Racism

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Plug-In: Here's the latest sex and money news from the Southern Baptist Convention

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Plug-In: Here's the latest sex and money news from the Southern Baptist Convention

After a week away, it’s nice to be back. Making headlines this week: A U.S. senator is demanding to know if the Christian aid organization World Vision is funding terrorism, Ken Chitwood reports for Christianity Today.

Pope Francis is going to Marseille to talk migration, but will Europe listen as it scrambles to stem an influx? The Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield, Trisha Thomas and Sylvie Corbet tackle that question. And Jerry Falwell Jr.’s latest legal battle with Liberty University — and his brother — has escalated, according to Religion News Service.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with the latest news — and there’s a lot of it — from the Southern Baptist Convention.

What To Know: The Big Story

Is sin a private matter?: A lawsuit filed by the Rev. Johnny Hunt, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, against the SBC’s Executive Committee and Guidepost makes that claim, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reports. But legal experts are skeptical, Smietana notes.

The longtime megachurch pastor is upset over the disclosure that he covered up his sexual misconduct for a decade, according to the RNS story.

Moments that made the Rev. Bart Barber: The Conservative Resurgence that the SBC’s current president defied is now shaping his leadership, The Tennessean’s Liam Adams writes.

In other coverage, Adams notes that a top SBC committee documented a former CEO’s “professional fraud” but won’t pursue legal action. And Southern Baptist leaders are promoting strength even as a top committee faces increased instability.


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Washington Post goes to church in Greenville, N.C., and offers some nuance about Trump's rally

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There’s been a lot of talk (you think?) about President Donald Trump’s rally last week in Greenville, N.C.

You know, the one where the crowd chanted “Sent her back! Send her back!” in regard to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Well, the furor over the rally prompted the Washington Post to go to church — in Greenville.

The result? Pretty good, actually.

Here’s how the Post frames its news-feature:

GREENVILLE, N.C. — The Rev. Stephen Howard knew President Trump’s speech was going to be unsettling for his city and his mostly black church the moment he saw people had lined up at 4 a.m. Wednesday to get into the arena. 

These were his congregants’ neighbors and co-workers. Soon, they would be cheering for a president whom Howard and many of his flock at Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church considered a racist. He knew he would have to say something.

“I’m not into politics, but I’m into speaking for people,” he said.

Across town, Brad Smith, the pastor at a 192-year-old predominantly white Baptist church, got his first inkling that something had gone wrong when his wife returned home from the speech. She was there as an employee of East Carolina University, where the rally was held, and was shaken by the anger in the auditorium.

“It was bad,” she told him. “Really bad.”

And then we get to the next paragraph:


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A church's long-dead founder and the KKK -- New York Times article raises a question of relevance

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How far back must journalists dig into the history of a given denomination or congregation, and how might a given founder, dead more than seven decades, be viewed in light of today's mores?

Do we really have to know everything about the earliest leaders of a denomination or movement? Just ask biographers of Martin Luther, the complicated ex-Catholic who sparked the Protestant Reformation but who also has been accused of virulent anti-Semitism.

Or how about Baptist or Presbyterian leaders in pre-Civil War America who supported, or tolerated, slavery? Shall we hold modern-day Lutherans, Baptists or Presbyterians responsible for the sins of their spiritual forefathers?

The New York Times raises the general issue in a rather lengthy profile of the Zarephath Christian Church in New Jersey's rural Somerset County.

We start out in conventional territory. This passage is long, but it's important to sense the tone of this piece right up front.

Hundreds of people each weekend drive up the hill to a newly built $12 million church surrounded by soccer fields in a New Jersey community named Zarephath. They worship by singing along with rock-ballad style prayer songs, following lyrics projected on three overhead screens. They sway and lift their arms high overhead, or say the words quietly with their eyes closed.
Drums, several guitars, keyboards and backup singers accompany the prayers. Spotlights shift from purple to blue to red as the mood builds.
“O come to the altar, the Father’s arms are open wide,” about 300 congregants sang during a recent Sunday service, in a sanctuary that resembles a warehouse-style concert hall, save for two small crosses near the stage. “Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.”


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Connect dots: After Charlottesville, journalists should cover anti-Semitism as distinct from 'racism'

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The past week once again underscored for me the connectedness of earthly phenomena -- including, most decidedly, what's happening in the news business.

Comments made in Washington -- or Bedminster, N.J. -- reverberated in Panmunjom. An ugly and disconcerting clash in Charlottesville produced global bulletins, with good cause.

So excuse me if this post strays from my assigned GetReligion role, which is to focus on analysis of international stories and trends, and instead zig-zags between the foreign and the domestic.

Call it connecting the dots -- in a very personal way.

The week saw a plethora of screaming headlines (and shouting cable talking heads) going on about the threat of nuclear war with North Korea and -- incredibly -- the threat of U.S. military intervention in hapless Venezuela. And then, at week’s end, came Charlottesville, the consequences of which will surely keep the news media engaged for some time, or at least until the next all-engulfing story comes along.

President Donald Trump finally got specific Monday about the underlying cause of Saturday’s clash between an assortment of alt-right white supremacists and their fellow travelers, and a large number of counter demonstrators, one of whom was killed when a man identified as a white supremacist and new-Nazi sympathizer is alleged to have driven his car into the crowd of counter demonstrators.

North Korea surely has potential consequences that are far greater formore people in Asia and elsewhere than do Venezuela (a non-story born out of another thoughtless remark by our commander in chief) and Charlottesville.

But I'm going with Charlottesville here, because, as I was told in Journalism 101, all news is local and personal. And I happen to be an American and a Jew and what I learned a half-century ago in journalism school remains true.


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