⛪️ How Plug-In's Columnist Got His Start On The Godbeat, Plus Big News On 'Nones' 🔌
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) Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers!
What were you doing 25 years ago today? I was covering Pope John Paul II’s Jan. 26-27, 1999, visit to St. Louis — the unexpected assignment that gave me my start in religion reporting.
My ReligionUnplugged.com retrospective on that experience and how it changed my journalism career was published this morning. It’s part memoir and part reflection on an era when print newspapers were still king. I’d love for you to check it out.
Making headlines this week: “Americans are having a harder time trusting anyone these days — including pastors,” Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt reports, citing recent Gallup polling.
Meanwhile, the looming showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump essentially pits two countries against each other: Blue America vs. Red America, the New York Times’ Peter Baker proposes.
“It is at least partly about ideology, yes, but also fundamentally about race and religion and culture and economics and democracy and retribution and most of all, perhaps, about identity,” Baker writes.
This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with a major new study on the religiously unaffiliated.
What To Know: The Big Story
A closer look: In a new report out this week, the Pew Research Center examines “how atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular’ see God, religion, morality, science and more.”
ReligionUnplugged.com’s Clemente Lisi provides an overview of the findings:
Pew attempted to drill down into what “nones” believe, their feelings towards organized religion and their context within American life and politics.
For example, most “nones,” the study found, believe in a “higher power” aside from God of the Bible, but few attend any kind of religious service. About half said spirituality is “very important in their lives.”
Who are the ‘nones’?: About 28% of Americans fall into that category.
They break down this way: 17% identify as atheists, 20% as agnostics and 63% as “nothing in particular,” the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas notes in her coverage of the Pew report.
Dallas points out:
Religion scholars have been studying and debating the nones since the 1960s, but the label — and the people it refers to — is a persistent source of confusion.
For one thing, the term nones sounds like nuns, the Catholic women who dedicate their lives to serving God and their church. For another, the label implies, at least to some Americans, that nones have no attachment to religion.
In reality, the nones are a complex group with varied ideas about God, spirituality and religious institutions. They’re linked together not by a shared set of beliefs, but by what they say when asked about their religious affiliation.
What it means: The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein delves deeper into the findings, quoting a variety of experts:
Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who consulted with Pew on the report, said the data points to a new frontier of what might be called “meaning-making” research. The report adds more detail to what this huge swath of Americans believe about spirituality, but it’s not clear whether they are simply slowly letting go of the supernatural, or something else, he told The Washington Post.
“I think it’s possible these people don’t believe in anything [supernatural], we just don’t have the language yet to describe what they do believe,” he said. “When someone sees the stars and has an overwhelming, spiritual experience of awe, and they call it a ‘higher power,’ what does that actually mean? And that’s the next step in research. We don’t have answers yet. This report is showing where we need to do more research.”
See more coverage by NPR’s Jason DeRose, USA Today’s Emily DeLetter and the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. Religious controversy in India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a Hindu temple this week on the ruins of a historic mosque.
It’s “a political triumph for the populist leader who is seeking to transform the country from a secular democracy into a Hindu state,” The Associated Press’ Biswajeet Banerjee, Sheikh Saaliq and Krutika Pathi report.
Read in-depth coverage by ReligionUnplugged.com’s Shadab Farooq, the New York Times’ Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar and the Wall Street Journal’s Krishna Pokharel and Tripti Lahiri.
2. Arab and Jewish neighbors: Coexistence initiatives in Israel have tentatively resumed despite the war with Hamas.
Religion News Service’s Michele Chabin shares the compelling details.
3. 30 years of longing: Longtime Salt Lake Tribune religion writer Peggy Fletcher Stack recounts how she lost her twin girl and “joined the throngs of forever-grieving parents.”
“The questions — ‘Why are you sad?’ ‘Do you promise me there’s a heaven?’ — never cease; the ache — ‘numbness and lostness,’ ‘survivor guilt,’ ‘nothing in the world will ever be right — never vanishes, but the precious moments, sweet memories and life-sustaining hopes live on,” Stack explains.
More Top Reads
About 245,000 Holocaust survivors are alive now. Where are they now? The Washington Post’s Annabelle Timsit tackles that question. … An email sheds new light on a Texas House candidate’s role in a Southern Baptist leader’s sex abuse scandal, according to the Texas Tribune’s Robert Downen. … A pastor and a small Ohio city are tussling over the legality of his 24/7 homeless ministry, The Associated Press’ Patrick Orsagos and Mark Scolforo report. … A taxpayer-funded Catholic school in Oklahoma is likely to draw a U.S. Supreme Court review, experts tell the National Catholic Reporter’s Brian Fraga. … A flood of insurance cancellations wreaks financial challenges for houses of worship in Texas, Louisiana and beyond, The Christian Chronicle’s Cheryl Mann Bacon finds. … After five years, clergy abuse survivors are still waiting for a report from the New Jersey attorney general, NorthJersey.com’s Deena Yellin reveals. … And at The Conversation, scholar Alice Bloch details why descendants of Holocaust survivors are replicating Auschwitz tattoos.
Inside The Godbeat
The Los Angeles Times’ plan to lay off 115 journalists, slashing its newsroom by more than 20 percent, was big news in the journalism world this week.
Among those losing their jobs are two reporters whose religion coverage I’ve praised over the years: former Religion News Service national correspondent Alejandra Molina and veteran Times writer Sarah Parvini.
Charging Station: ICYMI
Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from ReligionUnplugged.com.
Has the pro-life movement lost its way?
That’s the question posed by MinistryWatch.com’s Warren Cole Smith, who traces his career in journalism to the abortion issue.
The Final Plug
In case you didn’t follow directions and click the link on my retrospective piece, I’ll let you skip to the end:
Two-plus decades and thousands of stories later, I still cover religion.
I’m amazed at all the places this beat has taken me, from disaster zones to major-league ballparks to a Southern Baptist Convention president’s cattle farm. I’m indebted to all the sources who’ve trusted me with their stories, from refugees to sex abuse victims to survivors of an antisemitic hostage standoff. I’m blessed by all the friends I’ve made — some people of faith like me, others not — in the religion writing community.
As a young journalist, I thought my big dreams might take me inside statehouses and even the White House (and occasionally, they have). But I discovered my niche inside houses of worship and everywhere faith is manifested.
My unexpected story assignment a quarter-century ago turned out to be divine.
But really, go ahead and read the whole thing.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for ReligionUnplugged.com and serves as 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 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.