Hillsdale College

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It's hard to avoid the theology in 'A Christmas Carol,' but some movies do just that

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It's hard to avoid the theology in 'A Christmas Carol,' but some movies do just that

On his way to becoming a Hollywood superstar, Bill Murray demonstrated great skill at delivering rants that blurred the line between lunacy and pathos.

In the 1988 flick "Scrooged," he belted out lessons learned from visits with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, as well as occupying his own coffin in a crematorium.

"I'm not crazy. It's Christmas Eve. It's the one night when we … share a little more. For a couple of hours, we are the people we always hoped we would be. It's really a miracle because it happens every Christmas Eve," proclaimed Murray's character, a greedy, arrogant TV executive.

"If you waste that miracle, you're gonna burn for it. I know. … There are people that don't have enough to eat and who are cold. You can go and greet these people. Take an old blanket out to them or make a sandwich and say, 'Here!' l get it now. … I believe in it now."

"Scrooged" is a fascinating Tinseltown take on the Charles Dickens novella "A Christmas Carol" because of what the film contains and what it leaves out, said English literature professor Dwight Lindley of Hillsdale College in Michigan.

This dark comedy contains miracles, ghosts, angels, sin, judgment, penance, purgatory, damnation, the Grim Reaper and eternal life. What it lacks is any meaningful role for God or a Holy Babe in a manger.

"Scrooged" is as "far as some people in Hollywood can go with Dickens," by "domesticating his message and making it more comfortable," said Lindley, who is teaching a six-lecture online course about this 1843 text.

The class, he added, was created for "anyone who loves the story, but doesn't know how to dig deeper into it than what they have seen in the somehow superficial versions that are around. … Some people have a sense that there is something deeper, something moving underneath the surface."

For many, watching "A Christmas Carol" on video is a holiday ritual. These movies usually include the basic story, while ignoring the narration in which Dickens frames his parable.


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Plug-In: Losing their religion -- shape of Latino Catholic population keeps changing in America

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Plug-In: Losing their religion -- shape of Latino Catholic population keeps changing in America

LANCASTER, Pa. — Greetings from Amish country.

I wrote this while in Pennsylvania for the Evangelical Press Association’s 2023 Christian Media Convention.

Let’s check out the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.

What to know: The big story

A declining demographic: Once upon a time in America, the phrase “Latino Catholic” seemed almost superfluous.

However, new research released this week details just how much that has changed.

The Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca reports:

The study by the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Catholic Latinos fell to 43% in 2022 from 67% in 2010. The share of evangelical Protestants among U.S. Latinos remained relatively stable at 15%, compared with 12%. But the proportion of Latinos with no religious affiliation is now up to 30% from 10%, bringing it to about the same level as that of the U.S. population as a whole.

The tendency to identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” is especially strong among young Latinos, as with young Americans in general. About half of U.S. Latinos ages 18 to 29 identify themselves that way.

Crux’s John Lavenburg notes:

Even with the decreases, Latinos are about twice as likely as U.S. adults overall to identify as Catholic. However, the data within that 43 percent shows the potential impacts of a secularized U.S. culture on Latino Catholics, and paints a bleak picture for the future if the trends continue.

Political angle: The Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner suggests that evangelical Hispanics — despite “relatively stable” numbers — have a rising profile:

This is due in part, the research group said, to the political activism of some evangelical churches, but also because “a rising share of Latino voters” have cast their ballots for Republican candidates in recent elections.

Religion News Service’s Alejandra Molina cites “the clergy sexual abuse scandal, a lack of LGBTQ inclusivity and the rule that women can’t be priests” as reasons Latinos are leaving the Catholic Church.


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OK, we get it: That whole 'Christian nationalism' thing is hot, right now. But what is it?

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OK, we get it: That whole 'Christian nationalism' thing is hot, right now. But what is it?

By all indications, urgent warnings against “Christian nationalism” (CN) will continue as a major media theme through Election Day 2024.

Journalists will need to be careful with a tricky label that’s mostly shunned by supposed participants in the CN movement and employed by opponents (as with “fundamentalist” or “ultra-“ or “cult”). How complex is the fighting about this term? Click here to tune in some of the YouTube debates.

Critics’ typical definition comes from attorney Amanda Tyler, who leads Christians Against Christian Nationalism (with a large “N”) and the proudly progressive Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. She says CN “seeks to merge American and Christian identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.” Its “mythological” view of founding of a “Christian nation” means America is singled out “to fulfill God’s purposes on earth.” Further, CN “demands a privileged place for Christianity in public life, buttressed by the active support of government at all levels.”

Writers could pursue this sort of theme sideways by reviewing or collecting pro and con reactions to “How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor,” the latest book by middle-roading evangelical Richard Mouw of Calvin University, formerly president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

Otherwise, here's a rundown to guide journalists on some of the notable CN chatter since The Guy took a whack at the definition issue last year year at GetReligion.

Hang on, because this gets complex. For starters, ambiguity abounded in an October Pew Research survey.

Some 60% of adults think -- yes -- the founders intended the U.S. to be a “Christian nation,” and 45% think it actually “should be” such, though for many that means only generalized moral guidance while only 18% think the phrase indicates Christian-based governance. Importantly, a 54% majority had never even heard of CN.

That belief the U.S. “should be” a Christian nation was favored by fully 65% of Black Protestants (compared with e.g. only 47% of Catholics). Yet University of Texas political scientist Eric McDaniel wrote for TheConversation.com that CN believes the only “true” Americans are “white, Christian and U.S.-born and whose families have European roots.”


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DeSantis as 'culture warrior' or theocrat: Coverage depends on a newsroom's worldview

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DeSantis as 'culture warrior' or theocrat: Coverage depends on a newsroom's worldview

A Republican politician with presidential aspirations visits a Christian college. What happens next, in terms of the way the event is covered by the mainstream press, is predictable — during this era of niche news, with stories written to appeal to the beliefs of specific political flocks.

The politician in question is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the school is Hillsdale College in Michigan. The visit took place this past February and was used as an example in a recent Miami Herald article of DeSantis’ mingling of faith and politics.

This is how the paper opens its Sept. 13 piece:

While visiting a private Christian college in southern Michigan that wields influence in national politics, Gov. Ron DeSantis rephrased a biblical passage to deliver a message to conservatives.

“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes. You will face flaming arrows, but if you have the shield of faith, you will overcome them, and in Florida we walk the line here,” DeSantis told the audience at Hillsdale College in February. “And I can tell you this, I have only begun to fight.”

The Republican governor, a strategic politician who is up for reelection in November, is increasingly using biblical references in speeches that cater to those who see policy fights through a morality lens and flirting with those who embrace nationalist ideas that see the true identity of the nation as Christian.

That’s followed by the thesis:

He and other Republicans on the campaign trail are blending elements of Christianity with being American and portraying their battle against their political opponents as one between good and evil. Those dynamics have some political observers and religious leaders worrying that such rhetoric could become dangerous, as it could mobilize fringe groups who could be prone to violence in an attempt to have the government recognize their beliefs.

The article has no problem finding experts who warn of impending danger.


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Podcast: What happens at Calvin doesn't stay at Calvin. True, so what now for LGBTQ wars?

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Podcast: What happens at Calvin doesn't stay at Calvin. True, so what now for LGBTQ wars?

Back in the spring, we did a GetReligion podcast that was accompanied by a post with this title: “What parents (and journalists) can learn from LGBTQ debates at Calvin.”

The Big Idea in that podcast was that Calvin University isn’t just another Christian college — it’s the base camp for a kind of Reformed intellectual A-team that punches way, way, way above its weight in the Council For Christian Colleges and Universities (the global network in which I worked and taught for a quarter of a century or so). Thus, I stated: “What happens at Calvin doesn’t stay at Calvin.”

If you have followed Calvin closely in recent decades, you know that a significant chunk of its faculty believes (this is my summary) that those who truly honor and teach the great Reformed Tradition of Calvinism know that it’s time for new Reformers (that would be them) to reform the out-of-date theological conclusions of their ancestors. You can see similar streams of thought among Methodists, Anglicans, Catholics and even (in a few zip codes) the Eastern Orthodox.

With that in mind, it’s time for this week’s “Crossroads” episode (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which offers an update on Calvin and tensions inside its denomination, care of a Religion News Service story with this headline: “Christian Reformed Church codifies homosexual sex as sin in its declaration of faith.” Actually, if you read carefully, the CRC affirmed 2,000 years of Christian teaching that (a) sex outside of marriage is a sin and (b) Christian marriages unite a man and a women. Here is the overture of that RNS story:

(RNS) — The Christian Reformed Church, a small evangelical denomination of U.S. and Canadian churches, voted … at its annual synod to codify its opposition to homosexual sex by elevating it to the status of confession, or deration of faith.

The 123-53 vote at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, caps a process begun in 2016 when a previous synod voted to form a study committee to bring a report on the “biblical theology” of sexuality.

The vote, following a long day of debate, approves a list of what the denomination calls sexual immorality it won’t tolerate, including “adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex.”

“The church must warn its members that those who refuse to repent of these sins — as well as of idolatry, greed, and other such sins — will not inherit the kingdom of God,” the report says. “It must discipline those who refuse to repent of such sins for the sake of their souls.”

Just asking: That “what the denomination calls” language is interesting. Doesn’t that kind of imply that these teachings belong to the CRC alone — as opposed to being doctrines affirmed by the world’s largest Christian bodies, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Third World Anglicans and most evangelical and Pentecostal believers.


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Along the religion beat: Should 'mainstream media' pundits take sides on church disputes?

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Along the religion beat: Should 'mainstream media' pundits take sides on church disputes?

The acerbic anti-Donald Trump conservative Jonah Goldberg says that — at National Review and currently TheDispatch.com — he has spent the past 25 years complaining about "liberal media bias."

But, he wrote last week, much has changed during that time with the breakup of America's onetime "hegemony" of three broadcast networks, the newsmagazines and a few influential newspapers. Now we have devoutly conservative news-talk radio and cable TV while infinite opinions of commentary and information overwhelm the Internet.

Then there's rising distrust in the news media, which The Religion Guy believes is a serious threat to healthy democracy. A Pew Research Center survey, reported last August, found that since 2016 the percentage of Americans with at least "some" trust in the national news media has slumped from 76% down to 58%, and among Trump-era Republicans and Republican leaners from 70% down to 35%.

Another simultaneous change, Goldberg said, is "the blurring of reporting with partisan punditry, particularly on cable news and social media." The Guy would contend that this distrust expands when partisan opinion seeps into or overshadows supposed hard news. (This is the spirit of our media age, since, as tmatt often observes here at GetReligion, opinion is cheap and actual reporting is expensive).

That brings us to religion coverage in the print media and the Internet (broadcasters and cable generally slight the beat) and a rather idiosyncratic must-read complaint about The New York Times from Hillsdale College historian D.G. Hart, posted at Real Clear Religion the same day as Goldberg's article. In case you missed it, the text is here.

Hart thinks the Times "rightly" figures that explicitly religious periodicals can handle faith news, which means he does not read the paper that closely (though it can be criticized for sins of omission). The article appears to suggest the Times and other outlets should downplay or eliminate attempts to do religion-beat reporting -- which would remove the very reason GetReligion exists.


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Clarification please: Associated Press adds to confusion in private higher ed story (updated)

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This is not rocket science. (Or maybe it is? See update at the end of this piece.)

For a week or so, I have been watching to see if editors at the Associated Press were going to run a correction about a story about some fine print in the Republican tax bill. The headline on that story stated: "Senate votes to block special break for conservative college."

Note that the word "college" is singular.

That "fact" was at the heart of the debate, as shown in the overture for this hard-news story:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats ... successfully blocked a provision in the Republicans’ sweeping tax bill designed to give a special tax break to a conservative college in Michigan.
Democrats said the tax break was designed to help just one politically-connected school: Hillsdale College in southern Michigan.
“I can’t find anybody else in America who benefits from this particular provision. That doesn’t strike me as right,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said, “It feels like this is a very limited provision written for a very special person.”

The key fact here is that Hillsdale College does not accept federal funds, including funds linked to scholarships and student aid. The basic idea is that government money will inevitably have strings attached. Thus:

The tax package would impose a new tax on investment income earned by some private universities and colleges. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., added a provision exempting certain colleges that don’t receive federal funds. Democrats said Hillsdale was the only college that would benefit.


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