The Overview (Tuesday, June 8)
How COVID changed religious freedom, a leaked letter rocks the SBC, polling on the Equality Act raises eyebrows, and more.
Another summer, another year without a Portland Trail Blazers championship.
I’ve been a fan of the Blazers since I was a kid. Growing up just outside Portland left me few options of hometown teams to root for, and the Blazers were a fun draw. And the city loved them, selling out home games for nearly 20 consecutive seasons.
The team does have one championship, winning in 1977 against the favored Philadelphia 76ers. They’ve also been to two other NBA Finals, losing to the Detroit Pistons in 1990 and Michael Jordan in 1992. But they’ve come close only three times since then, losing in the conference finals in 1999 to the San Antonio Spurs, in 2000 against the Los Angeles Lakers, and in 2019 to the Golden State Warriors.
Winning this year would have been miraculous, even with the routine heroics and otherworldly talent of Damian Lillard. Heck, even the best game of his career couldn’t get Portland over a the hump in a crucial playoff game (the Blazers lost the next game, and the series, to the Denver Nuggets). As was the case all season, Portland simply couldn’t keep pace against better, more well-rounded teams.
There are two teams I follow closely: the Oregon Ducks football team, and the Blazers. And while both teams have given me plenty to cheer for over the years, neither has ever brought home a championship in my lifetime. I watch friends of mine celebrate their teams’ titles with envy, wondering whether I’ll ever experience that joy as a fan.
But even if that’s the case, it’s been a joy watching Lillard evolve from a relative unknown coming out of college into the All-NBA player he is today. Every year all but one team loses their final game, but not all those teams have a player like Dame to root for. I guess what I’m saying is, as a Blazers fan who has never seen a championship, it could be worse.
With that, here’s the Tuesday, June 8 edition of The Overview:
1) Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News reports on how the pandemic forever changed Free Exercise law in the United States. She’s not wrong that the pandemic definitely affected the state of religious freedom jurisprudence, although I probably would have gone with “accelerated changes to” Free Exercise law — the ingredients were already there, but the pandemic served as a timely catalyst.
2) Dallas also highlights a recent conversation hosted by the American Enterprise Institute about an important new book: Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics. Authored by political scientists David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman, and John Green, the book examines an increasingly secular United States and its implications for the future of American politics.
3) The New York Times’ Will Wright shares the story of a seminary in Virginia that has begun paying reparations to the descendents of slaves. The Virginia Theological Seminary established a fund and enlisted genealogists to identify people whose ancestors worked at the seminary without pay, prior to or even after the Civil War. Some descendents have already started receiving checks — $2,100 this year, according to the story.
4) Last week Religion News Service shared a 2020 letter addressed from Russell Moore to SBC leaders. In the letter, Moore details a number of troubling incidents about sexual abuse and race relations in the denomination, incidents that many believe prompted Moore’s recent departure from the SBC.
The letter was a bombshell, and a number of leaders in the denomination quickly attempted to direct the conversation to the health of individual SBC congregations and away from “denominational intrigue” and “drama.”
It’s certainly true that not all SBC churches are actively engaged in the sort of evil described by Moore, but that doesn’t diminish the need for tough conversations right now. David French puts it best: “It’s hard to overemphasize how much the church’s defensiveness is at odds with the imperative of repentance.”
5) Christianity Today’s Bonnie Kristian breaks down recent polling on the Equality Act. Focusing on a March 2021 survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute, Kristian believes that the Act is not as popular among the public as pollsters believe. Essentially, she points out that question wording matters a great deal — people may be supportive of protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in public services, but what happens when the other side is introduced into the question? For example, she writes,
Respondents weren’t asked, for instance, if they see a difference between requiring a conservative, religious baker to bake for a gay wedding and requiring him to sell a gay customer any generic cookie already in the case.
This is an important distinction, and one that the PRRI survey couldn’t account for this time around. While the Equality Act may be popular in general terms, when specific elements and objections are raised, it may be more controversial that it seems.
Stories like the ones about Russell Moore and the SBC never cease to blow my mind when I try to rationalize why the leaders of denominations and other institutions hesitate on or actively retard efforts to investigate claims of sexual assault. I hesitate to put forth the idea that there's some kind of conspiracy, but besides the fear of being found out for one's own behavior, what is there to lose by purging these people from your ranks? If anything, if you frame it properly, you're likely to be lauded as a hero and to have your popular image greatly amplified. Even if you didn't care about taking care of one's congregants, you could still be motivated to speak out and/or take the charges seriously if only for the fame and respect that would come along with being a firebrand prosecutor of sexual abusers. There's probably not a more hated—universally, anyways—group in America right now.
Sometimes people will say, "Oh, but this preacher is so respected, we can't have a scandal like this," and I actually cannot understand how that is supposed to be a defense. Respect is earned, and is not a permanent quality. While it is perfectly understandable why someone's heretofore upstanding and moral behavior would lead one to doubt the veracity of claims of sexual abuse etc., there is no reason why that previous reputation should be cited as a reason for arresting the progress of serious probes and investigations. Obviously exceptions abound, but in this case, the behavior of the SBC seems egregious. You'd think these people would realize the fire that they're playing with, what with race and sexual abuse and all. There is no better ammunition against Christians than these issues. It'd be nice to think that the people in charge of these denominations and churches were aware of the fact that their job is dealing with the eternal consequences of people's souls, but alas, there are no such illusions left to believe in the 21st century. I hope earthly justice comes around the block some day for the perpetrators. It'd be the least God could do.