Latinos

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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

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Religion-beat crash: RNS wades into intersectional fight between LGBTQ clout and race

The journalism nightmare begins with an email, a text or, in the old days, a telephone call or a photocopy of a document in the mail.

Sources may or may not demand to remain anonymous. They want your newsroom to dive into a controversy that — in most cases — involves money, sex, power and what violations of religious law, criminal laws or both.

The source has tons of information on one side of a conflict that has two sides, or more. There is no way to write the story without multiple voices speaking — but only one side will talk. Nine times out of 10, there are legitimate issues of confidentiality, often legalities linked to counseling or medical care.

The reporter describes all of this to an editor. It’s clear this story will require untold hours of research (money, in newsroom terms) and, if the story ever pans out, the result will be long and complicated. The editor’s eyes glaze over. The question: Why is this story worth the time, money and effort?

I got one of those calls, long ago, about the sex life and financial times of PTL’s Jim Bakker. Eventually Charlotte Observer editors passed, pulling me off that lead. I left and, years later, a great reporter (see the essential Charles E. Shepard book) pulled the evolving threads together for a Pulitzer.

I cannot imagine how many emails and calls Robert Downen and Houston Chronicle reporters fielded before being allowed to dig into years of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m waiting for the book.

All of this is a long introduction to the challenges that, I suspect, loom over this double-decker Religion News Service headline:

Why the largest US Lutheran denomination apologized to a Latino congregation

It’s been a ‘perfect storm’ of charismatic personalities and a heightened awareness of racism, all brewing in one of the country’s whitest denominations

But the story doesn’t open with issues linked to race.

What we see in this unbelievably complicated story is a head-on collision between key elements of postmodern theories about “intersectionality.” Think race, sex, gender, economics and the demographic realities facing the declining world of oldline liberal Protestantism.


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Axios looks at the hot political (of course) trend of Latinos becoming evangelical voters

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Axios looks at the hot political (of course) trend of Latinos becoming evangelical voters

It’s the question that I get all the time from frustrated, fair-minded people when I speak to civic or church groups: “Where can I go, these days, for unbiased news?”

There is, of course, no easy answer. We live in an age in which pretty much every news organization — even the Associated Press on moral and cultural issues — is preaching to choirs of believers huddled in digital bunkers on the left and the right.

I recommend that people get on Twitter and follow about 10-20 journalists and public intellectuals who consistently tick off people on both sides of the political spectrum. The goal is follow their tweets and retweets and see who THEY are reading and what articles they have found helpful or horrible. You know, people like David French, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan (and, I would hope, moi).

I also advise listeners to look for newsletters and websites, even if they lean left or right, that provide lots and lots of direct links to other sources of information. This list includes, of course, Axios. This brings me to one of that websites quick-hit pieces with this headline: “Mapped: Power of Latino Protestants.”

One of the stories that everyone missed in 2016 — but we discussed it here at GetReligion (and CNN, for a fleeting moment, on election night) — was that Donald Trump never would have reached the White House without the support of a surprisingly high number of Latino voters in Florida. Many of them were in the Orlando suburbs, an area dotted with evangelical and Pentecostal megachurches popular. Here is the lede on this Axios piece (with its own must-see map):

The Latino exodus from Catholicism and toward more politically conservative evangelical faiths is one important reason for the rightward shift that could shape the future of the electorate.

Pause for a moment. Look at the phrase “politically conservative evangelical faiths.”

Now, name a moral or cultural issue on which the STATED doctrines of evangelicalism are more conservative than the PRINTED contents of the Catholic Catechism.


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Podcast: More Americans are losing faith in God, but press should dig for deeper details

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Podcast: More Americans are losing faith in God, but press should dig for deeper details

When looking for commentary on trends in Gallup poll numbers about religion, it never hurts to do a few online searches and look for wisdom from the late George Gallup, Jr.

Reporters should also consider placing a call to John C. Green, a scholar and pollster who has followed trends in religion and politics for decades. Of course, it always helps to collect files of charts from political scientist Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor who is an omnipresent force on Twitter (and buy his latest book, “20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America”).

Gallup, Green and Burge (#DUH) played prominent roles in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a Religion News Service story (via the Washington Post) about a now-familiar trend in America’s public square. That headline: “Poll: Americans’ belief in God is dropping.” The overture:

Belief in God has been one of the strongest, most reliable markers of the persistence of American religiosity over the years. But a new Gallup Poll suggests that may be changing.

In the latest Gallup Poll, belief in God dipped to 81 percent, down six percentage points from 2017, the lowest since Gallup first asked the question in 1944.

This raises an obvious question: Who is losing faith in God?

This news report links the trend to politics (#DUH, again) and makes a very interesting connection, in terms of cause and effect. Read this carefully:

Belief in God is correlated more closely with conservatism in the United States, and as the society’s ideological gap widens, it may be a contributor to growing polarization. The poll found that 72 percent of self-identified Democrats said they believed in God, compared with 92 percent of Republicans (with independents between at 81 percent).

In recent years there has been a rise in the number of Americans who acknowledge being Christian nationalists — those who believe Christian and American identities should be fused.

“It could be that the increase in the number of atheists is a direct result of Christian nationalism,” said Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who studies the nonreligious.

I’ll provide some additional details in the rest of the post to back up what I’m about to say. The big idea in this story, interpreting these latest Gallup numbers, appears to be this: Lots of young people in liberal and progressive forms of religion are so upset about the rise in vaguely defined Christian nationalism that they openly declaring that they are atheists and agnostics.

Say what?


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Why are Latinos veering into GOP? It's all about money, money, money (and zero faith)

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Why are Latinos veering into GOP? It's all about money, money, money (and zero faith)

I know, I know. If you have read GetReligion for the past four-plus years, you know that we’re convinced that the rise of the Latino evangelical voter (often paired with traditional Catholic Latino voters) is an emerging story in American public life.

Part of this story is the rise of Pentecostalism in the Spanish-speaking world (classic Pew Research Center study here) and another part is linked to the defense of Latino family values (to use a loaded phrase).

There’s much more to this story than the role these voters played in Donald Trump’s surprising (to some) showings in some Florida and Texas zip codes. Click here (“New York Times listens to Latino evangelicals: 'Politically homeless' voters pushed toward Trump”) and then here (“Concerning Hispanic evangelicals, secret Trump voters and white evangelical women in Georgia”).

To be blunt about it, it appears that political-desk reporters are struggling with this issue, in part because it undercuts some themes in long-predicted demographic trends backing Democrats. You can see that in the recent, oh-so-predictable New York Times story that ran with this massive double-decker headline:

A Vexing Question for Democrats: What Drives Latino Men to Republicans?

Several voters said values like individual responsibility and providing for one’s family, and a desire for lower taxes and financial stability, led them to reject a party embraced by their parents.

The story is getting some Twitter attention because of this magisterial statement of woke Times doctrine:

Some of the frustrations voiced by Hispanic Republican men are stoked by misinformation, including conspiracy theories claiming that the “deep state” took over during the Trump administration and a belief that Black Lives Matter protests caused widespread violence.

But it’s more important to focus on the bigger picture, which is that this trend is all about Latino men wanting to get rich by being part of the American dream. The overture is long, but essential:


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Rust Belt religion: Do political reporters get that Catholics are the key voters in 2020?

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“White evangelical Protestants,” “white evangelical Protestants,” “white evangelical Protestants.”

“Catholic voters,” “Catholic voters,” “Catholic voters.”

World without end, amen.

The closer we get to Election Day 2020, the more we are going to see these terms in the news.

The assumption is that the “Catholic vote” is especially crucial to Democrat Joe Biden, since he is a life-long Catholic who is seeking to become America’s second Catholic in the White House. Meanwhile, journalists continue to be obsessed with President Donald Trump’s popularity among white evangelical Protestants, who played such a crucial role in his rise during the GOP primaries in 2015.

However, if you look at the swing states that put Trump in office, it was clear that Rust Belt Catholics — blue-collar Catholics in particular — were crucial voters four years ago.

During the past couple of years, our own Richard Ostling has been stressing that political-beat reporters really need to get over the whole “white evangelicals” thing and accept that, as is so often the case, Catholic voters will be the key swing voters this time around.

If readers and scribes need more input on that point, please consider this recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette think piece by Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The blunt headline: “Catholics, not evangelicals, will make or break Trump.” Here is a crucial chunk of that essay:

In 2016, Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — states with heavy concentrations of Catholic voters — by merely 107,000 votes combined. Although since the 1980s the U.S. national vote and the Catholic vote component have tracked very closely to each other in each election cycle, 2016 was an exception: Hillary Clinton handily won the national popular vote and Mr. Trump won the majority of Catholic voters. Exit polls had Mr. Trump holding a 52%-to-45% edge among Catholics.

Two critical things happened that helped Mr. Trump: his populist economic appeals to white working class voters in those key states, and the widely predicted “Latino surge” never materialized.


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Outspoken but quiet, conservative but progressive: Media profile U.S. Catholic bishops' Latino leader

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Here’s a surefire way to make headlines: Do something significant — and this part is crucial — do it for the first time.

Such was the case with this week’s election of Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles as U.S. Catholic bishops’ first Latino leader.

Prominent religion writers — including the New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias, the Washington Post’s Julie Zauzmer and Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins — were on the scene for the milestone vote. It helps, of course, that the bishops met in Baltimore, an easy drive or train ride from those journalists’ base in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Other familiar names — The Associated Press’ David Crary, the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Lovett and the Los Angeles Times’ Sarah Parvini — covered the news remotely (Crary from New York and Lovett and Parvini from Los Angeles). The WSJ piece was more of a brief (four short paragraphs), but the financial newspaper at least acknowledged Gomez’s election.

Before analyzing all the coverage, I’ll note that I first became familiar with Gomez when he became archbishop of San Antonio in 2005. Based in Dallas, I covered religion for AP at the time. So I traveled to San Antonio to meet Gomez and do a story on him stepping into a new role as the leading Hispanic cleric in the U.S.

I remember him being friendly but not overly talkative. These were my favorite two paragraphs of the piece that I wrote for AP’s national wire:

Gomez showed that sense of humor as he recalled how he started attending daily Mass as a high school student in Monterrey. A sign of a future archbishop’s deep commitment to the church? Perhaps. But it was also a good way to get the car keys.

“The only way that my dad let me drive was to go to Mass,” Gomez said with a chuckle.

I noticed a few common themes in this week’s stories.


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Defying stereotypes: The Atlantic's Emma Green paints a nuanced portrait of Trump voters in Iowa

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You’ve heard the same stat over and over: 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

That is true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Yet in the three years since Trump’s shocking upset of Hillary Clinton, many in the mainstream press have pushed the idea that all white evangelicals — well, 81 percent of them anyway — love Trump and everything about him.

In typical stories along those lines, there’s no room for nuance and no room for white evangelicals to have complicated feelings about Trump. It’s as if the reporters conveniently forget that there was another candidate on the ballot. A candidate who, like Trump, was one of the most unpopular major party nominees in history. And who, unlike Trump, clashed with many white evangelicals on issues such as abortion.

Given the preponderance of the aforementioned narrative, it’s especially nice when an award-winning Godbeat pro like The Atlantic’s Emma Green produces a piece — as she is so apt to do — that defies the worn-out stereotypes and digs deeper on the familiar stat so often repeated.

I’m talking about Green’s report out of Iowa this week titled “They Support Trump. They Want Him Impeached.”

The headline is partly clickbait and partly a mostly accurate assessment of Green’s report, which opens with this compelling scene:

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa — The small towns that run across Iowa’s northwest corner form a district that is as politically red as it gets in America. There are vast stretches of farmland; public-school football teams pray together after games; Christian music regularly plays over the loudspeakers in shopping centers. Voters here in Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District have sent Representative Steve King back to Washington every year since 2003, and 81 percent of those in Sioux County, near the district’s northwest corner, chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, a higher pro-Trump percentage than anywhere else in the state.

Still, even some of these hard-core Republicans wouldn’t mind if Trump were impeached before Election Day 2020.

Polling suggests the president’s base nationwide is firmly opposed to impeachment, and that people’s opinions on the inquiry are split neatly along partisan lines. But at least in Sioux Center, where Republican presidential candidates regularly make pit stops during the primary season, some conservatives still feel ambivalent about Trump’s policies and character. In my conversations around town, people were skeptical that the impeachment inquiry would go anywhere, but they smiled ruefully at the fantasy of a President Mike Pence and a clean slate of Republican candidates in 2020. While voters in this area clearly preferred Trump over Clinton in 2016 and told me they have appreciated some of his work over the past two and a half years, there’s a difference between defending Trump and supporting him. However skeptical people here may be of Democrats’ motives and the likelihood of success, impeachment offers a distant dream of a return to Republican “politics as usual.”


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New York Times offers totally faith-free look at why Hispanic American birth rate is plunging

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You know that old saying, “Demographics are destiny”?

Here at GetReligion we have an observation about religion news trends that is linked to that: “Doctrine is destiny,” especially when doctrines are linked to marriage and family.

I thought of that when reading a long New York Times feature that ran the other day with this headline: “Why Birthrates Among Hispanic Americans Have Plummeted.”

Now, I am sure that this is a very complex subject and that there are lots of trends linked to it. However, I found it fascinating — stunning, actually — that this story is missing one rather logical word — “Catholic.” How do you write about Latino families, marriage and children and not even mention Catholicism and its doctrines (think contraceptives, for starters) on those subjects?

However, the Times team managed to pull that off. Here is a crucial chunk of this story:

As fertility rates across the United States continue to decline — 2017 had the country’s lowest rate since the government started keeping records — some of the largest drops have been among Hispanics. The birthrate for Hispanic women fell by 31 percent from 2007 to 2017, a steep decline that demographers say has been driven in part by generational differences between Hispanic immigrants and their American-born daughters and granddaughters.

It is a story of becoming more like other Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanics in the United States today are born in this country, a fact that is often lost in the noisy political battles over immigration. Young American-born Hispanic women are less likely to be poor and more likely to be educated than their immigrant mothers and grandmothers, according to the Pew Research Center, and many are delaying childbearing to finish school and start careers, just like other American-born women.

“Hispanics are in essence catching up to their peers,” said Lina Guzman, a demographer at Child Trends, a nonprofit research group.

Catholic thinkers would note that the phrase “catching up” contains some interesting assumptions.

Meanwhile, if you know anything about Catholic culture and Hispanics, you know — at the very least — that the regions in the United States in which the church is growing are those  where immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are thriving.


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For reporters looking ahead: How politics will impact the Catholic church in 2019

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Elections matter. That’s the mantra you hear from both Republicans and Democrats — usually from the side that won said election — every time a piece of legislation being pushed finds legislative obstacles and serious opposition.

The recent midterm elections saw a split decision (Dems took the House, while the GOP held the Senate), leaving the nation polarized as ever heading into the what is expected to be a political slog heading into the 2020 presidential race. With the Catholic vote split down the middle again following these recent elections, it’s worth noting that Catholics, as well as the church itself, will be tested starting in January with the start of a new legislative session from Congress down to the state level.

Indeed, elections matter. Here are three storylines editors and journalists at mainstream news outlets should look out for that will impact the church in the coming year:

Clergy sex abuse: As the scandals — that mostly took place in past — continue to trickle out in the form of grand jury reports and other investigations, look for lawmakers to try and remedy the situation for victims through legislation on the state level.

With very blue New York State voting to put Democrats in control of both the state Assembly and Senate (the GOP had maintained a slight majority), look for lawmakers to pass (and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Catholic, to sign) the Child Victims Act. The Empire State isn’t alone. Other legislatures in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey and New Mexico are considering similar measures.

The New York legislation would allow victims of abuse suffered under the age of 18 to seek justice years later as adults. Removing the statute of limitations on cases involving private institutions, like the Boy Scouts and Jewish yeshivas, is at the heart of the battle.

New York law currently prevents victims from proceeding with criminal cases once they turn 23. As we know, many victims don't come forward until years later. The church has opposed past attempts at the legislation — along with the GOP — after successful lobbying efforts by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The ability to sue the church, even many years later, could bankrupt parishes, while public schools would be immune to such penalties. Another source of contention in the legislation is the one-year “look back” window that would allow victims to bring decades-old cases to civil court.


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