Weekend Plug-in 🔌

Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Subscribe now to get this column delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Greetings from the oven.

OK, maybe it’s not that hot here in Oklahoma.

But I did mow the other day with the heat index at 109 degrees Fahrenheit. My wife kindly promised to call an ambulance if she found me collapsed in the backyard.

As my brain tries not to melt, here are a few notes of interest from the world of religion news.

• • •

Churches closing in the U.S. aren’t exactly breaking news.

It’s a familiar trend, as Plug-in can attest.

This is something different, though: a congregation pastored by a leading scholar of the nation’s religious decline shutting its doors.

The Associated Press’ Peter Smith and Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana both produced compelling features about Ryan Burge’s little church in small-town Illinois holding its final service.

Burge himself offered a first-person account for the Deseret News, writing, “My church is closing, and I don’t know what comes next — for me, or America.”

Burge, an Eastern Illinois University professor whose research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, is a featured columnist here at ReligionUnplugged.com. His latest piece, published this week, asks, “Do educated people believe in God more or less?”

• • •

Godbeat pros are delving into the religious backgrounds of the presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is a “Baptist with a Jewish husband and a faith that traces back to MLK and Gandhi,” as The Associated Press’ Darren Sands details. 

Harris is “an old-timer” at the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, the Rev. Amos Brown told Religion News Service. That’s the report from RNS’  Jack Jenkins and Adelle M. Banks.

The Catholic conversion of JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, is part of a young conservative movement, the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein notes. 

Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, “do not share a faith, but they do both believe that religion plays an important role in family life,” according to the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas. 

• • •

Journalist McKay Coppins “set out to review every prayer offered at a Trump rally since he launched his 2024 campaign.

“I  compiled 58 in total — and what I found was both revealing and unsettling,” the writer noted on X.

Those 58 prayers totaled more than 17,000 words, according to Coppins’  article in The Atlantic.

This paragraph stood out to me:

​​There are many ways to parse the text. You could compare the number of times Trump’s name is mentioned (87) versus Jesus Christ’s (61). You could break down the demographics of the people leading the prayers: 45 men and 13 women; overwhelmingly evangelical, with disproportionate representation from Pentecostalism, a charismatic branch of Christianity that emphasizes supernatural faith healing and speaking in tongues. One might also be tempted to catalog the most comically incendiary lines (“Oh Lord, our Lord, we want to be awake and not woke”). But the most interesting way to look at these prayers is to examine the theological motifs that run through them.

• • •

Daniel Silliman, news editor for Christianity Today, is the author of a new religious biography of former President Richard Nixon.

“One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation” will be released Aug. 8 — the 50th anniversary of the late president’s resignation.

I got a review copy but decided to wait for the Kindle and Audible versions. That’s my go-to combination for reading books these days.

In the meantime, Silliman did a fascinating CT story on the one minister who urged Nixon to confess to the Watergate cover-up.

• • •

”Stunning.”

”Eloquently written.”

Those are just a few of the descriptions I’ve seen of Sam Kestenbaum’s Harper’s Magazine cover story on “The Demon Slayers.”

The award-winning religion writer details the “new age of American exorcisms.”

• • •

Look for a more normal Plug-in next week.

And try to stay cool.

Inside The Godbeat

Meagan Clark Saliashvili, former managing editor of ReligionUnplugged.com, has a new gig. She’s the new interim managing editor of Religion News Service.

Congrats, Meagan!

The Final Plug

I have “breaking news” — as my colleague Calvin Cockrell cleverly put it — concerning The Christian Chronicle’s Erik Tryggestad.

Tryggestad, um, fell down a Malaysian hill during a recent reporting trip to Southeast Asia.

The experience resulted in a painful injury — and “a mountain of compassion and care,” as the victim describes it in a personal column.

Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.

Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged 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.