Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Got feedback or ideas for this column? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

(ANALYSIS) This time, the Democrats avoided the dogma.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s faith was a big focus going into this week’s Senate Judicial Committee hearings.

In advance of the confirmation proceedings, The Associated Press’ Mary Clare Jalonick and Elana Schor noted:

WASHINGTON (AP) — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca and Lindsay Wise pointed out:

In her 2017 confirmation hearings, senators from both parties brought up the connection between Judge Barrett’s faith and her rulings. But Democrats, especially California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, got backlash for their questions.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley asked, “When is it proper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law?”

Sen. Feinstein said, “Whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma…I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

In response to the line of questioning, Judge Barrett said, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

With the 2017 backlash in mind, Democrats steered clear of Barrett’s religion at this week’s hearings, even as Republicans focused on it.

BuzzFeed News’ Zoe Tillman explained:

In their opening statements and questions for Barrett this week, Democrats pressed her about whether she would be a vote to reverse or chip away at Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a nationwide right to abortion. Democrats also asked her about anti-abortion statements she’d signed in the past. But they did not focus on her faith or bring up her religious practices as a Catholic.

In trying to combat questions about Barrett’s religion that never came, Republican members ended up repeatedly bringing her religion into the hearings, however.

“You’re Catholic,” Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said to Barrett on Tuesday, kicking off a string of questions about her faith. She replied that she was. Graham asked whether her faith meant “a lot” to her personally, to confirm that she’d raised her family Catholic, and if she could set aside her religious beliefs in considering cases as a judge. Barrett answered yes to each of his questions.

“This is the first time in American history that we've nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology and she is going to the court,” Graham said on Wednesday.

Even if the dogma did not live loudly at the hearings, it figured prominently in an excellent profile of Barrett by New York Times religion writer Elizabeth Dias. Up high in Dias’ story, a former White House counsel jokes concerning Barrett, “We now affectionately call her Judge Dogma.”

Other recent must-reads on the Barrett nomination:

• Even Trump-skeptical Republicans are relishing the prospect of a 6-3 Supreme Court (by Emma Green, The Atlantic)

• Many Catholic women see themselves in Amy Coney Barrett. Others see an impossible standard (Samantha Schmidt and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post)

• With Barrett nomination, a D.C. conservative power couple nears its dream (by Elizabeth Williamson, New York Times)

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Undocumented immigrants and churches that give them sanctuary face breaking points: We journalists don’t always do a great job of telling “the rest of the story,” to borrow the late Paul Harvey’s famous phrase.

That’s part of what makes this in-depth story by Jeff Gammage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, so impressive.

2. White evangelicals hope to keep changing Texas red for Trump: In a 2004 story for The Associated Press, I referred to fast-growing Collin County, Texas — north of Dallas — as a “bastion of evangelical Christianity and conservative political views.”

Sixteen years later, the demographics are changing — and “old and new political camps ‘are fighting it out to see which way’ it goes in Collin County,” as one Texas House candidate told AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer. 

A nitpicky quibble: I wish AP had used a different term than “parishioners” to describe the evangelicals in the lede. Catholics have parishes. Baptists don’t. (AP’s own stylebook points this out.)

3. Venture funders flock to religious apps as churches go online: This is a fascinating trend story by Bloomberg’s Jacqueline Davalos.

The bottom line:

The pandemic has “crystallized the opportunity,” says Brett Martin, co-founder and managing partner at Charge Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm in New York. A global shutdown accelerated tools that the tech industry was already into, like video conferencing, community building and fundraising — all of which can be applied to religion, Martin says. “Shame on the venture capital community for not recognizing the opportunity sooner.”

Some did. Pray.com, for example, was founded in 2016 and is backed by $16 million in venture funding. Now there are plenty of ways investors can get involved across all the functional areas of a church — from digital tithing to management software and virtual bible study.

More Top Reads

• How QAnon uses religion to lure unsuspecting Christians (by Daniel Burke, CNN)

• ‘Reluctant cultist’ survives an end times cult turned pet rescue group to find his own faith (by Bob Smietana, Religion News Service)

• Latino, evangelical and politically homeless (by Jennifer Medina, New York Times)

• Biden reaches out to Catholics like himself, embracing a key group in big 2020 states (by Matt Viser, Washington Post)

• Inspired by Trump, Hasidic backlash grows over virus rules (by Liam Stack and Joseph Goldstein, New York Times)

• Refugee data on religion disappears as fewer persecuted Christians admitted to U.S. (by Emily McFarlan Miller and Jack Jenkins, RNS)

• Big crowd in Murdock, Minn., grills representative of controversial Nordic heritage church (by John Reinan, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

• Sean Feucht in Nashville: Health department investigating after 'worship protest' drew thousands (by Rachel Wegner, The Tennessean)

• Synagogue’s virtual shiva service disrupted by Zoombombers posting anti-Semitic, pornographic videos (by Zack Murdock, Hartford Courant)

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

Hey Godbeat pros: Here’s your opportunity for some cost-efficient training.

MinistryWatch.com’s Warren Cole Smith is doing a free webinar Oct. 28 on “how to read a Form 990, which is the ‘tax return’ tax-exempt orgs have to file.”

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

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

• Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict: Inside the religious fight for Nagorno-Karabakh (by Conrad Franz)

• What I wish my Christian friends knew about the news media (by Rob Vaughn)

• White Christians favor Trump ahead of 2020 election, but other religious groups lean toward Biden: Pew Research (by Jillian Cheney)

• New Super PAC begs Christians not to vote for Trump (by Meagan Clark)

• ‘Chinese Female Jesus’ stalks Indian youth on social media, alarming church leaders (by Stephen David)

• Mainstream press ignores church vandalism but can't get enough of ACB's faith (by Clemente Lisi)

• Jesus And Wi-Fi: Alaska church helps students during pandemic (by Bobby Ross Jr.)

• Meet the Belgian Buddhist training entrepreneurs (by Kimberly Winston)

• Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters (by Terry Mattingly)

• An evangelical’s guide to QAnon: Inside one of the most talked about internet groups (by Jillian Cheney)

• Nigerian boy jailed for blasphemy offers hope, despite holes in media coverage (by Ira Rifkin)

• 'I will not stay silent': Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong struggles against the Vatican (by Timothy Nerozzi)

• Can ‘Faith Based’ save Christian comedy? (by Joseph Holmes)

The Final Plug

Generally, we like to end Weekend Plug-in on a cheerful note.

Enter Religion News Service’s Emily McFarlan Miller with a feature on Donny Osmond performing a wedding in an “amazing technicolor dreamcoat.”

Yep, that’ll do.

Thank you for reading, friends. See you back in this same space next week.

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.