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.

SAN DIEGO — How’s your Saturday going, Weekend Plug-in reader?

After a busy day of flying from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles and then driving to San Diego, I’m a bit delayed in filing this week’s newsletter.

Confession time: I forgot how slowly everything moves in Southern California, from baggage claim to the rental car line to the clogged highways. I just ran out of time Friday before needing to take care of more important matters.

Without further delay, let’s jump right into our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with Wednesday’s death of Sinéad O’Connor at age 56.

What To Know: The Big Story

Sinéad O’Connor’s protest: The Irish singer-songwriter — who famously ripped up Pope John Paul II’s photo on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992 — condemned clergy sex abuse early, but America didn’t listen, the New York Times’ Liam Stack recounts.

In her native country, O’Connor was a lonely voice for change until Ireland changed with her, according to the NYT’s Ed O’Loughlin.

The Catholic Church’s abuse scandals “made Ireland more secular, and more understanding of her criticisms,” O’Loughlin’s story notes.

Career-altering flashpoint: The Associated Press’ Holly Meyer examines O’Connor’s legacy:

More than 30 years later, her “Saturday Night Live” performance and its stark collision of popular culture and religious statement is remembered by some as an offensive act of desecration. But for others — including survivors of clergy sex abuse — O’Connor’s protest was prophetic, forecasting the global denomination’s public reckoning that was, at that point, yet to come. O’Connor, 56, died Wednesday.

The SNL moment stunned David Clohessy, a key early member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. In his 30s at the time, he had only recently recalled the repressed memories of the abuse he suffered. He found O’Connor’s act deeply moving. It was something he and other survivors never thought possible. …

“We were all just deeply convinced that we would go to our graves without ever seeing any public acknowledgment of the horror and without any kind of validation whatsoever,” Clohessy said. “That’s what made her words so very powerful.”

O’Connor paid dearly for criticizing the church, but history proved her right, CNN’s Issy Ronald asserts. Despite the backlash over the “SNL” incident, she had no regrets, People’s David Chiu explains.

O’Connor’s ‘Theology’: Ted Olsen, former executive editor of Christianity Today, mourned the singer-songwriter’s death by noting that he listens to her “Theology” albums at least monthly.

“They’re amazing,” declares Olsen, who wrote a 2007 CT piece on “Why you shouldn't be surprised that her new album is mostly passages from the Old Testament.”

One more related link: At the Jesuit magazine America, Matthew Cortese writes about “How Sinéad O’Connor taught a Catholic priest how to pray.”

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Devil in the details: God has fallen on hard times in America, and so has the devil, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reports.

Smietana cites polling data:

Losing faith in God seems to be accompanied by disbelief in the devil, according to a new Gallup report that found that more than half of Americans (58%) said they believe he exists, down from two-thirds (68%) in 2001. About the same percentage (59%) said they believe in hell, down from 71% two decades ago.

But guess who Americans do believe in?

The Associated Press’ Holly Meyer has the answer:

Compared with the devil, angels carry more credence in America.

Angels even get more credence than, well, hell. More than astrology, reincarnation, and the belief that physical things can have spiritual energies.

In fact, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

2. Catholicism in Portugal: “(W)hen Pope Francis arrives in Lisbon on Aug. 2 for the 42nd international trip of his papacy and his fourth World Youth Day — a major gathering of Catholic youth that takes place in various cities around the globe every few years — he will find a weakened Catholic Church experiencing the same difficulties it has in much of the developed world.”

That’s the pre-trip analysis by the National Catholic Reporter’s Brian Fraga and Christopher White.

Portugal is starting the atoning process for clergy sex abuse, according to The Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield.

3. Emmett Till memorialized: “For the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., it was the moment he had long awaited and once could not have envisioned,” Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks writes.

“The older cousin of Emmett Till, Parker is the sole remaining witness to the 1955 kidnapping of the Black teenager, who was dragged from his bed to face a lynching that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Now Parker has lived to see the designation of a church in Chicago and two other sites in Mississippi as the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.”

More Top Reads

Meet the Christian creators designing chatbots “with a biblical worldview,” via Fiona André, writing for Religion News Service. … Where Boomer faith is low, Gen Z faith is up, Samantha Saad explains for Christianity Today. … In Iowa, former Vice President Mike Pence hopes to pull evangelical voters back from former President Donald Trump. Is being born again enough? The New Yorker’s Antonia Hitchens asks. … An East Palestine, Ohio, church is hosting a chemical exposure study in the wake of a train disaster, as RNS’ Kathryn Post details. … Young Christians in South Korea are apathetic about reunification, CT’s Isabel Ong discovers. … A longtime pastor confessed to abducting and killing a girl almost 50 years ago, the Washington Post’s Victoria Bisset and Marisa Iati report. … And in a Wall Street Journal think piece, Tim Busch suggests that “The Vatican can clean up its financial act.”

Inside The Godbeat

Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, has a new book in which he urges fellow evangelicals “to stop lying and come back to Jesus.”

Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana interviews the former Southern Baptist rising star about the book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.”

In a related first-person piece for The Atlantic this week, Moore declares “The American evangelical church is in crisis. There’s only one way out.”

Charging Station: ICYMI

Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from ReligionUnplugged.com.

In a special travel piece, Kim Lawton visits Turkey and explores “the footsteps of St. Paul off the beaten track.”

Check it out.

The Final Plug

Have you seen the “Barbie” movie yet? Do you plan to?

At Vox, Melissa Wilkinson maintains that Greta Gerwig’s hit film is a biblical metaphor.

But here at ReligionUnplugged.com, Joseph Holmes argues that “Barbie” shows Gerwig is the wrong choice to direct the first two “Narnia” movies for Netflix.

Thank you for reading this delayed edition of Plug-in.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

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.