The Washington Times

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Julia Duin: It's been a long road and we've reached the end of our GetReligion journey

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Julia Duin: It's been a long road and we've reached the end of our GetReligion journey

It’s been almost nine years since that day in February 2015 when Terry called me in Alaska to ask if I’d join the GetReligion team starting March 1.

(We already had a reminder of the Mattingly family sitting in our home; an enormous lion gifted by Terry and Debra to my daughter Veeka when she was 6 1/2, about the time she stayed with them for several days while I was on a reporting trip. I’ve included a photo of the Aslan-like creature with her delighted face just after she received it. The lion still keeps vigil by her window).

The GetReligion assignment, Terry told me, was that I’d concentrate on West Coast media and culture wars coverage.

 Since then, my writing has ranged w-a-y beyond that, from John Allen Chau to Josh Harris. I have picked up a lot about analytical writing, hopefully have not made too many enemies and have shown some light into dark corners.

Sometimes I hit it out of the park. With the election of President Donald Trump and the ascendancy of his pastor, Rev. Paula White, I spread word of  an ascendant Pentecostal/charismatic movement that was way more powerful than its non-charismatic evangelical counterpart.

This was years ahead of the curve. Not a whole lot of folks were listening until Jan. 6, 2021.

But you, dear readers, were seeing it here first, starting my Nov. 10, 2020, column that begins with the frantic prayers in White’s Florida church in the face of a Trump loss. By the time my Dec. 15, 2020, column about the “Jericho March” in DC surfaced, there were prophets nationwide saying Trump would win no matter what and other disturbing trends that not enough reporters were tracking.

Why? These prophets were considered wackos by most.

My Jan. 11, 2021, column, about the aftermath of Jan. 6 (when some of those ‘wackos’ showed up on the streets of Washington) and the resulting “civil war” among charismatics got a lot more ears — and a ton of hits. By this time, the “Trump prophets” who had erroneously prophesied that the 45th president would win a second consecutive term were in the middle of a theological maelstrom. The day of Biden’s inauguration, I penned one last column on the topic here.

I count the work I did on the prophets and my coverage on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick as among the best work I did for this blog.


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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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Plug-In: No Separation Of Church And State? New York City Mayor Sparks A Furor

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Plug-In: No Separation Of Church And State? New York City Mayor Sparks A Furor

Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers!

Among the religion news happening now, Catholics in Los Angeles are remembering slain Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell. See photos by Los Angeles Times staff photographer Francine Orr from Thursday’s vigil Mass, before the funeral Mass the next day.

As always, we have a bunch of best reads and top headlines in the world of faith to highlight. Let’s jump right in.

What To Know: The Big Story

Big Apple, big controversy: “Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that at an interfaith breakfast this week — remarks called “unhinged and dangerous” by a rabbi quoted by the New York Times’ Dana Rubinstein.

More from the New York Times:

He went on to suggest that his path to the mayoralty was divinely ordained, saying that when he implements policies, he does so in a “godlike approach.”

At another point, Mr. Adams seemed to suggest that it was a mistake for the Supreme Court to ban mandated prayer in public schools, as it did in 1962. “When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools,” he said.

The phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution, but the First Amendment’s statement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” has been widely interpreted to dictate such a separation.

‘God bless Mayor Adams’: But not everyone criticized the comments.

In fact, Adams won “a new group of fans: Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians, whose leaders lauded the liberal Democrat,” according to the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner.


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About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

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About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

I rarely write about Southern Baptist affairs unless one of their annual conventions is at hand, but I can’t resist commenting on a fascinating sideshow happening between the highly symbolic Merritt family and their fellow conservatives.

Jonathan Merritt is the openly gay (and I assume celibate, based on previous comments) son of the Rev. James Merritt, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s been a tough ride for the past 10 years as the younger Merritt has tried to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, while working as a news- columnist. His father has been under immense pressure as well.

The latest fracas, with a hat tip to JulieRoys.com, has to do with the elder Merritt walking away from his position as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The whole affair has gone unnoticed by many newsrooms, even though this is a topic that is newsworthy for a variety of reasons. Here is what Roys wrote:

Former Southern Baptist Convention President James Merritt resigned last week as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary over controversy sparked by Merritt’s decision to share a sermon online by his son who’s gay. …

The decision came after Merritt, who’s also pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, tweeted a link to a sermon by his son, Jonathan Merritt. The younger Merritt is a graduate of Southeastern Baptist and an author, journalist, and popular speaker. In August, Jonathan Merritt announced on Instagram that he’s gay.

“I don’t agree with my loved son @JonathanMerritt on everything to be sure,” James Merritt tweeted November 22. “But I encourage you to listen to his message on Mark 13. It is both brilliant and faithful to the gospel and the coming of Jesus!”

After that, things got really interesting. Here is the chronology:

Nov. 22 — James Merritt publishes his tweet.

Nov. 23 — The Conservative Baptist Network, a group of some 6,000 members based in Memphis, issues a statement with the headline: “Promoting homosexual preachers is not loving, biblical or Baptist.” The elder Merritt responds that same day.


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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

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Many media pros have missed a mega-money source backing some big Christian causes

Follow the money.

Those three little words guide journalists and prosecutors alike. And that explains the news potential of the Georgia-based National Christian Foundation (NCF), www.ncfgiving.com/ which to date has quietly given $14 billion to 71,000 non-profit groups, $1.3 billion of that last year, in both tiny and huge grants. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece recently noted that "mysterious" operation is "one of the most influential charities you've never heard of."

Writing last week for Ministry Watch (a news website that reporters should follow), GetReligion alumnus Steve Rabey reports that NCF became "the world's largest Christian foundation" largely through word-of-mouth referrals rather than promotional efforts. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which posted antagonistic coverage in February, ranks NCF as the nation's eighth-largest charity.

NCF calls itself a "ministry," and though it aids a wide range of secular non-profit charities it's a particularly important vehicle for religious donations from wealthy conservative Protestants who share its belief that "the entire Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God." The foundation's 26 offices around the U.S. handle donations -- contact info posted here -- so local angles for the media abound. (At national headquarters, Dan Stroud is C.E.O and Steve Chapman the media contact via info@ncfgiving.com or 404-252-0100.)

Rabey's piece includes a helpful link to the Guidestar.org posting of NCF's 593-page IRS Form 990 filed for 2019, with a listing of grant recipients that reporters will want to eyeball. The largest categories of donations ranged from local churches ($215 million) on down to medical care ($21 million). Major causes included evangelism, relief, education, children and youth work, museums, spiritual and community development, media and publishing, orphan care, Bible translation and ministry to the homeless.

NCF typifies the rising importance of "donor-advised funds" in U.S. philanthropy. The basic idea has existed for a century and was devised as a vehicle for Christian donors in 1982 by pioneering Atlanta tax attorney Terry Parker, still a board member, along with evangelical financial gurus Ron Blue and Larry Burkett.


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New podcast: Yes, New York's governor urged church folks to be her 'apostles' backing vaccines

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New podcast: Yes, New York's governor urged church folks to be her 'apostles' backing vaccines

Hey news consumers, remember that time when President Donald Trump stood in front of a church (sort of in an urban war zone), held up a Bible and the world went nuts?

Chances are good that you heard about it. However, as a refresher, here are 66,100,1000 Google references to this incident, as well as as an imperfect collection of other Trumpian news involving the word “Bible.”

Or remember that time when Trump — long-time member of the liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and probably, in terms of private life, one of the most secular presidents in American history — went to Liberty University to court evangelicals and said this (care of an NPR report):

"We're going to protect Christianity. I can say that. I don't have to be politically correct," he thundered at the beginning of his speech at the conservative evangelical university.

Then he moved on to cite "Two Corinthians 3:17, that's the whole ballgame. ... Is that the one you like?" Trump asked. "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

Over at Google, there appear to be a mere 2,380,000 references to this “Two Corinthians” incident.

Truth is, politicians often say and do strange things while courting support in religious settings that are way outside their own cultural comfort zone.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focuses on the coverage — actually, the lack of coverage — of the recent visit that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul paid to the Christian Cultural Center, a massive and very influential predominantly African-American megachurch in Brooklyn. Click here to get that podcast, or head over to Apple Podcasts.

Now, there was more to this political-religious event than the hilarious typo in the rushed transcript of the governor’s remarks produced, apparently, by a staff member. Check out the opening words here: “The phrase be to God, this is the day the Lord has made. Amen, amen.”

Let’s assume that the governor actually said “praise be to God.”


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Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up? 

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Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up? 

Those impossible-to-ignore and hard-to-define white " evangelicals" have, for decades, been the largest and most dynamic sector in U.S. religion. Are we finally witnessing an evangelical crack-up as so long anticipated -- and desired -- by liberal critics?

That's a big theme for the media to affirm or deny.

To begin, The Religion Guy is well aware that millions of these conservative Protestants quietly attend weekly worship, join Bible and prayer groups, try to help those in need, fund national and foreign missions and are oblivious to discussions of this sort on the national level.

For years we've seen a telltale slide of membership and baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention, that massive and stereotypical evangelical denomination. At the same time, it’s clear (follow the work of Ryan Burge for background) that many of those Southern Baptists have simply moved to independent, nondenominational evangelical megachurches of various kinds.

But more than numbers, analysts are pondering insults to cultural stature, which greatly affect any movement's legitimacy, respect, impact and appeal to potential converts, especially with younger adults.

The Scopes Trial to forbid teaching of Darwinian evolution nearly a century ago continues to shape perceptions of evangelicalism and its fundamentalist wing, especially due to the fictionalized 1955 play and 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." No doubt ongoing evangelical enthusiasm for Donald Trump has a similar negative impact among his critics, but this is not merely a political story but involves evangelicalism's internal dynamics. The Trump era exacerbates divisions that already existed despite unity in belief.

Turn to former GetReligion writer Mark Kellner, who is already making his mark (pun intended) as the new "faith and family" reporter for the Washington Times. Here is an essential recent read: “After scandals, is evangelical Christianity's image damaged?"

The immediate cause behind the question was an odd little incident that spoke volumes, the sacking of Daniel Darling as spokesman for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB).


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Covering a life-and-death issue: Muslims driving changes in India's rapacious dowry custom

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Covering a life-and-death issue: Muslims driving changes in India's rapacious dowry custom

In 2006, I was assigned a four-part series on the horrific gender discrimination against women in India and how the massive aborting of girls has resulted in skewed gender ratios (as low as 814 girls for every 1,000 boys resulting in a gap of 43 million when I was there). It ran in the Washington Times several months later.

Sabu George, an Indian activist who was passionately against the aborting of females, showed me where to go in India to report on this phenomenon. The first place he sent me was to a Sikh wedding (pictured above) several hours north of New Delhi.

There, I saw the stash of presents (a refrigerator, TV, clothes for the groom, DVD player and washing machine) for which the bride’s family had no doubt gone into debt to provide as a dowry for their daughter. More than one wedding can ruin a family financially and I began to see why Indians choose to abort a second daughter when they have the chance.

Medical clinics were very open about the practice, saying in their ads, “Better 500 rupees now (for an abortion) rather than 50,000 rupees later (for a dowry).”

Although dowry began as a Hindu custom, it’s evolved into something all religions take part in across India. And what happens if one family decides that the bride’s dowry wasn’t “good enough”? This has been known to turn into a life-and-death subject.

Which is why I was interested in Al Jazeera’s recent story about how Muslim Indians are finally saying “no.”

Here’s what ran April 2:

A prominent Muslim organisation in India has released new guidelines, asking the community to shun dowries and extravagant marriages after a woman recently died by suicide due to “dowry harassment”.


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Demons are in the details: Reporters may want to write serious Halloween stuff this year

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Let’s make this a holiday feature story day here at GetReligion.

In addition to the Thanksgiving coverage memo from our patriarch, Richard Ostling, I would like to offer a “think piece” link to all of those reporters who are out there — right now — writing stories about (a) conservative Christians who don’t celebrate Halloween at all, for some reason or another, (b) megachurches that hold “You could go to hell” haunted houses full of fake blood and images of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll or (c) churches that attempt safe versions of the holiday, keeping kids off the street and (d) congregations of all kinds who plan to have safe, socially distanced activities in 2020.

OK, that last one is completely valid, but rather tame.

Truth is, lots of religious believers wrestle with Halloween for a variety of reasons — including people who would simply prefer to emphasize the feasts of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Lots of churches will hold events with children in costumes — dressed up as their patron saints.

Then there’s the whole question of Hollywood providing all the occult-scary imagery for this event, along with the rather recent trend toward young adults in skimpy, sexy “fill in the blank” costumes.

So with all of that in mind, let me ask reporters to consider doing a feature this year on how clergy, parents and believers in ancient churches wrestle with these issues. I am referring to an op-ed at The Washington Times by a friend of mine, Father Andrew Stephen Damick — who is an online apologetics scribe working with the Antiochian Orthodox Church here in America. Here’s the double-decker headline:

Should Christians participate in Halloween?

Halloween is about demons. No, that's not a problem

The essay starts exactly where journalists tend to start when thinking about stories of this kind:

Every October, Christians trash each other on social media over Halloween. Is it harmless costumes and candy? Participation in the occult, cavorting with demons? Co-opting a pagan holiday?

Christians believe demons are real. The Bible talks about them. Most Christians agree that you should stay away from them.


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