopher White, Religion News Service’s Claire Giangravé and the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca.

Looking ahead: Francis may have a freer hand after Benedict’s death, Rocca reports. But U.S. bishops’ rift with Francis is unlikely to ease, according to AP’s David Crary. At Crux, Elise Ann Allen explores whether Benedict’s death might open the door to new rules for retired popes.

More: Lisi presents “5 Catholic storylines you need to follow closely in 2023.”

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Football and prayer: In America, the phrase “thoughts and prayers” is uttered frequently at painful times, as Poynter.org’s Al Tompkins notes.

But what happens when people actually pray?


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State and federal elections spotlight America's diversity and (yet again) religious nones

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State and federal elections spotlight America's diversity and (yet again) religious nones

The mayhem at the U.S. Capitol last week did not prevent Congress's ceremonial tally of the Electoral College victories of the nation's second Catholic president, Joseph Biden, and of Kamala Harris, the first African-American, first Asian-American and first female vice president.

Simultaneously, diversity was also demonstrated in the two Georgia runoff wins that give Democrats control of the U.S. Senate. Jon Ossoff is this heavily Protestant state's first Jewish senator. Baptist pastor Raphael Warnock makes history as only the South's second African-American senator elected since the Reconstruction era. The first is Republican Tim Scott in neighboring South Carolina.

OK. The press has reported all that.

Less noticed are some diverse Democrats newly elected to state legislatures, as featured in the "mainline" Protestant magazine Christian Century. Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Wisconsin and Oklahoma all elected their first-ever Muslim lawmakers, and the Oklahoman, Mauree Turner, is also America's first legislator to identify as non-binary. Episcopal priest Kim Jackson becomes the first openly lesbian member of Georgia's Senate. Kirk White, founder of the Wiccan Church of Vermont, joins that state's Assembly.

Journalists should also be reflecting on the societal change reflected in the religious makeup of the new U.S. Congress, documented in Pew Research Center's latest biennial report, drawn from CQ Roll Call data. Pew's report page is here and for future reference note you can click on "Detailed Table" for a listing of each member's religious identity.

Religious affiliations do not necessarily define members' policies and voting records. Consider all those Democrats who call themselves Catholic but are pro-choice on abortion -- churchgoer Biden among them. But the numbers tell the media something about society's broad religious trends.

Diversity rundown: Way back when, Congress was exclusively Christian and heavily Protestant. The new House and Senate have 33 Jews, three Muslims, three Hindus and two Buddhists. Like Jews, Unitarian Universalists are over-represented relative to the U.S. population with three members, while Pentecostalists are under-represented, with only two members.

Several organizations have compiled religious censuses of Congress over the years. Pew Research issued its first after the 2008 election.


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Daily Beast team stunned to learn that 'The Great Commission' remains in New Testament

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Here is a tip for reporters getting ready to tip-toe into coverage of stories that mix politics and centuries of Christian tradition.

Ready? There are times when it really helps to find out if Jesus — look for quotes in the New Testament — has addressed the issue that you are preparing to cover. This is especially true if you are considering an attack on a believer for defending a doctrine that is so central to Christianity that Bible passages about it have been given a unique name.

Like this one — “The Great Commission.” Here’s the quote from St. Matthew:

… Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

This brings us to that headline atop a short piece at The Daily Beast that keeps popping up in my email: “Newly Elected GOP Congressman Madison Cawthorn Has Tried to Convert Jews to Christianity.”

Yes, I know that there are debates about whether The Daily Beast is a proper source for hard-news coverage of serious topics, such as this one. And this “story” is actually a short piece of aggregated news from another source (click here for more Jewish Insider info).

It’s pretty easy to spot the buzz words in this overture, which argues that it is controversial for Christians to, well, take “The Great Commission” seriously — even in private life:

Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina Republican who will become the youngest member of Congress in history, has admitted he tried to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity.

In an interview with Jewish Insider, the 25-year-old, who came under fire for selfies he took at Hitler’s vacation retreat in Germany, claimed he had converted “several Muslims to Christ” and several “culturally Jewish people.”

“If all you are is friends with other Christians, then how are you ever going to lead somebody to Christ?” Cawthorn said. “If you’re not wanting to lead somebody to Christ, then you’re probably not really a Christian.”

It’s all about the word “admitted.”


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News story? Twitter algorithms cancel Tim Tebow, just ahead of Big Tech showdown on Hill

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Growing tensions between Big Tech and the U.S. Congress has to be one of the biggest news stories in America right now, even as coronavirus statistics soar and shadowy activists keep setting fires at strategic locations in American life.

Think about it: How many Americans get their “news” about COVID-19 and the events swirling around #BlackLivesMatter through sources controlled by these czars of Big Tech — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives. Here’s a bite of preview material from The Washington Post:

Some Republicans, meanwhile, plan to revive their assertions that major social media sites exhibit political bias. Party leaders have ratcheted up their attacks in recent weeks after Facebook and Twitter began taking action against President Trump for his incendiary posts. But GOP critics often have provided scant evidence of their bias allegations, which tech giants fiercely deny and Democrats have decried as a distraction.

“If a platform is dominant in the marketplace and is discriminating against a particular political point of view, [then] anti-competitive behavior coupled with bias is concerning,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), a member of the antitrust panel.

As the old saying goes, it’s not bias — it’s just bad algorithms, over and over.

Now, if journalists were looking for a clickable story to illustrate this side of the Big Tech wars, perhaps a story involving a symbolic person in American life who drives big numbers in social media, why not cover a big tech conflict involving Tim Tebow?


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Covering Rep. Gabbard’s American path to Hinduism, including some complex, tricky details

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Most clickbait is so flatly manipulative that I find it easy to resist, but there is the occasional instance when a headline like “Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood” when I think, “OK, convince me.” 

Kerry Howley does a lot of convincing in her nearly 7,000-word essay, published in the recent edition of The American Prospect. My impressions of Rep. Gabbard, who represents the Second Congressional District of Hawaii, are from the headlines: She’s of Samoan heritage, she’s a Hindu and she stood against Sen. Kamala Harris’ efforts to depict a nominee’s involvement in the Knights of Columbus as a theocratic threat to the American judicial system. 

As Howley shows in her reporting, Gabbard self-identifies as Hindu although the group in which she grew up — the Science of Identity — does not claim a Hindu identity. Like many other movements that repackage Hinduism for Americans, Science of Identity offers Eastern theology (teachings from the Bhagavad Gita), a passionate leader with an exotic adopted name (Chris Butler becomes Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa) and homemade variations on the life of faith (Howley quotes an aunt of Gabbard’s who calls Butler’s group the ‘alt-right of the Hare Krishna movement’ ”).

In this respect, Gabbard is Hindu in the same way that Arlo Guthrie was Hindu when he became a disciple of Guru Ma (Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati).

Gabbard’s father led his family into the movement before she was born, and she has stayed in relationship with it throughout her life.

Gabbard moved leftward in her perspectives on abortion and same-sex couples after she volunteered for military service and worked with a medical unit north of Baghdad. As Howley describes it:

When she returned, her positions on social issues eventually fell a bit more in line with the party; she said that living in a theocracy had changed her, and she no longer believed the state should dictate the romantic or reproductive lives of its citizens.


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I know, I know, it was Twitter: Was New York Times pro right that Jews don't believe in heaven?

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I did not watch the State of the Union show last night, in keeping with my long-standing policy that I strive to prevent the face of Donald Trump from appearing on my television screen. I took the same approach to Hillary Clinton throughout the 2016 race.

In other words, I wait for the transcript of the speech and I read the key parts. This approach is much easier on my aging stomach lining. In other words, I’m interested in what was said — not the Trump dramatics and the talking-heads circus that followed.

This time around, I was interested in what Trump had to say about the current firestorms in Virginia and New York about what U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse has called “fourth-trimester abortion.”

You’ll be shocked, shocked, to learn that fact-checkers at The New York Times were not impressed with Trump’s comments in this area. Click here to see that, and then click here for a conservative academic’s skeptical fact-check of the Times fact-check.

I also checked Twitter a bit, during the speech, and then read all the way through my feed this morning looking for signs of post-SOTU intelligent life.

Thus, I ran into the amazing tweet by New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karmi stating:

Trump Just Ad-Libbed "They Came Down From Heaven" When Quoting A Holocaust Survivor Watching American Soldiers Liberate Dachau. Jews Don't Believe In Heaven.

Wow. I had no idea that there was a Jewish catechism that definitively stated loud dogma on issues of this kind.

I was under the impression — based on graduate school readings on trends in post-Holocaust Jewish life and culture — that trying to say that “Jews believe” this, that or the other is rather difficult. In this case, are we talking about Orthodox Jews, modern Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews, Buddhist Jews, “cultural” Jews, Jewish agnostics, secular Jews or what?

Saying “Jews don’t believe in heaven” is sort of like saying “Democrats don’t believe in God.” I mean, there are Democrats who believe in God, and there’s evidence of that, and there’s some evidence that lots of Democrats don’t believe in God. How would anyone try to make a definitive statement about something like that?

Ditto for Jews and “heaven.”


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