Religion

It was the summer of 1954, and Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was locked in a primary fight with fellow Democrat Dudley Dougherty. Flush with cash, Texas oil tycoons threw their support behind Dougherty through tax-exempt organizations like Facts Forum and the Committee for Constitutional Government. But Johnson, political shark that he was, quietly slipped in a new amendment to the IRS code banning tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan political activity. Lyndon Johnson sailed through the primary, and the name Dudley Dougherty became lost to history. The Johnson Amendment lived on, though in the present age, it has been contorted by political activists to crack down on Christians.Johnson’s intention was not to censor religious institutions.

Mainline Protestantism, once a primary cultural and political pillar of American life, is in freefall. Traditional Protestant denominations – Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others – now account for less than 11 percent of the population, down 40 percent since 2007, according to the Pew Religious Landscape Study. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the main Lutheran body in the United States, had more than five million members when it was formed in 1988. That number now stands at fewer than three million. By 2050, the ELCA projects that membership will have dropped to a mere 67,000. At that point, American Lutheranism will virtually cease to exist as a denomination – soon to be joined, no doubt, by other stalwarts of the Reformation.

Was the first American Pope ushered in on a wave of suspect, last-minute betting? Something odd seems to have been happening on at least one online gambling platform – Polymarket – in the minutes before the new Pope was announced. I know because I happened to place a bet just before Pope Leo XIV walked out on the balcony of St. Peter’s – and watched the odds dramatically shortening before my eyes.   Before his election as Pope, Leo was Cardinal Robert Prevost. I’d barely heard the name until a week ago, when I joined a tour of the Vatican laid on by the Holy See press office. We were not, disappointingly, to be shown the Sistine Chapel, the world’s most splendid polling station for the few days of a papal election.

One icy day in January, the 130-year-old First Methodist Church in Princeton, Indiana, burned to the ground after years of slow decline. Through the years the church’s beautiful crescent sanctuary had seen christenings, confirmations, weddings, funerals, the full circle of small-town religious life. Downstairs hosted the Pinewood Derby and the yearly pancake and sausage breakfast. Boy Scouts learned first-aid there; seniors practiced CPR. That was all long ago. The destruction left by the fire was so complete authorities in the small Southwest Indiana county seat couldn’t find a proximal cause. But ultimately, it was gradual social and generational change that left the building underused, expensive to maintain, impractical and finally vulnerable.