On Religion

Donald Trump

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It doesn't help when true believers start joining mobs engaged in online combat

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It doesn't help when true believers start joining mobs engaged in online combat

It seemed that whenever the Rev. Daniel Darling ventured into social media, he saw the same red flags – so he posted a commentary on "Christians and Conspiracy Theories."

"Because it's online, doesn't mean it's true," he noted. "Because a story is advanced by someone whose ideology I agree with, doesn't mean it's true. …

"For some reason, we are a people who want to believe there is a big plot behind every single thing that happens. … If you watch enough cable TV, depending on your political persuasion, you will come to think that behind every act in Congress there is a string of connected dots that go back to either George Soros (liberal) or the Koch brothers (conservative)."

This wasn't a hot take on QAnon letters or rumors of shredded Georgia ballots.

Darling wrote those words a decade ago, while leading an evangelical church near Chicago. Now he's a crucial voice for the National Religious Broadcasters and author of a book – "A Way with Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good" – pleading for believers to think twice about their online lives.

"I'm not saying we should run away and hide," said Darling, in a telephone interview. "There's no way to avoid the fact that social media is a crucial part of American life. I don't think Christians have any choice about whether or not to be engaged. …

"What we need to do is be more careful when deciding where to draw lines and take stands. But, unless you're Amish, I don't see anyone sitting this one out."

It's especially important for religious leaders to warn their followers not to join the online "mobs" that are destroying America's ability to have sane public debates. In some cases, digital attacks are also threatening lives and reputations.

Consider, for example, the woke social-media attacks that fueled inaccurate mainstream news reports about Covington Catholic High School students at the 2019 March for Life. Then there were the conservative social-media warriors who embraced #pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming that prominent Democrats were linked to a global child-trafficking ring.

Did Russia steal the White House in 2016? Yes, there were mainstream-news reports. Did China, Cuba, Venezuela or some other evil force steal the 2020 election? Yes, there have been headlines on the other side of America's partisan media wars.

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Top religion-beat story of 2020? There were several COVID-19 stories to choose from ...

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Top religion-beat story of 2020? There were several COVID-19 stories to choose from ...

There was never any question whether the global coronavirus pandemic would be named the most important religion-news story in 2020.

The question was which faith-driven COVID-19 story – out of a dozen or so – would top the Religion News Association's Top 10 list.

According to journalists who cover religion, this was the year's biggest story: "COVID-19 pandemic claims lives of many religious leaders and laity, upends death rituals, ravages congregational finances, spurs charitable responses, forces religious observances to cancel or go online and stirs legal fights over worship shutdowns."

But there was a problem on my ballot. The RNA list included another coronavirus item focusing on religious liberty. In some cities and states, officials created pandemic regulations that claimed many institutions – from grocery stores to casinos – provided "essential services." Meanwhile, other institutions – like churches and synagogues -- were deemed "non-essential."

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that religious institutions shouldn't face tougher rules than secular groups and activities. It was wrong, for example, to ban masked priests from hearing confessions – outdoors, 10 feet away from masked penitents – while consumers were lined up at liquor stores.

These conflicts continued. In a symbolic pre-Christmas press conference, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam explained why he thought religious groups should be willing to move their activities online and stay there – for now.

"This year we need to think about what is truly the most important thing," Northam explained, in a Richmond press conference. "Is it the worship or the building? For me, God is wherever you are. You don't have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers."

Bishop Robert Barron of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles was not amused. The problem with this"secularized, Protestant-ized" view of worship, he said, is that it doesn't work for believers with ancient traditions that don't work online, such as offering communicants consecrated bread and wine.

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While many Catholics feel politically 'homeless,' Biden Catholics managed a 2020 win

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While many Catholics feel politically 'homeless,' Biden Catholics managed a 2020 win

Conservative patriarch Edmund Burke died in 1797 in Beaconsfield, England.

This didn't prevent columnist Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, a Catholic conservative, from making Burke her write-in choice in the 2020 White House race. She wasn't the only voter who felt politically homeless, due to religious and moral convictions that clashed with the political and personal choices of President Donald Trump and, the odds are overwhelming, president-elect Joe Biden.

Once again, there was no way to ignore issues linked to faith, morality and, yes, character. This was especially true with Catholic voters who frequent church pews.

Considering Trump, Noonan stressed the coronavirus crisis, where the president finally "met a problem he couldn't talk his way out of. I believe that's what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can't afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe."

What about the Democrat, a lifelong Catholic? Noonan predicted Biden would be a "hapless and reluctant conductor" on a "runaway train," especially on moral and cultural issues.

"The progressive left," she argued, "endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union.”

The bottom line: The political realities of 2020 left many Catholics and other active religious believers torn between political options that no longer seemed acceptable.

It was easy to read between the lines in key passages of a new cover letter the U.S. Catholic bishops added to their "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" document (.pdf here).

"The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed," the letter stated. "At the same time, we cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty. …

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For Protestant pastors, the 2020 White House race looks a lot like the one in 2016

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For Protestant pastors, the 2020 White House race looks a lot like the one in 2016

For pastors in America's Protestant pulpits, Election Day 2020 is starting to look a lot like 2016.

Most evangelicals whose priorities mesh – for the most part – with the Republican Party are ready to vote for Donald Trump, according to a LifeWay Research survey. Protestant clergy who do not self-identify as evangelicals plan to vote for Democrat Joe Biden.

The difference in 2020 is that fewer pastors are struggling to make a decision. A survey at the same point in the 2016 race found that 40% of Protestant pastors remained undecided, while 32% packed Trump and 19% supported Hillary Clinton.

This time, only 22% remain undecided, with 53% saying that they plan to vote for Trump, while 21% support Biden.

"There's still a lot of 'undecided' pastors," said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay. "Quite a few pastors – for a variety of reasons – want to put themselves in the 'undecided' bucket. …

"Last time around, Donald Trump was such an unknown factor and many pastors really didn't know what to do with him. This time, it appears that more people know what Trump is about and they have made their peace with that, one way or another. The president is who he is, and people have made up their minds."

Looming in the background is a basic fact about modern American politics. In the end, the overwhelming majority of pastors who say they are Democrats plan to vote for Biden (85%) and the Republicans plan to back Trump (81%).

Some pastors have a logical reason to linger in the "undecided" category – their doctrinal convictions don't mesh well with the doctrines of the major political parties.

The Rev. Tim Keller, an influential evangelical writer who founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, recently stirred up online debates with a New York Times essay called, "How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don't."

In recent decades, he noted, Democrats and Republicans have embraced an approach to politics in which party leaders assume that working with them on one crucial issue requires agreement with the rest of their party platforms.

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

During a normal White House race, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner allows the candidates to don formal attire, fire snappy one-liners and make subtle appeals to Catholic voters.

But nothing is normal in 2020. Thus, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump used this year's virtual dinner to preach to Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. The event produced few headlines, coming a mere six hours before Trump announced his positive test for COVID-19.

Saluting Catholic progressive, Biden offered a litany about the pandemic, race, the recession and climate change. He warned that many Americans have lost faith "in one another, in truth, in science and reason."

The current pope, Biden stressed, embraced him during a 2013 White House visit, offering comfort shortly after brain cancer took his son Beau's life.

"Pope Francis took the time to meet with my entire family to help us see the light through the darkness," said Biden. "I live in an amazing country … where an Irish Catholic kid like me from Scranton, Pennsylvania, would one day befriend a Jesuit pope. But that's who we are as a country – where anything is possible when we care for one another, when we look out for one another, when we keep the faith."

While stressing that he is guided "by the tenets of Catholic social doctrine" – helping the "least of these" – Biden didn't mention his vow to codify Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court overturns that decision or his promise to reinstate policies requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to cooperate in providing birth control and abortifacients to staff. He didn't mention his decision to officiate at the same-sex wedding of two White House colleagues, an action clashing with church doctrine.

It was logical for Biden to avoid providing fresh ammunition for critics. But the speech, once again, trumpeted his Catholic credentials.

"Joe Biden's choice to run explicitly on the claim that he is a faithful Catholic squarely places on the table his claim to be a faithful Catholic," stressed legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University, writing on Facebook. He is a Catholic conservative who has also been a consistent critic of Trump.

“No way out of this, folks," he added. "It's not, or not just, Biden's critics who have raised the issue. It's the Biden campaign. …

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Joe Biden and Democratic strategists face faith issues in 2020 that will not go away

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Joe Biden and Democratic strategists face faith issues in 2020 that will not go away

It didn't matter where Pete Buttigieg traveled in Iowa and the early Democratic Party primaries – voters kept asking similar questions.

Yes, they asked about his status as the first openly gay major-party candidate to hit the top tier of a presidential race. But they also wanted to know how his faith journey into the Episcopal Church affected his life and his take on politics.

"Those who are on my side of the aisle, those who view themselves as more progressive, are sometimes allergic to talking about faith in a way that I'm afraid has made it feel as if God really did have one political party," said Buttigieg, addressing a webinar for clergy and laypeople in his denomination's House of Deputies.

"It was very important to me to assert otherwise, but also to talk about the political implications of the commandments to concern ourselves with the well-being of the most marginalized and the most vulnerable and the idea that salvation has to do with standing with and for those who are cast out in society. … That energy carried the campaign, in ways that I never would have guessed."

But highly motivated religious believers are, of course, often divided by conflicts about doctrine that then spill over into politics.

Buttigieg waded into one such controversy during the campaign when candidate Beto O'Rourke said congregations and religious institutions that reject same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status.

“If we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely. They should not be able to discriminate," said Buttigieg, on CNN's State of the Union broadcast. "But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers or other religious facilities in this country, I think that's just going to deepen the divisions we are already experiencing."

Other Democrats face similar hot-button issues. Former vice president Joe Biden, during his fight over the "soul of the nation" with President Donald Trump, is sure to hear questions about his Catholic faith and his evolving beliefs on moral and political issues.

Biden backed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. His views changed, while serving with President Barack Obama.

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Trump in a Sword drill competition? Evangelicals care about people with open Bibles

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Trump in a Sword drill competition? Evangelicals care about people with open Bibles

For generations, young Christians have learned how to hold and respect their Bibles during competitions known as "Sword drills."

The sword image comes from a New Testament affirmation that the "word of God is … sharper than any two-edged sword."

Drill leaders say, "Attention!" Competitors stand straight, hands at their sides.

"Draw swords!" They raise their Bibles to waist level, hands flat on the front and back covers. The leader challenges participants to find a specific passage or a hero or theme in scripture.

"Charge!" Competitors have 20 seconds to complete their task and step forward. For some, four or five seconds will be enough.

The key is knowing how to open the Bible, as well as hold it.

It's safe to say the young Donald Trump didn't take part in many Bible drills while preparing to be confirmed, at age 13 or thereabouts, as a Presbyterian in Queens, New York City. His mother gave him a Revised Standard Version – embraced by mainline Protestants, shunned by evangelicals – several years earlier.

President Trump was holding a Revised Standard Version during his iconic visit to the historic St. John's Episcopal Church, after police and security personnel drove protesters from Lafayette Square, next to the White House. To this day, evangelicals favor other Bible translations, while liberal Protestants have embraced the more gender-neutral New Revised Standard Version.

A reporter asked: "Is that your Bible?"

The president responded: "It's a Bible."

"Trump is a mainline Protestant. That's what is in his bones – not evangelicalism. It's clear that he's not at home with evangelicals. That's not his culture, unless he's talking about politics," said historian Thomas S. Kidd of Baylor University, author of "Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis."

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Believers in an angry age of 'fake news,' conspiracy chatter and the QAnon heresy

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Believers in an angry age of 'fake news,' conspiracy chatter and the QAnon heresy

A majority of evangelicals are worried about "fake news" and they also think mainstream journalists are part of the problem.

The question, as pandemic-weary Americans stagger into the 2020 elections, is how many believers in this voting bloc have allowed their anger about "fake news" to push them toward fringe conspiracy theories about the future of their nation.

Some of these theories involve billionaire Bill Gates and global coronavirus vaccine projects, the Antichrist's plans for 5G towers, Democrats in pedophile rings or all those mysterious "QAnon" messages. "Q" is an anonymous scribe whose disciples think is a retired U.S. intelligence leader or maybe even President Donald Trump.

The bitter online arguments sound like this: Are these conspiracies mere "fake news" or is an increasingly politicized American press – especially on politics and religion – hiding dangerous truths behind its own brand of "fake news"?

"A reflexive disregard of what are legitimate news sources can feed a penchant for conspiracy theories," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

Many mainstream journalists do a fine job of covering the complex world of evangelicalism, stressed Stetzer, reached by email.

Nevertheless, he added: "I think that the bias of much of mainstream news has to be considered in this conversation. Many evangelicals have seen, over and over, news sources report on them irresponsibly, with bias, and – at times – with malice. When you see that enough, about people you know, there is a consequence. Regrettably, I don't think many in the mainstream news world are thinking, 'We should have done better.' "

It doesn't help that Americans disagree about the meaning of "fake news."

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Prayer breakfast warfare: Did President Trump mean to reject words of Jesus?

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Prayer breakfast warfare: Did President Trump mean to reject words of Jesus?

Few politicos at the National Prayer Breakfast were shocked when President Donald Trump brandished copies of The Washington Post and USA Today to celebrate their "ACQUITTED" headlines.

But it was a Harvard University professor who did something even more provocative – quoting strong words from Jesus of Nazareth – during an event known for its meek Godtalk and vague calls for unity.

America's "biggest crisis," said Arthur Brooks of the Kennedy School of Government, is a culture of contempt that is "tearing our society apart."

"I want to turn to the words of the ultimate original thinker, history's greatest social entrepreneur, and as a Catholic, my personal Lord and Savior, Jesus," said Brooks, author of books such as "The Conservative Heart" and "Love Your Enemies." He is the former leader of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The key passage for this era, he said, is found in Gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter 5, verses 43-45: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

Brooks added: "Love your enemies! Now that is thinking differently. It changed the world starting 2,000 years ago, and it is as subversive and counterintuitive today as it was then. But the devil's in the details. How do we do it in a country and world roiled by political hatred and differences that we can't seem to bridge?"

Trump declined to take part when Brooks challenged prayer-breakfast participants to raise their hand if they loved someone who disagreed with them about politics.

As the next speaker, the president responded to Brook's remarks with words that unleashed a week of online debate among conservative religious believers – early Trump supporters and reluctant Trump supporters alike – who have debated the degree to which they can embrace his take-no-prisoners approach to national leadership.

Addressing Brooks, Trump said: "Arthur, I don't know if I agree with you."