Posts tagged podcast
Crossroads Podcast: The Struggle To Cover The Sins Of Powerful Clergy

The scandals surrounding the life and work of the former (and now disgraced) cardinal Theodore McCarrick rumbled in the background of Roman Catholic life for decades — starting in the early 1980s. Insiders whispered, but nothing was done.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: What Changed With Trump’s Religion Numbers This Time?

As I watched Tuesday’s returns roll in, I kept noticing that much of the “news” in the 2024 election was actually old news for people who have been following the “Crossroads” podcast for the past decade.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Harris’ Hot Words In Response To ‘Jesus Is Lord’

Once upon a time, a MAGA-hat adorned teen at the annual March for Life — Nicholas Sandmann, by name — offered an enigmatic smile while a Native American activist pounded a drum in his face. Mainstream journalists were certain that this Donald Trump-era incident was a big news story and used oceans of digital ink while covering it.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Dallas Super Pastors Behaving Badly

Anyone who has been paying attention to religion news has heard of the “Nones” — the “religiously unaffiliated” people who have little or no connection to any form of institutional religion. Then there are “Nons,” the term that religion-data expert Ryan Burge has pinned on the other big trend (“The Future of American Christianity is Non-Denominational”) that is reshaping the religion marketplace.

Read More
‘Crossroads Podcast’: Elite Journalists Move To America’s Heartland

Here’s the big idea in the podcast: Elite newsrooms allowing reporters to live in the heartland offer opportunities for reporters to interact with voices and points of view that they would not have encountered otherwise. In the end, however, a newsroom is only as diverse as the worldviews and source lists found in the work of its editors and superstars.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Taylor Swift Remains A Force In American Life

This brings us to megastar Taylor Swift and her decision to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 White House race, which was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Legions of “Swifties” from in America (and around the world) received this news via Instagram (Swift has 280+ million followers), where her much-anticipated post triggered celebratory mainstream media coverage.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: The Ideas That Led Vance To Swim The Tiber River

One of the world’s most important newsrooms just offered a finely detailed profile of Catholic convert J.D. Vance and, imagine this, the feature focused on the emotions and ideas that led him to swim the Tiber. This included his intellectual and spiritual attraction to the work of St. Augustine, one of the most important minds in Western culture.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Where Are The Young Women Leaving Churches Going?

Before we get to the issue of modern women fleeing church pews, let’s pause and do something that — as a rule — I try to avoid doing when discussing matters of cultural, morality and faith. Let’s consider some political numbers. In a recent Pew Research Center package of survey data, there is this headline: “Partisanship by gender, sexual orientation, marital and parental status.”

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Prayers At The GOP And Democratic Conventions

During one of the presidential elections during my decade teaching in Washington, D.C., there was more than the usual chatter about the importance of the so-called “Catholic vote” and its impact in swing states.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Newsweek’s ‘Incomplete’ On Christian College ‘Canceling’

Let’s say that you know a teacher at a Catholic school that, when accepting this job, this person signed a contract in which he agreed to defend the doctrines detailed in the Catholic Catechism or, at the very least, not to oppose them in public. After several years of work, this teacher decided that gender is a social construct and that she was a woman trapped in a man’s body and began to transition into life as a woman. The school then declined to renew the teacher’s contract. Was that teacher canceled?

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: What Do ‘Lutherans’ Believe, Anyway?

If you look up “Baptist” in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, you will find: “… a member or adherent of an evangelical Protestant denomination marked by congregational polity and baptism by immersion of believers only.” Ah, but I have heard quite a few Baptists, especially those leaning toward an Anabaptist identity, argue that the vague term “evangelical” doesn’t apply to them and some may even debate the word “Protestant.”

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Get Ready For Young And Conservative Catholic Priests

More than two decades ago, a veteran Catholic priest and educator explained some ecclesiastical math to me. The late Father Donald Cozzens was talking about one of the biggest religion-news stories of the past half century — the growing shortage of priests at Catholic altars. To understand the problem, he said, you need to view it through the eyes of mothers and fathers.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Did God Alone Save Trump?

I don’t have solid poll data backing me up on the following. But, in my experience, if you walked up to lots of church-going, scripture-quoting evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals and said you were trying to think of a Bible verse defined by “6:11” many, if not most, would immediately say, “You mean Ephesians 6:11?”

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Pride News Trends That May Continue Into The Future

Did everyone in the religious congregation of your choice have a good “Fidelity Month”? That’s a joke, of course. There were probably more churches in America that celebrated Pride Month than those that were aware that “Fidelity Month” even exists. And pride is where it’s at, when it comes to the principalities and powers of corporate America, Big Tech, Hollywood, mainstream newsrooms and the vast majority of our elected officials from sea to shining sea.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: What Religion Questions Do Biden And Trump Want To Avoid?

The timing was awkward, to say the least, for the recording of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Lutheran Public Radio listeners who heard this chat live heard us discussing an alleged “debate” between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump that had not yet taken place. Ditto for anyone who immediately downloaded the Issues, Etc., audio file.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: Smartphones Are Doors Into Heads, Hearts And Souls

It appears that Emily Harrison — creator of the “Dear Christian Parent” website — is some kind of religious countercultural radical. By the way, for me “radical” is a compliment when discussing matters of digital-screen culture. The question is what brand of faith-based radical she is, since her Substack’s “about” page offers classic nondenominational-era language: “Believer in Jesus. Wife. Mother. Writer & Speaker on kids and screen time. ScreenStrong Ambassador.”

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: What Happens Next To The Divided Methodist Flock?

No one was surprised when the embattled United Methodist Church — after decades of fighting about the Bible, salvation and sexuality — boldly steered onto a progressive course after the exit of 7,659 congregations in America's biggest church split since the Civil War. At least, no one should have been surprised.

Read More
Crossroads Podcast: CBS Plays Papal Softball With Francis

I am old enough to remember when “60 Minutes” was must-watch television for journalists. In those days, this CBS News “magazine for television” had a crack research team that dug deep and found the documents and evidence needed to support tough questions for political, cultural and business leaders who granted interviews.

Read More