Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

(ANALYSIS) One.

Two.

This makes three straight weeks that the Southern Baptist Convention’s big meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, has topped Plug-in.

Want an impossible challenge? Try highlighting the best coverage out of the plethora of headlines produced in Music City this week.

Some of the big news:

• The surprise election of “moderate” (if you’re OK with that term) pastor Ed Litton from Alabama as the SBC’s president.

Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana, the Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt, the New York Times’ Ruth Graham, The Associated Press’ Travis Loller and Peter Smith and ReligionUnplugged’s own Hamil R. Harris all offer insightful coverage on that. (Even the Los Angeles Times weighs in, via Atlanta bureau chief Jenny Jarvie.)

• The skirmish over critical race theory, which Chris Moody describes in an in-depth narrative piece for New York Magazine.

Also, don’t miss The Tennessean’s Wednesday front-page report by Katherine Burgess, Duane W. Gang and Holly Meyer.

For more on the CRT angle, see Adelle M. Banks’ RNS story and Greg Garrison’s Birmingham News coverage.

• The major action to confront sexual abuse in the denomination, as the Houston Chronicle’s Robert Downen, CT’s Shellnutt, the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Burgess and RNS’ Smietana detail.

In addition, the convention approved its “most absolutist statement yet in opposition to abortion,” note AP’s Loller and Smith.

And a challenge over pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren’s California church ordaining women pastors was referred to the SBC’s credentials committee, reports RNS’ Banks.

What did I miss?

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Catholic bishops this week will discuss if Biden qualifies for Communion: It’s the culmination of decades of abortion politics: The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein sets the scene for the week’s other big religion story.

Equally interesting: Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins, Claire Giangravé and Alejandra Molina reach out to every Catholic bishop in the country to ask where they stand. (Spoiler alert: Few offer a firm yes-or-no answer on the big question, RNS notes.)

How high are the stakes?

“This is a week that could change Catholic life in this country,” ReligionUnplugged’s own Clemente Lisi writes. “That is not an exaggeration when you consider what the bishops will be debating.”

First-day coverage of the meeting, which opened Wednesday, includes stories by RNS’ Jenkins and The Associated Press’ David Crary.

2. How hip-hop gravitated toward religion: “Hip-hop, a counter-culture genre born on the Black and Latino streets of the Bronx in the 1970s, has gotten religion,” the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Sandi Dolbee writes.

“It even has a name: holy hip-hop.”

3. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties, shorn of influence, vow to unseat new leader: Yes, a little knowledge of ancient Scriptures will help with understanding this story.

“I will use what our father Jacob used when he needed to deal with Esau: gifts, prayer and war,” one source tells the Wall Street Journal’s Felicia Schwartz and Dov Lieber.

“Just as we survived the pharaoh in Egypt, so too will we pass this government,” another says.

More Top Reads

• N.Y. Holocaust survivors celebrated at concert after isolation (by Luis Andres Henao, Associated Press)

• ‘People of Praise leaders failed me’: Christian group tied to Justice Amy Coney Barrett faces reckoning over sexual misconduct (by Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites, Washington Post)

• How Solomon's Garden became a weapon in the fight for East Jerusalem (by Joshua Eaton, Sojourners)

• British PM ducks reporter’s ‘Catholic question,’ blasts atheist Labor rival as ‘a fool’ (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)

• ‘Transformational partnership’ — LDS Church donating nearly $10M to help Black Americans (by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune)

• No, Pope Francis did not cancel a meeting with President Biden (by Joshua J. McElwee, National Catholic Reporter)

• ’What Is God Like?’ Late author Rachel Held Evans’ first children’s book invites questions (by Emily McFarlan Miller, Religion News Service)

• America is in crisis. Many Christians are making it worse (by Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News)

• Fla. governor signs bill requiring moment for school prayer (by Bobby Caina Calvan, Associated Press)

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

BuzzFeed News has won its first Pulitzer Prize — for coverage of a religion story.

Journalist Megha Rajagopalan, architect Alison Killing and programmer Christo Buschek were honored in the international reporting category.

As BuzzFeed notes, Rajagopalan, Killing and Buschek produced “a series of innovative articles that used satellite images, 3D architectural models, and daring in-person interviews to expose China’s vast infrastructure for detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslims in its Xinjiang region.”

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from Religion Unplugged.

• SBC elects Alabama pastor known as racial healer (by Hamil R. Harris)

• Get ready for a week that could change U.S. Catholicism forever (by Clemente Lisi)

• The United Methodist Church must tackle its looming real estate crisis (by Rick Reinhard)

• Southern Baptist Convention to discuss race, gender, and sex abuse in seminal meeting (by Hamil R. Harris)

• Ira Rifkin offers Jewish (and Buddhist) thoughts as he lives with the ashes of his son (by Ira Rifkin)

• From abortion and porn to women and race: how Southern Baptist Convention resolutions have evolved (by Ryan Burge)

• How listeners and a Christian radio ministry carried each other through the pandemic (by Natalie Lowin)

• Demographics make news: how will religion shape the oncoming birth dearth and vice versa? (by Richard Ostling)

The Final Plug

Talk about a story of biblical proportions: Jonah was spotted recently at the northern tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Actually, that was another man — a veteran lobster diver named Michael Packard — who reported getting swallowed by a whale last Friday, as the Cape Cod Times’ Doug Fraser reports.

“I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead,’” Michael Packard said. But Packard lived to tell the story. Don’t miss the newspaper’s full account of how.

By the way, I realize it’s Thursday.

I’m having finger surgery this afternoon, so we decided to publish Plug-in a day earlier than usual. Depending on how the operation goes, I hope you see back in this same space next Friday.

Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for Religion Unplugged and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.