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Why are most clergy timid about smartphone wars? They fear offending parents

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Why are most clergy timid about smartphone wars? They fear offending parents

As the star of the scathing documentary "Religulous" -- "religious" plus "ridiculous" -- Bill Maher has never hidden his agnostic views about faith.

But that doesn't mean the stand-up comic doubts the reality of evil. Consider this blistering comment on smartphones, drawn from his "Real Time" talk show earlier this year.

Far too many people think "they don't need reality," Maher told social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University, author of "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

"We've made reality obsolete -- interesting choice," said Maher. "Parents today, it's kind of the worst of both worlds. Too much hovering in real life, where there is any left, and then none with virtual. You go in your room, lock yourself in there with the portal of evil, that is the phone. … I feel like parents, in each generation, ceded more control to children."

In response, Haidt -- a self-avowed Jewish atheist -- stressed that modern life continues to eat away at the traditions of the past.

"As life gets easier, as people get wealthier, as they move away from the old days, authority tends to decay -- there tends to be less respect for authority, less respect for the old ways," said Haidt. "Kids need structure, they need moral rules. … When it seems as though anything is permissible, it doesn't make people happy. It makes them feel disoriented and lost."

Maher has made it clear that he is "not a tech enthusiast," noted Emily Harrison, in her "Dear Christian Parent" Substack newsletter. But the shocker in that HBO exchange was his claim that smartphones serve as a "portal of evil" in daily life.

"Wait. What? … Yes, smartphones can do lots of great things, but they also have made the proliferation of pornography mind boggling large," wrote Harrison. After all, five years ago, PornHub was already reporting 115,000,000 visits "per day with smartphones accounting for almost 84% of their online traffic. So, is the smartphone a 'portal of evil'? Yeah, I'd say so."

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Will religious leaders dare to address the smartphone crisis? Part I

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Will religious leaders dare to address the smartphone crisis? Part I

The scene unfolds whenever the Rev. Russell Moore asks people in the pews to read a passage of scripture as he begins a sermon.

At that point, "most people pull up their phones and go to their Bible app rather than their physical Bible," said Moore, editor of Christianity Today and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Once those digital screens light up, one thing leads to another, he said. People keep saying: "I have an hour where I come in and worship … and I'm distracted by -- I'll get pings on my phone. I'm getting distracted by all of that."

Maybe churches should consider a strategic change in their worship plans, said Moore, in a podcast conversation with Jonathan Haidt, author of the bestseller "The Anxious Generation" and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University.

There has been a trend in some evangelical churches, noted Moore, to offer "scent-free services" in their schedules. By doing this, church leaders are saying: "We have some people with allergies, so we're going to have a service -- you don't have to go to this service -- but if you do, you're going to say, 'I'm not coming in wearing cologne or perfume or whatever.'"

Moving to the challenges of the digital age, Moore asked: "Do you think it could work to say: 'We're going to have specific worship services that are phone free. We're not mandating that everybody come in without phones -- but for this service.' Would that do anything?"

Haidt interjected: "That's a great idea, because there are a couple of things going on here that are interesting, psychologically. One is that many of us have desires for how we want to be in the long run … but then when faced with temptation, we cave."

The key is whether clergy are willing to discuss screens-culture problems and then dare people to consider acting -- together.

"I'll bet, if the pastor talks about this with the congregation and says, … 'Do you feel that your phone -- your digital stuff -- is distracting you in ways that you're not comfortable with?' Almost all hands are going to go up," said Haidt, a self-avowed Jewish atheist. The next question: "How many of you would like to really be present when worshipping, versus distracted?" Once again, he predicted, the "hands are going to go up."

The problems found in religious communities mirror those found in schools, where researchers are seeing patterns of anxiety, depression and digital addictions among the young. Millions of people feel trapped.

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Which candidate did Hell endorse? That isn't the real question facing believers right now

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Which candidate did Hell endorse? That isn't the real question facing believers right now

Forget the opinions of newspaper czars, the question many voters needed to know in this feverish White House race was simple: Who did Hell endorse?

Writing in the style "The Screwtape Letters" by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, in which a veteran tempter lectures lesser demons, Dominick Baruffi didn't answer that question. But his satirical lecture by the Infernal National Convention chairman "Gurtfoot" stressed that this year's options were truly hellish.

"Almost everything said in front of a camera is said for the purposes of being seen while saying it, and any policy has become entirely secondary to their celebrity," wrote Baruffi, a Westminster Theological Seminary graduate who works as a counselor for troubled children.

His demon "Gurtfoot" added: "What are the humans to do but either spend their time quarreling over choosing 'the lesser of two evils' or permit themselves to drift into apathy and ignorance? Of course, both are perfectly acceptable outcomes in our eyes. … If we can continue to produce candidates such as these two halfwits in the years to come our victory is all but assured."

But the main goal of the "Screwtape Endorses a Candidate" essay was not to slam the Republican and Democratic candidates. Instead, Baruffi focused on an issue discussed by insiders -- whether the acid of recent elections has warped how Christians view politics.

With President Donald Trump returning to the White House, progressive religious leaders will feel an immediate stab of disappointment. But believers on the left and right will soon have to face the fact that compromises are painful in a bitterly divided nation.

Thus, Baruffi's proud tempter noted: "The modern man now sees politics as repugnant, wholly undesirable and certainly unable to be discussed reasonably with others. …This is a great victory for our kind. The less the humans are made to think of the IDEA of politics, the more isolated and fractured they become, thus making them more vulnerable to our advances."

If millions of believers choose to flee politics, that will be tragic.

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Hard question from Bob Briner: Why are there so few excellent Christian movies?

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Hard question from Bob Briner: Why are there so few excellent Christian movies?

Decades later, it's hard to remember how much "Chariots of Fire" shocked the Hollywood establishment, with soaring box-office totals and four wins at the 1982 Oscars -- including a Best Picture win for producer David Puttnam.

The film's focus on two legendary runners -- one Christian and the other Jewish -- also pleased believers who rarely applaud how faith is handled on screen.

That sent the late Bob Briner to London, seeking Puttnam's private office. Briner was an Emmy winner and global sports media trailblazer who worked with tennis legend Arthur Ashe, Dave Dravecky, Michael Jordan and many others.

"Naive soul that I am, I believed that the success of Chariots would trigger a spate of similar films," Briner wrote, in "Roaring Lambs," a 1993 book that was popular with college students and among media professionals. "It seemed to me that the movie moguls would see that a great, uplifting story … backed up by stirring music and produced on a reasonable budget would be a formula for success after success."

That didn't happen. A melancholy Puttnam had stacks of potential scripts.

"He was looking, but not finding," wrote Briner. During his career, Puttnam had "shown an affinity for producing quality, uplifting, affirming, even Christian-oriented movies, but no one was bringing him scripts of quality."

Briner, who died of cancer in 1999, was an articulate evangelical and supporter of Christian education and all kinds of projects in mass media, the fine arts, business and print storytelling. I met him through his efforts to meet journalists who were active in various Christian traditions, while working in mainstream news.

Now, the Briner Institute is publishing a new edition of "Roaring Lambs," while seeking discussions of the many ways the Internet era has changed the media marketplace, creating new ways for religious believers to reach mainstream consumers -- but also temptations to settle for niche-media Christian products.

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

As a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, Father Stephen Noll felt a sense of loss when he learned he would need a smartphone app to attend baseball games.

Noll calls himself a "digital dinosaur, perhaps from the Jurassic period." What he didn't expect, after 50 years of priesthood, was for this digital divide to affect his ministry.

"I am fundamentally app-horrent," he wrote in "Millennial People, Boomer Priest," a book of lessons from his year as a young parish's interim pastor. The big problem was staying in contact with members of Redeemer Anglican Church, in north Pittsburgh. It was even harder to reach potential converts who kept walking through the doors.

"Caving to the need to reach my Millennial parishioners," he wrote, "I learned to text with the help of the voice input mic, which is a good thing since it seems no one answers voice messages -- or even answers the phone at all!"

Noll was 74 when he became interim pastor on May 1, 2021, after the traumas -- in pews and pulpits -- of the coronavirus pandemic. He decided that many young adults were wrestling with anxiety, loneliness and other painful realities that were both modern and ancient.

According to the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, many people stopped attending worship during the pandemic. Surveys before 2020 found that 25% of Americans never attended services. It was 33% in 2022.

But something else was happening during those years. Surveys found that 19% of Americans changed from one religious affiliation to another, including 6% of those who were religiously unaffiliated before COVID-19.

Noll said some of the young adults in his pews were asking hard questions about the brokenness around them, including in their own lives and the homes in which they were raised.

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At crucial times in life, J.D. Vance focused on 'Wisdom from the Book of Mamaw'

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At crucial times in life, J.D. Vance focused on 'Wisdom from the Book of Mamaw'

The young J.D. Vance was used to the melodramas surrounding his mother Beverly Vance with her addictions to painkillers, heroin and alcohol, as well as the chaos caused by her five failed marriages and countless live-in boyfriends.

But his mother was trying to steer a car during one pivotal clash with Bonnie Blanton Vance, the matriarch known to all as "Mamaw."

"There was a lot of screaming, some punching and driving, and then a stopped car on the side of the road," wrote Vance, in his bestseller "Hillbilly Elegy," from 2016. "It's a miracle we didn't crash and die: Mom driving and slapping the kids in the backseat; Mamaw on the passenger side, slapping and screaming at Mom. … We drove home in silence after Mamaw explained that if Mom lost her temper again, Mamaw would shoot her in the face."

Once he was safely home -- at his grandmother's house -- Vance approached her on the battered couch where she napped, watched TV and read her Bible. He asked one question: "Mamaw, does God love us?" She hugged him and began weeping.

What Vance calls "Wisdom from the Book of Mamaw" guided his rise through the U.S. Marines to Ohio State University, Yale Law School, Silicon Valley, the U.S. Senate and now the Republican nomination to become Vice President of the United States.

Mamaw was a lifelong Democrat who distrusted organized religion, including "holy rollers" and snake handlers, cursed like a sailor and, when she died, her house contained 19 loaded handguns. But the soft heart and steel spine of the family's "hillbilly terminator" provided stability when needed.

In "Hillbilly Elegy" described what she taught him: "To coast through life was to squander my God-given talent, so I had to work hard. I had to take care of my family because Christian duty demanded it. I needed to forgive, not just for my mother's sake but for my own. I should never despair, for God had a plan."

Mamaw wasn't much of a churchgoer, but no one doubted her faith.

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RFK Jr. offers a testimony about God, faith, heroin and fighting his personal demons

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RFK Jr. offers a testimony about God, faith, heroin and fighting his personal demons

After he decided to kick heroin, the young Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tried to think about daily life in a totally different way.

Rather than trusting his willpower to do the right thing for a whole day, he began dividing each day into 40 or more decisions.

"When the alarm goes off in the morning, do I get immediately out of bed, or do I stay in bed for an extra 20 minutes with my indolent thoughts?", asked Kennedy, speaking to a recent Socrates in the City gathering. "When I reach in the closet and pull out a pair of blue jeans, and all those wire hangers fall on the ground, do I shut the door like I used to and say that I'm too much of a big shot, that's somebody else's job, or do I go in there and clean up my own mess?"

After 14 years of addiction, Kennedy said he tried to act as if each decision was a moral test and God was watching. This was a leap of faith, since his addiction attacked the Catholic faith of his childhood.

This New York City audience -- Socrates events focus on "Life, God and other small topics" -- knew Kennedy would discuss his independent White House campaign and his edgy views on the environment, vaccines, autism, assassinations and similar topics.

Basic questions would be covered, as with previous guests since 2000 -- such as scientist Francis Collins, author Malcolm Gladwell, television legend Dick Cavett, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks of England, Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright and Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter.

But politics isn't the only reality. Socrates in the City founder and host Eric Metaxas -- a conservative Christian radio host and the New York Times bestselling author of "Bonhoeffer," "Miracles" and other books would ask Kennedy about the role of faith in his complicated and controversial life.

"I was never an atheist -- ever. I was raised in a deeply religious family, and I integrated that," said Kennedy. "My dad was killed when I was 14. I became a heroin addict when I was 15. ... When you're … living against conscience, which is what happens when you're an addict, you tend to push any kind of notion of God off over the periphery of your horizon."

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Attention all 'Rational Sheep' -- Hollywood is no longer the true church of the masses

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Attention all 'Rational Sheep' -- Hollywood is no longer the true church of the masses

As the creator of classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" and "You Can't Take It with You," director Frank Capra knew how to touch the hearts and souls of moviegoers.

The self-described "Christmas Catholic" took that power seriously. "No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has," he once said. This was the "power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark."

The power of today's digital media is much more complex than that, said Barbara Nicolosi Harrington, a former Catholic nun turned screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor.

"Hollywood has been the church of the masses, but I don't think that's still true. At least, we cannot say that movie theaters are the sanctuaries they once were for most people, especially for the young," said Harrington, author of "Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture."

When she was young, she explained, mainstream entertainment "was everything. Hollywood created the images that told us what was cool and what it meant to be a success and to be loved."

Now, when she talks to young people, they have a completely different relationship with mass media. The voices and images of Hollywood are competing with legions of "influencers" who reach the masses through omnipresent smartphones.

"There are so many competing screens and so much of the content is truly asinine," she said. Young people accept that, but believe that, with their peers, they can decide what is true and what is false in that digital universe. When messages hit home, social-media mavens then connect users with creators, activists or networks linked to the content.

"Kids think they're in control," said Harrington, reached by telephone. "But how can you tell what is right and wrong if it's TikTok and its algorithms that decide what you see? ... You think that you get to decide what is right for you and what voices will guide you. But is that true these days?"

The big question is whether millions of parents, pastors, teachers and counselors realize how much the balance of power has shifted in mass-media and entertainment.

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'Good men' vs. 'Real men' -- Do religious leaders understand the difference?

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'Good men' vs. 'Real men' -- Do religious leaders understand the difference?

The 18-foot granite Titanic Memorial in Washington, D.C., shows a robed man rising from the waves, his arms extended like a cross.

Once a year, at the precise time on April 15, 1912, when the liner was declared doomed, the Men's Titanic Society gathers at this statue, which is hidden behind Fort McNair after being moved to make way for the Kennedy Center. Members wear tuxedos, to honor the passenger who donned evening clothes in order to "die like a gentleman."

A toast in the rite includes: "Chivalry, gallantry, bravery and grace. … To the young and old, the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the learned, all who gave their lives nobly to save women and children. To those brave men."

No one debates the values that inspired that sacrifice.

"Men seem to instinctively treat masculinity as the call to die so that others may live -- the highest form of sacrifice," noted Nancy Pearcey, in "The Toxic War on Masculinity," her latest work of Christian apologetics. "That principle seems to be built into men's created nature."

However, Pearcey noted that sociologist Michael Kimmel has offered clues as to why many activists now condemn "traditional masculinity."

Kimmel asked West Point cadets to describe a "good man," and heard "honor," "duty," "integrity," "sacrifice," "do the right thing," "be a protector" and similar responses. When he asked what it means to "man up" as "a real man," cadets said, "tough," "never show weakness," "win at all costs," "suck it up," "get rich" and "get laid."

Pearcey calls the "good man" credo the "software of God's creation," while the "real man" stereotype reveals the "virus of sin."