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) I read the preacher’s words once — and then again — and tried to make sense of them.

In a Florida TV station’s report on a church promoting the COVID-19 vaccines, minister Charlie McClendon was quoted as saying, “Each week I emphasize it from the pool pit just before I preach.”

The pool pit?

I’ve covered religion for two-plus decades, but I hadn’t come across that term. Strange.

Later, my eyes popped wide open in the middle of the night.

Suddenly, it hit me.

“Pulpit.”

I burst into laughter, much to the chagrin of my sleeping wife.

After I posted on Twitter about the mistake, reporter Gretchen Kernbach offered a gracious mea culpa and corrected the wording.

Even before her tweet, I made clear — amid humorous responses and more serious calls for better religious literacy in journalism — that I wasn’t casting stones. In 30 years of news reporting, I’ve made plenty of doozy mistakes myself.

I just thought this particular one was funny. If you don’t believe me, feel free to ask my wife.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. For U.S. teen Buddhist lama, it’s faith, school, football: Associated Press religion writer Luis Andres Henao tells the fascinating story of Jalue Dorje, a 14-year-old Minnesota boy who grew up loving loving football, Pokémon and rap music.

“Yet a few years from now, he’s expecting to say goodbye to his family and homeland and join a monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas — from an early age, he was recognized by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders as a reincarnated lama,” Henao explains.

This multimedia package, featuring a video and photos by AP global religion team member Jessie Wardarski, is exceptional.

2. Nine years, 782,000 words later, South Carolina woman completes handwritten Bible: Christianity Today’s Adam MacInnis profiles Caroline Campbell, a 28-year-old Christian with Down syndrome who copied the entire Bible by hand.

“She started in Genesis and worked her way through Revelation, writing down all 782,815 words from her 1973 New American Standard Bible,” MacInnis notes.

The world needs more stories like this, full of hope and inspiration.

3. Religious groups eye legal challenges to delta variant restrictions and vaccine mandates: The pandemic culture wars rage on, as CNN’s Ariane de Vogue’s reports.

“If any governments try to go down the path of closing worship again, this time around we have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s numerous rulings making clear that worship is not just important, but essential,” the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s Eric Rassbach tells de Vogue.

More Top Reads

• Hundreds arrested at Capitol while protesting for voting rights, minimum wage (by Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service)

• ‘Fertile soil for abuse’: a reckoning at Covenant Fellowship Church (by Esther Yoon-Ji Kang and Susie An, WBEZ Chicago)

• How Border Patrol chaplains help agents find inner peace in a job of conflict and danger (by Mya Jaradat, Deseret News)

• Bishops’ debate over Communion sparked by Biden seeps into holiest sacrament for Catholics (by Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post)

• Supreme Court to decide if religious schools may receive taxpayer funding for tuition (by John Fritze, USA Today)

• Afghan war’s end quiets chaplain’s litany of funeral prayers (by Matt Sedensky, Associated Press)

• Charismatic TikTok divided over praying in tongues (by Renée Roden, RNS)

• Lions, lies and hope (by Erik Tryggestad, Christian Chronicle)

• Hillsong founder Brian Houston charged with hiding dad’s child sex crimes (by Hannah Sparks, New York Post)

• Religious households give more support to charities than secular ones, study finds (by Mark A. Kellner, Washington Times)

• Football player sues RZIM claiming misuse of funds (by Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today)

Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines

In recent months, The Associated Press has made some incredible hires for its global religion team, adding former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion editor Peter Smith and former Tennessean religion reporter Holly Meyer.

Sadly, Sally Stapleton, AP’s global religion editor since 2019, recently left to join Magnum Photos as senior assignment manager.

The good news: AP plans to hire a successor. The deadline to apply for the New York-based opening is Aug. 27.

Charging Station: In Case You Missed It

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

• Five IOS apps that help Christian families with spiritual formation (by Paul Glader)

• Why we should be wary of Facebook-church partnerships (by Michael Metzger)

• The west misunderstood Ethiopia’s conflict. Here’s how we should move forward (by Girma Bekele)

• What’s really going on in U.S. mainline Protestantism? What the media should watch (by Richard Ostling)

• The young and secular are least vaccinated, not evangelicals (by Ryan Burge)

• Zacharias Institute leaders announce plans to resign (by Anne Stych)

• New BBC documentary on Hillsong Church paints a grim picture (by Josh Shepherd)

• Q&A: In new book millennial nuns share social media tips (by Jewels Tauzin)

• Should the Southern Baptist Convention change its name? (by Richard Ostling)

The Final Plug

We don’t always cover Britney Spears news at Weekend Plug-in.

But we do when we have a religion angle.

On Thursday night, Spears informed her 32.9 million Instagram followers that she is now Catholic. She was raised Baptist.

Happy Friday, everybody. Enjoy the weekend.

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.