On Religion
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When a Doritos chip becomes a meme: Progressive take on Holy Communion?

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When a Doritos chip becomes a meme: Progressive take on Holy Communion?

On election night in 2016, an event offering pain as well as triumph, Kamala Harris dug into a big bag of salty snack-food consolation.

"It was incredibly bittersweet. When I took the stage for my acceptance speech – to represent California in the Senate – I tore up my notes. I just said, 'We will fight,' " said Vice President Harris in a fundraising letter for her White House campaign.

"Then I went home, and I sat on the couch with a family-sized bag of nacho Doritos. I did not share one chip with anybody. ... Two things are true eight years later: I still love Doritos and we still have not stopped fighting."

Thus, in her campaign against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – whose 2016 victory angered her – the Harris team has used Doritos as a symbol of the feisty, combative side of her personality.

Thus, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently made waves with a social-media clip in which she placed a Dorito on the tongue of podcaster Liz Plank, a popular online "influencer" and MSNBC contributor.

Many Catholics cried "foul," since Plank was kneeling and appeared to be imitating the posture of a believer receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion. After the video went viral, defenders of Whitmer and Plank said they were merely offering their take on a TikTok meme in which someone feeds food to a friend, and then awkwardly stares into the camera.

It didn't help that the full version of the video – produced for Plank's "feministabulous" Instagram page – also focused on debates about abortion rights. In the past, Plank has called faith-based crisis-pregnancy centers "fake clinics."

The president of the Michigan Catholic Conference was not amused.

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

It was the rare Trump quote that caused groans as it rocketed through conservative media.

But this soundbite came from an upcoming memoir from former First Lady Melania Trump: "Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes. … I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Former President Donald Trump had already softened his party's strong stance against abortion, leading satirists at The Babylon Bee to note: "Pro-Lifers Excited To Choose Between Moderate Amount Of Baby Murder And High Amount of Baby Murder."

To put that in ballot-box terms, a new study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University claimed that 32 million church-going Christians are poised to sit out this election, many because they are disillusioned or believe the results will be rigged.

If the number of conservative believers going to polls plummets, that would clash with trends in the last four White House races, according to political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, author of "20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America."

"Half of the Christians are not going to vote. That's normal. That's old news. … We can expect those numbers to remain stable," said Burge, reached by telephone.

But there's another trend researchers expect to see again, he added. Yes, 80% of white evangelicals "voted for John McCain in 2008 and 80% have been voting for Donald Trump. We can expect that to happen again. It's what they do."

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Sign of the times: It's painful – but churches divided by doctrine almost always split

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Sign of the times: It's painful -- but churches divided by doctrine almost always split

After decades of progressive dissent, the leaders of the Christian Reformed Church in America finally took a firm stand against the Sexual Revolution.

Not only did the 2022 CRC Synod, voting 123-53, condemn "adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex," it added the small, but influential, denomination's longstanding teachings on these moral issues to its "declaration of faith."

The report added: "The church must warn its members that those who refuse to repent of these sins – as well as of idolatry, greed, and other such sins – will not inherit the kingdom of God." Dissenters should "repent of such sins for the sake of their souls."

Dissent continued, especially in congregations with strategic ties to Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the 2024 CRC Synod, it was clear the denomination would lose several dozen congregations, out of 1,000 in North America.

The Grand Rapids Eastern Avenue congregation proclaimed: "While all members of the church must always be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, it would be disingenuous for us as a church to deny, minimize, or hide a fundamental and intractable disagreement between a significant number of members of good standing in our church and the CRC's decision to make a particular interpretation a confessional matter." Thus, the "only way we can remain a Christian Reformed congregation with integrity … is under protest."

Head-on collisions are inevitable when believers in a religious institution proclaim – in word and deed – clashing stands on ancient doctrines, said the Rev. Michael Clary, of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. While he is a popular social-media commentator on Reformed theology, he leads a Southern Baptist congregation.

Splits will occur – because of core beliefs on both sides. Progressives truly believe doctrines must evolve to avoid causing pain to modern believers. Orthodox thinkers in various traditions truly believe they cannot edit what the New Testament describes as the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints."

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That 2024 reality: Protestant pastors facing pressures linked to partisan politics?

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That 2024 reality: Protestant pastors facing pressures linked to partisan politics?

Eight years ago, Lifeway Research asked Protestant pastors who they planned to support in the presidential election and only 3% declined to answer.

That number didn't change much in 2020, when 4% declined. But things changed recently, when almost a quarter of the pastors refused to voice their choice in the 2024 White House race.

Among those who tipped their hand, 50% said they would vote for former President Donald Trump and 24% backed Vice President Kamala Harris. The intriguing question was why – in a tense, tight election – so many clergy insisted that they were undecided or needed to remain silent for some other reason.

"Whether these pastors are mum because their vote might differ from the majority view in their congregations or because they are genuinely undecided was not clear," noted Mark Wingfield, of Baptist News Global. "Nationally, as few as 3% of all voters are considered truly undecided this election year, a much lower share than in previous years."

In the document explaining the survey, Lifeway executive director Scott McConnell noted that how pastors define "their own political party preference" is consistently the best way to predict their voting-booth decisions.

Half of the Protestants in the survey identified as Republicans, while 18% were Democrats and 25% said they were political independents. Clergy leading conservative flocks – evangelical, Baptist, nondenominational or Pentecostal – were most likely to be Republicans. Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and clergy in other progressive mainline churches were most likely to be Democrats. Also, Black pastors were among those most likely to back Harris (71%) and the least likely to support Trump (5%).

Thus, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 82% of white evangelicals – clergy and laity – planned to vote for Trump, while 86% of Black Protestants supported Harris. White mainline Protestants were more evenly divided, with 58% ready to back Trump.