On Religion
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Progressive evangelicals reject partisan theology – in the Donald Trump choir

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Progressive evangelicals reject partisan theology -- in the Donald Trump choir

The hours after an apparent assassination attempt are a tricky time for social-media humor.

Some readers didn't get the joke when a progressive evangelical offered a hot take on the man with an AK-47 hiding in the bushes beside Donald Trump's golf course.

"This could either be somebody waiting to try to kill the former president or somebody legitimately using his AK as a putter," noted the Rev. Ben Marsh of First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on X. Then he added: "Folks, we're talking about Florida here."

As critics circulated the quip, Marsh reposted strong rejections of political violence, including this appeal: "Please protect Trump and ban these guns!!!"

The furor was timely, since Marsh was one of the first to sign "Our Confession of Evangelical Conviction," a new statement urging evangelicals to reject verbal violence in American life.

"Unlike the false security promised by political idolatry and its messengers, the perfect love of God drives away all fear," noted a key passage. "We reject the stoking of fears and the use of threats as an illegitimate form of godly motivation, and we repudiate the use of violence to achieve political goals as incongruent with the way of Christ."

Skye Jethani of the Holy Post Podcast, the document's lead author, tweeted: "The attempted murder of Donald Trump is evil & every Christian should condemn it."

In the bitterly divided evangelical world, any discussion of these issues – such as a confession signed by A-List evangelical Trump critics, as well as some doctrinal progressives – will automatically be framed by the rhetoric of the former president and his boldest supporters. Decades of rapier thrusts by late-night comedians, newsroom warriors and oppo-researchers fade into the past.

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Pope Francis offers strategic words on cats, dogs, babies and interfaith life in Indonesia

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Pope Francis offers strategic words on cats, dogs, babies and interfaith life in Indonesia

It was the kind of quote that, when said by the right person under the right conditions, would inspire bold headlines.

"Your country ... has families with three, four or five children," Pope Francis told President Joko Widodo of Indonesia. "Keep it up, you're an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe … these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child."

The pope's words didn't draw much flak, especially when compared with the media firestorm when critics resurrected a 2021 barb by U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism.

"We are effectively run, in this country … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own life and the choices that they have made," Vance told Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Maybe America could do more, he added, "to support more people who actually have kids."

Vance, of course, is now in a hot spotlight as the GOP choice for vice president. The pro-natalist views of Pope Francis, meanwhile, drew warm praise in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation.

Visiting an often tense land – with a population that is 87% Muslim, and 3% Catholic – the pope did everything he could to praise the beliefs and traditions of his hosts. In that context, his pro-family views were welcomed.

The pope also praised Indonesia's more moderate approach to religious life, although the government has strengthened laws against blasphemy and apostasy and some local officials, in this vast and complex archipelago, have been stricter than others when enforcing sharia law. Also, there have been occasional terrorism threats, including what officials decided was an attempted ISIS plot against Pope Francis.

In a speech to public officials and diplomats, the pope pressed for renewed interfaith dialogues, stressing that this would be an indispensable way of "countering extremism and intolerance, which through the distortion of religion attempt to impose their views by using deception and violence."

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Journalism is a tricky business in Roman Catholic cyperspace

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Journalism is a tricky business in Roman Catholic cyperspace

When U.S. Catholic bishops gathered in Baltimore in 2023, they were prepared to vote on an updated document for believers seeking guidance in voting booths.

The draft prepared beforehand called abortion "a preeminent priority" for the bishops, but not – in a rhetorical switch – their most important issue in political life. Editors at The Pillar website obtained a copy of the proposed language and published a news story.

"Well, a number of bishops read that in The Pillar," noted Ed Condon, one of the website's two founders, "so several of them proposed amendments to change the text to stronger language. … More than one bishop told us he was only informed about the issue because he read it in The Pillar."

The final text included this phrase: "The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority." In moral theology terms, "a preeminent priority" is quite different from a statement that abortion remains "our preeminent priority." That bright red line has caused fierce debates, especially with a pro-abortion-rights Catholic in the White House.

A heated opinion piece would have generated as many, or more, reader "clicks" than a hard-news report, which would have been "good for business," noted Condon.

Opinion is cheap. Reporting is expensive.

"We don't have ads on our site, which means we don't make a penny from page views," he wrote, in the website's newsletter. That was a strategic choice, "because we don't ever want to set ourselves up with a perverse incentive to write sensationalist stories we aren't sure about."

In the heated environs of Catholic cyberspace, that kind of reporting will draw fierce criticism from partisans on the other side of doctrinal debates that have political, moral and cultural implications.

Catholic liberals and many mainstream journalists screamed "foul" when The Pillar printed several 2021 stories – built on patterns in cellphone data – claiming that some important Catholic clergy in the United States, and in non-tourist zones inside the Vatican, were using the hookup app Grindr. A Religion News Service column called this coverage "unethical, homophobic innuendo."

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Jonathan Haidt: It's time for clergy to start worrying about smartphone culture

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Jonathan Haidt: It's time for clergy to start worrying about smartphone culture

Preaching to teen-agers has always been a challenge.

But in the smartphone age, clergy need to realize that the odds of making a spiritual connection have changed – radically. Young people who spend as many as 10 or more hours a day focusing on digital screens will find it all but impossible to listen to an adult talk about anything, especially in a religious sanctuary.

"As long as children have a phone-based childhood there is very little hope for their spiritual education," said Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller – "The Anxious Generation" – that has raised the heat in public debates about controlling or banning smartphones in schools.

"An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say. Don't let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it's going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives," he said, in a Zoom interview. "There's not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones."

It would be hard for the cultural stakes to be higher, argued Haidt, the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University. Thus, his book's weighty subtitle: "How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

While Haidt's work has ignited debates among politicians, academics and high-tech entrepreneurs, reactions have been muted among religious leaders who are usually quick to spot threats to children. Then again, clergy may not be used to a self-avowed Jewish atheist issuing warnings about the "spiritual degradation" of young people.

It would be a big step forward, he said, if "the leaders of various denominations could make a clear statement about how the phone-based childhood is a threat, not only to their mental health, but to their spiritual health. … We can only save our kids from this if we have the churches, families and schools all working together."