Podcast: Americans have long been divided (and often confused) on abortion issues

When people ask me to list some must-read books — if the goal is understanding religion and the news — the first one I mention is “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America” by sociologist James Davison Hunter.

Pundits love to toss “culture wars” around as a kind of journalism hand grenade, but few bother to flash back to this 1991 classic and note how Hunter defined that term. In 1998 I wrote a column — “Ten years of reporting on a fault line” — in which I noted Davison’s description of America’s ongoing legal and political wars about religion, morality and culture.

The key: Americans were no longer debating specific religious beliefs or traditions. Instead, he said they were fighting about “something even more basic — the nature of truth and moral authority.”

… America now contains two basic worldviews, which he called "orthodox" and "progressive." The orthodox believe it's possible to follow transcendent, revealed truths. Progressives disagree and put their trust in personal experience, even if that requires them to “resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life."

The book Hunter wrote in 1994, right after “Culture Wars”? It was called “Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture Wars.” Hold that thought.

All of this brings me to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focusing on a new Lifeway Research study — on behalf of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — probing how religious faith and practice affect what Americans believe about abortion. The survey took place days before the leak of the draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The survey results are complex and will provide little comfort for those committed to a consistent pro-life stance or. on the other side, the defense of America’s pro-abortion-rights legal structures built on Roe.

In the podcast, I argued that this survey deserves mainstream media coverage — but I sincerely doubt that this will happen. Why?

Pro-abortion rights activists hit Catholic churches, but you probably didn't read about it

If there was ever a doubt that Americans are living in two, separate news universes, then the past two weeks certainly crystallized that reality even more than the polarizing presidential elections of 2016 and 2020.

Americans who lean left politically, comfortable with reading just The New York Times or Washington Post, have been treated to apocalyptic news stories and opinion pieces — it is often hard to tell which is which — stemming from the leak of the draft decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Did you know that gay marriage is now at risk? Did you know that this incarnation of the U.S. Supreme Court is illegitimate? For these elite news organizations and their readers, reversing the right to abortion is just the first attack by fascist Republicans — you wait and see.

On the right, conservatives who watch opinion shows on Fox News Channel or read Brietbart can’t get enough of how President Joe Biden has been an abject failure, particularly when it comes to inflation.

Have you seen how high gas prices are? Did you read about the baby formula shortage? To those news organizations, it’s all about fixing these problems by “owning the libs” by getting the GOP in control of the House and Senate in the November midterm elections.

I have friends on both sides of the political aisle and it’s shocking to me how much one side doesn’t know about what the other is reading and thinking. It often takes weeks for stories that one side repeatedly reported on to ever make it into the pages and onto screens of the other side.

It’s not a failure of our politics. Those have always been polarized. This is a failure of journalism.

Let me explain how these two news universes (while great for the bottom line of news organizations catering to their bases) led to a major news story being totally ignored by many mainstream news sites.

The protests — deemed an issue with “a lot of passion” by the White House — over abortion spilled over into houses of worship, especially Catholic churches. Is the First Amendment right to protest on private property more important than freedom of religion? Not according to the Constitution, and that’s what the news media should be concerned with reporting, not with managing narratives.

It’s therefore not a surprise that pro-abortion rights folks protesting outside churches — and in some cases disrupting Mass — received little to no coverage in most mainstream national news organizations.