The Overview (Tuesday, May 25)
Russell Moore is moving to Christianity Today, how relationships matter in conflicts between religious freedom and LGBT rights, and one nun's focus on mortality
Greetings from a special Tuesday edition of The Overview. Longtime readers know that this typically goes out on Mondays, but given that the U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to announce decisions yesterday, and considering one of these decisions could have been a case with major implications for religious liberty, I thought it would be prudent to wait.
Of course, the Court issued no such decision, and the next possible date for the decision is next week (when that comes out, expect a quick breakdown of the case and its implications here). So, forgive me for the unnecessary delay — onward to the Tuesday, May 25 edition of The Overview:
1) In a major development in the protestant community, Russell Moore is leaving the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for Christianity Today, where he will lead their new Public Theology Project. From CT’s news release:
The Public Theology Project will … reground and revitalize a beautiful and orthodox public theology for our day. It will convene a broad set of voices on matters of faith in the public square, publish content in multiple media that fleshes out the implications of the gospel for the whole of life, and host gatherings and events. It will also be the main outlet for Moore’s regular writing and his podcast, SignPosts.
“Christianity Today has meant a great deal to me in my faith journey,” said Moore. “I am thrilled to join the team and lead the Public Theology Project. We need to recover a theologically orthodox, intellectually credible, socially engaged, missiologically holistic, and generally connected witness for American evangelical Christianity.”
Moore’s role at the ERLC, the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, was not without controversy. Moore’s opposition to then-candidate Donald Trump during his first presidential run attracted criticism from across the rank-and-file within the SBC, especially among those who admired Trump’s bombastic personality applied in defense of Christian values. Indeed, in speaking with somebody who has been connected to the ERLC in the past, I remarked that Moore’s departure would accelerate the SBC’s civil war on political and cultural issues, to which this person simply responded, “I’m think it just ended.”
2) Speaking of Christianity Today, CT’s Liam Adams explains how several different Christian colleges are planning to welcome students to campus in the fall, and whether these students will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Adams highlights a variety of factors these colleges are considering: some are hesitant to require vaccinations out of a concern that enrollment could dip, while others are requiring vaccinations due to the college’s relationship with the broader community. As for the former, Adams writes,
Evangelical Christian colleges get about 80 percent of their revenue from tuition. Unlike big state schools and Ivy League institutions, they generally can’t rely on big endowments or donors. Year to year, the financial health of the school depends on the number of students arriving in the fall.
While John Brown University was not profiled in Adams’ article, we are in the midst of related conversations; I imagine most colleges around the country are. JBU did host several vaccination clinics during the spring semester, for folks on campus and in our community. And while I don’t have any insider knowledge of these discussions, I’d be very surprised if my university required students to be vaccinated as a condition of attending classes next semester. We’ll know soon enough.
3) I’ve written about Fairness for All, the legislative framework aimed at bridging tensions between religious liberty and LGBT rights, on multiple occasions. But in an article for the Christian Science Monitor, Harry Bruinius sheds light on a relationship between two opposing parties that could signal a way forward in this difficult area of political compromise.
Bruinius introduces attorneys Casey Pick and Kim Colby, whose disagreements on these issues evaporated in the midst of a personal tragedy for Pick:
In one of the early sessions, [Pick] and Ms. Colby were going at it “hammers and tongs,” she says, debating an especially sensitive question: What kinds of organizations can be considered religious, and thus protected under the nation’s laws in special ways?
Ms. Pick had to leave the room at times, however, to make the numbing logistical decisions necessary after a loved one dies: changing airline tickets, arranging the funeral, and informing others. In the middle of one of their breaks, she was in the hallway, near a corner, weeping quietly on the phone.
She looked up. Ms. Colby was standing a few feet away. When their eyes met, Ms. Colby held out her arms.
“And I let her hug me,” Ms. Pick says. “And it was just as powerful a moment as I have experienced. I was so exhausted, and I could only think it should have been my father, or somebody else, another family member to deal with all of this, but they were all gone.”
I’m certainly not the only one who has written about Fairness for All in recent years; indeed, it’s one of the most debated ideas at the intersection of religious freedom and LGBT rights. But Bruinius’s article is an important reminder that at the center of these conversations, always, are people.
And while our shared humanity won’t solve all our problems—Colby remarked that, after they shared a hug and a short conversation, “We went back in the room, and we started disagreeing again”—it can be helpful to remember that “the other side” is almost certainly not “other.”
4) Writing for his Substack newsletter—which you should subscribe to, by the way—Samuel James highlights a troubling phenomenon in our political culture: the tendency to believe in your innocence while proclaiming your opponents’ malevolence. With great precision, he writes:
We are rapidly becoming a public square that cannot tell the difference between ideas and personalities. We choose what we believe based on the opposite of whatever the people we dislike believe, and we tell ourselves that the Other Group is doing this but not us.
James later cautions against the tendency to let our desires drive our beliefs, rightly noting that such a framework inevitably leads to a “public epistemological crisis”of the sort destined to doom any organized society.
5) The New York Times’ Ruth Graham highlights the efforts of a nun to remind people that they are, someday in the future, going to die. This isn’t, to Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, a bleak endeavor. Instead, it’s helpful for people to remember their own mortality:
Sister Aletheia’s project has reached Catholics all over the country, via social media, a memento mori [Latin for “Remember your death”] prayer journal — even merchandise emblazoned with a signature skull. Her followers have found unexpected comfort in grappling with death during the coronavirus pandemic.
While being reminded of our mortality may be uncomfortable, that doesn’t change the fact that it is inevitable. Sister Aletheia—a former punk rock fanatic and Bryn Mawr alum—has discovered that people are increasingly looking to reflect on big, important questions. And what is more important than death?
Substance aside, please read this article. Graham is one of a handful of incredible storytellers in the world of religion journalism, and her skill is on full display here. The photos add rich detail, too. Seriously, check it out.
The Overview (Tuesday, May 25)
The story about Sister Aletheia just further solidifies my conviction that Catholics have infinitely better aesthetics than basically all protestant denominations. Say what you will theologically about saints, purgatory, or whatever else Southerners don't like about Catholics, but their brand is a whole lot more, shall I say, bad-ass than anyone else on the Martin Luther side of the Schism. Protestant churches have a history of dorky guys trying to recreate being cowboys (see The Great Adventure), while Catholicism has death nuns with a public image not too far off from Metallica. Lest we forget heavy metal and classical music share a lot in common, too. Likewise, it doesn't take too much work to interpret "Shout at the Devil" by Mötley Crüe a Christian song.