Happy Monday! Thanks for reading the 11th edition of North Carolina Religion Roundup, a newsletter that highlights major religion news and trends in the Triangle and greater NC.
I’m a reporter covering community colleges, postsecondary access, and faith at EducationNC, and a M.Div. student at Duke Divinity School. (If you’re interested, you can read more about the newsletter and why I started it here.) As always, I’d love any thoughts or feedback regarding parts of the roundup you particularly like, and/or anything you’d like to see in the future. Plus, I’d love it if you’d share this newsletter with a friend.
In a Nutshell, I highlight some NC religion stories to keep an eye on, starting with how some NC faith groups and leaders have responded to the U.S. Supreme Court’s vote to reverse Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protection of abortion last month.
And in What I’m Reading, I include my favorite religion read (and watch) this week.
In a Nutshell:
NC faith leaders, groups react to Roe v. Wade reversal
Since then, abortion is now banned in at least 10 states, according to a New York Times tracker, with more bans expected in the coming weeks. In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order last week aiming to uphold access to abortion services in the state. Cooper currently can veto restrictive abortions laws — NC Republicans have majorities in the House and Senate, but not the three-fifths supermajorities needed to override vetoes. That could change following next year’s midterms.
The majority of U.S. adults (61%) say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to Pew Research data. Most of those people also support some restrictions on abortions based on the stage of pregnancy (56%).
In North Carolina — and across the country — faith groups had varied reactions to the decision. Some celebrated, others lamented.
At the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, the decision answers decades of prayers but will continue to require advocacy, Deacon Josh Klickman told The News & Observer. Klickman said the diocese will continue backing maternity homes and other pregnancy support organizations. “We see this as promotion of civil rights, allowing states to make the decision to protect the unborn,” Klickman said. “That is some reason to celebrate when you have those kind of victories, but will violence, murder, suicide, spousal murders, domestic violence, will that continue even after policy? Yes. So abortion will continue.”
Todd Unzicker, the executive director-treasurer of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, said he was encouraged by the ruling, which he feels affirms the value of life “from womb to tomb.” Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS), sent an email to the Southeastern community celebrating the decision and calling for continued work to outlaw abortion in NC.
In Charlotte, at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Ballantyne, priest Miguel Sanchez read from the statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Today’s decision is also the fruit of the prayers, sacrifices, and advocacy of countless ordinary Americans from every walk of life,” the Charlotte Observer reported. “The pro-life movement deserves to be numbered among the great movements for social change and civil rights in our nation’s history.”
Charlotte churches had a variety of reactions Sunday to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Jodie Valade / Charlotte Observer
The North Carolina Council of Churches, a collection of statewide faith leaders from 18 denominations, has supported reproductive choice since 1970, executive director Rev. Jennifer Copeland told the N&O.
Pastor Nancy Petty of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church said the use of Christian theology as a basis for the decision is “sinful.” “The way in which these so-called Christian justices have used their Christian faith … is a grave sin that they are committing,” she told the N&O. “Christians particularly need to really examine, is it their faith that they’re promoting and proclaiming, or is it their politics?” The church hosted a “service of lamentation and a call to action” in response to the decision.
In Chatham, Brent Levy, pastor at The Local Church, told his congregation that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was “not nearly as simple as being pro-life or pro-choice,” the News + Record reported. “We know that life is more complex than this,” he said. “For those who are cheering this decision, there are important questions and calls to action related to the care of the mother and child before and especially after the child is born. For instance, what sort of support — financial and otherwise — will be needed? How are individuals and communities called to surround families with a network of support to meet the ongoing physical, mental, and spiritual demands of raising a child?”
White evangelicals are generally opposed to legal abortion, Pew data shows, but majorities across other Christian groups say abortion should sometimes be legal. (Although the survey was conducted among Americans of all religious backgrounds, including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, it did not obtain enough respondents who are religiously affiliated with non-Christian groups to report separately on their responses, the Pew Research report said.) Over 1,000 rabbis across North America are teaching and writing about the ways Judaism supports, and in some cases requires, terminating a pregnancy, through the National Council of Jewish Women. “I support the right to an abortion because of my Jewish faith, not in spite of it,” council CERO Sheila Katz said at a May protest. “Abortion access is a Jewish value.”
More than 60% of abortion patients have a religious affiliation, according to the most recent Guttmacher Institute data. Seventy percent of women who had abortions identified as Christian, according to a LifeWay Research report, with about a quarter ID-ing as protestant.
More on abortion and faith:
NBC News conducted six months of interviews with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women who have had abortions in North Carolina. Many of them viewed their abortions as supported by their religious beliefs. From the article: “Sidrah, a Muslim woman with three children, described herself as a ‘very religious person.’ She told us, ‘If there was any doubt in my mind that Islam does not allow it, I wouldn’t have gone through it.’”
Durham's Immaculata Catholic School denies job to transgender parishioner
Wilhelmina Indermaur had been planning to take a role at the K–8 Durham school as an in-class aide for a disabled child she would nanny this summer, INDY Week reported. Instead, she learned the school had prohibited her from working on its campus due to her gender identity. “At first I had a kind of crisis of like, can I even be Catholic anymore? Can I support being a part of an institution that continues to do all these awful things?” Indermaur told INDY. “But the spirituality is really important to me. And I feel like the church won’t change unless people inside of it are working to change it.”
NC pastor accused in $24 million fake Cartier bracelet case
A pastor accused in a $24 million fraud case after North Carolina agents seized fake Cartier bracelets from his Chapel Hill church remains at large in China, the N&O reported, skipping his court date last month. Jiangang “Frank” Lan, 37, failed to appear in Orange County for his counterfeit jewelry case, raising his bail to $1 million. In 2019, the website for Deer Park Community Church on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill listed Lan as its pastor, along with his wife, Leah Peng. It’s unclear if the church is still operating.
Hindu Society of North Carolina provides community
Indian Americans make up the largest Asian American ethnic group in North Carolina, WRAL reported. 96-year-old Gangahar Sharma and his wife 90-year-old Saroj Sharma first established the Hindu Society of North Carolina in Morrisville in 1976. It now has 3,000 members and it’s open to all, says Saroj Sharma, "And we want to grow and we want to work with everybody. It’s not only Hindu. In this place, everybody is welcome, because God is one."
Wake Forest University School of Divinity fights the HIV epidemic in the South
Allison Mathews leads the Winston-Salem program, the Gilead COMPASS Faith Coordinating Center, which is part of a $100 million, multipronged effort to bring down HIV infection rates and destigmatize the disease throughout the American South, InterfaithAmerica reported in February. “Faith leaders have this long legacy of social justice advocacy in fighting for people’s human rights, but we also have to push them on HIV, unfortunately, because for the past 40 years many faith leaders have been silent,” Mathews said. “When the disease is destigmatized, people are more likely to seek out information, get support and access life-extending treatments. We are solely focused on the intersection of HIV and faith.”
Atheist worker fired after refusing to attend company’s Christian prayer
An atheist construction manager refused to continue attending a home repair company’s mandatory daily Christian prayer sessions for employees — resulting in his firing, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in a complaint against the Greensboro-based business. His boss told him “he did not have to believe in God, and he did not have to like the prayer meetings, but he had to participate” before the worker was fired in the fall of 2020, according to the complaint against Aurora Pro Services. The business is being sued for religious discrimination, the N&O reported, and is accused of punishing workers who did not want to attend the meetings, which also involved Bible readings and roll call.
Pay inequity at Methodist churches in North and South Carolina
A 12-year study of Methodist churches in North and South Carolina found that white pastors get paid significantly more than Black pastors, UM News said. United Methodist pastors should have their salaries set by annual conferences on a scale based on job performance and experience, two researchers said, which would reduce the salary disparity between Black and white clergy. Currently, local church leaders set pastor salaries based in part on the wealth of their church. In NC, more than 90% of United Methodist congregations are primarily white, while 6% are Black, according to the study. In South Carolina, 71% of churches are white and 27% are Black, the article said.
Christian school duped veterans on GI Bill in NC, advocates say
After more than 10 years in the military, Ismail Somai decided to use his GI Bill benefits to study at a seminary school near Fort Bragg, the N&O reported. The school, which was part of House of Prayer Christian Church, promised him a bachelor’s degree in advanced biblical studies. He says he was deceived by a church that operated more like a cult than a religious organization, and a veterans advocacy organization says the church as a whole has defrauded veterans out of at least $7 million over the last two years. The church was raided by the FBI on June 23, according to ABC 11.
While not perfect, the article subhead says, “Mormon No More” is a heartfelt docuseries that skillfully centers the painful experiences of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints. “The series is not a hit job on the church,” Riess writes, and “it generally resists cheap shots and focuses instead on individual people’s deeply human stories of love, faith and loss.”If you haven’t, I highly recommend watching the docuseries (available on Hulu). From the RNS piece:
The series skillfully weaves the stories of Sally and Lena with other LGBTQ Mormons and former Mormons, including Matt Easton, the BYU alum who came out as gay in a Valedictorian speech, and David Matheson, a prominent therapist who counseled hundreds of gay Mormon men in “conversion therapy” to try to change their sexual orientation before recanting that harmful approach in 2019. We also get to know Brad Talbot, a gay former BYU student who risks arrest for organizing a “light the Y” celebration that attempted to offer hope to LGBTQ students by illuminating the university’s famous “Y” sign in rainbow colors. These and other stories keep the series’ focus on how difficult it is to be a gay or trans member of the LDS Church, and how much these members have tried to live their faith, even to the point of believing their lives are not worth living. (Every episode ends with a hotline page, encouraging LGBTQ viewers who may be considering suicide to get help from groups like the Trevor Project.)
That's it for this week's edition of North Carolina Religion Roundup. Thanks for reading. Until next time. And in the meantime, I gladly welcome any tips, feedback or news you think I haven’t included but should in future editions. — Hannah
As always, I love the collection of resources and materials you share for readers! I leave this week's roundup feeling more informed about various relgious views on Roe v Wade and more empathetic to perspectives not my own! High five!
As always, I love the collection of resources and materials you share for readers! I leave this week's roundup feeling more informed about various relgious views on Roe v Wade and more empathetic to perspectives not my own! High five!