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) “Is it possible to be astonished and, at the same time, not surprised?”

A colleague recalled that quote — by fictional President Josiah Bartlet on a 2005 episode of the Emmy Award-winning political drama “The West Wing” — as a real-life mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

A Capitol Police officer this morning became the fifth person to die as a result of the insurrection.

How does religion figure in the tragic last stand of the nation’s conspiracy theorist-in-chief?

Let us count the ways, as highlighted by Religion Unplugged correspondents:

• As thousands of protesters gathered outside the Capitol building claiming election fraud, some carried a wooden cross, Hamil R. Harris notes.

• Others in the crowd carried flags and banners with Christian symbols and messages such as “Jesus Saves.” Kimberly Winston explains the history behind the array of flags.

• Christian leaders — some of whom have backed President Donald Trump because of his anti-abortion stance — condemned the pro-Trump mob and called for peace, Jillian Cheney reports.

In other noteworthy coverage, Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins explores the “two forms of faith on display” amid the chaos. The Atlantic’s Emma Green weighs in on “Storming the Capitol for God and Trump.” And Houston Chronicle religion writer Robert Downen interviews Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler, who says he’s “genuinely shocked and horrified” by what happened Wednesday but stands by his Trump vote.

Looking ahead, President-elect Joe Biden has invited Jesuit priest Leo O'Donovan, former president of Georgetown University, to deliver the invocation at Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the National Catholic Reporter’s Christopher White reports.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. ‘Only in America’: Raphael Warnock’s rise from poverty to U.S. senator: Associated Press writer Russ Bynum profiles the progressive reverend who — as explained by Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks — plans to remain senior pastor of his Atlanta church.

That church is the historic Ebenezer Baptist where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. preached. In light of Warnock’s victory Tuesday, the Washington Post’s DeNeen L. Brown recounts Ebenezer’s 134-year-old history.

Religion Unplugged’s own Hamil R. Harris delves into the significance of Georgia voters electing two Democratic senators — Warnock and Jon Ossoff — to give that party control of both chambers of Congress as well as the White House.

2. Inside Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, staff push leaders to take responsibility for scandal: Back in October, I praised Christianity Today journalist Daniel Silliman’s investigative reporting on sexual assault allegations against the late Zacharias.

Silliman’s latest in-depth coverage of the scandal involving “arguably the most famous Christian apologist in the world” is equally stellar and worthy of readers’ attention.

3. Randall Cunningham is back in the NFL … as Raiders chaplain: “I want to preach myself into a Super Bowl ring,” the former quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings tells the New York Times.

To quote Religion Unplugged’s Paul Glader, the piece by Kalyn Kahler is a “lovely religion and sports story of the ‘Where are they now?’ genre.”

More Top Reads

• In year of chaos and solitude, local survivors of Nazism see lessons (by Robert Downen, Houston Chronicle)

• African spirituality offers Black believers ‘decolonized’ Christianity (by Liz Kineke, Religion News Service)

• Could COGIC's next presiding bishop be from Memphis? Bishop Porter thinks so (by Katherine Burgess, Memphis Commercial Appeal)

• Why there are so many ‘miraculous’ stories of Bibles surviving disaster (by Maria Baer, Christianity Today)

• Rural pastors tend to flocks divided and isolated by COVID-19 (by Ian Lovett, Wall Street Journal)

• Shadyside Church to mark centennial of historic broadcast (by Peter Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

• Deputy who killed Casey Goodson has used faith to justify use of force before (by Danae King, Columbus Dispatch)

• Biden is ushering in a Second Coming of religious liberals (by Jack Jenkins, Daily Beast)

• ‘A wing and a prayer.’ Financial crisis has Catholic schools struggling to serve low-income students (by Andrew J. Campa, Los Angeles Times)

• The real problem with four-letter words (by Karen Swallow Prior, The Gospel Coalition)

• Death of 9 nuns highlights toll of coronavirus in convents (by Mary Esch, The Associated Press)

• 117th Congress, like the old, is overwhelmingly Christian, heavily Protestant (by Yonat Shimron and Emily McFarlan Miller, RNS)

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

After the 2017 mass shooting that claimed 26 lives at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, I became a big fan of Silvia Foster-Frau.

The young San Antonio Express-News writer offered such sensitive, nuanced coverage of the massacre, both in the immediate aftermath and the months and years afterward.

Now Foster-Frau has landed her dream job as a national reporter for the Washington Post. And she wrote a moving column about sharing the news with her beloved grandfather in Puerto Rico the week before he died.

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

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

• A time for Christians to be the nation’s healers (by Bruce Barron)

• A Christian's stance on binary party politics before Inauguration Day (by Michael Metzger)

• How data explains extreme support for Trump (by Ryan Burge)

• Will evangelicals remain loyal to Mike Pence in 2021? (by Deborah Whitehead)

• ‘Soul’ is a reminder that life is worth living — and a challenge for the distracted mind (by Jillian Cheney)

• South Sudan soldiers locked church members in a burning hut, raped women (by Juma Peter)

• Massachusetts court to rule on whether professors at religious colleges can have 'ministerial exemptions' (by Chelsea Langston Bombino)

• Nashville churches, already online due to COVID-19, disrupted by bomb blast (by Erik Tryggestad)

• Why Christian faith led a California philanthropist to the YIMBY movement (by Howard Ahmanson Jr.)

• 5 meditation and prayer resources to start the new year (by Jillian Cheney)

The Final Plug

I generally try to wrap up Weekend Plug-in with a light or quirky note.

Such as: Justin Bieber “dismissing reports that he’s training to become a man of the cloth,” as the New York Post’s Hannah Sparks reports.

Or perhaps: a Missouri Democrat ending his prayer on the opening day of the new Congress with the words “Amen and ‘A-woman.’”

As it turns out, though, a lot of people didn’t think Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s words were so funny.

So, kudos to the Kansas City Star’s Bryan Lowry for interviewing Cleaver and giving him an opportunity to explain what he was thinking.

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.