Chuck Todd

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Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues

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Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues

Ah, yes, those omnipresent American evangelical Protestants.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the media can't avoid ‘em. And in case anyone doubts media fascination, consider last Sunday's episode of NBC's influential, anachronistically-named gabfest "Meet the Press."

In the midst of a hyper-clogged October political agenda, the show devoted a major segment to what host Chuck Todd called "the debate among evangelicals about Donald Trump and whether he represents their values." Click here for the transcript. This was excerpted from a 30-minute piece that's streaming on Peacock.

The segment led off with a visit to the nondenominational, independent Patriot Church outside Knoxville, where the Ken Peters averred: "I think President Trump is a miracle. I think God picked Donald Trump, an imperfect vessel, to be the champion of His people." This is a congregation that has inspired almost as many headlines as it has members.

Yes, Pew Research tells us Trump scored 84% with white evangelical voters in 2020. But politicized preacher Peters is hardly representative of the sprawling and diverse network of evangelical clergy, churches, denominations, campuses and agencies.

An older-style evangelical pastor, the Rev. Phil Nordstrom of Knoxville's Life Church, told NBC that "we're trying to not fight the culture wars from the pulpit." Todd then interviewed the Rev. Russell Moore, former Southern Baptist social-issues spokesman turned "public theologian" at Christianity Today magazine, who fretted over Trump-era politicization of the evangelical image.

A prior Guy Memo weighed the possibility that a newsworthy evangelical crack-up is upon us, while another Memo focused on the related Donald Trump political angle. Now there are further developments.

In case journalists are gathering string for a broad state-of-the-evangelical-union article, The Guy looked for perspective in a real period piece from 1977, our Time magazine Christmas cover story, "That Old Time Religion: The Evangelical Empire."

Now this feature was written just before the advent of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Ronald Reagan's presidency, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and presidential run, the rightward doctrinal lurch by the Southern Baptist Convention, the rise of anti-abortion militancy and all the rest that would gobble up headlines in succeeding decades.


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There he goes again: New York Times Editor Dean Baquet on journalists getting religion

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There he goes again: New York Times Editor Dean Baquet on journalists getting religion

There he goes again.

Yes, the GetReligionistas noticed the online hubbub caused by that Chuck Todd remark the other day on Meet the Press, when he read part of a letter to the editor sent to The Lexington Herald-Leader that took a shot at, well, a certain type of Bible reader that went to the polls in 2016.

The problem, you see, is not a matter of politics — strictly speaking.

The problem is with that these knuckle-draggers have the wrong religious views, when it comes to the Bible. Here’s the key language, as it ran in Newsweek:

"[Why] do good people support Trump? It's because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales," the letter read. "This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good. ... The more fairy tales and lies he tells the better they feel. …

“Show me a person who believes in Noah's ark and I will show you a Trump voter."

Well now, that was certainly a quote worth discussing in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

I argued that this Meet the Press exchange was, in a way, a modern version of the classic shot at Richard Nixon voters that was reported in the classic Joe McGinnis book, “The Selling of the President.” Old folks like me will remember that quote, which said Nixon was “the president of every place in this country which does not have a bookstore.”

In other words, there are smart people and dumb people and people whose biblical views do not match those of NBC News are in the second camp.

As I have been saying for years, religious conservatives are wrong if they think that many elite journalists are anti-religion. That’s a simplistic thing to say. Many journalists believe that there are good religious people and bad religious people and that one of the duties of the press is to advocate for the views of the good religious people. Journalists get to tell us which doctrines are true and which ones are false.


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Pope's (maybe) hell comment sparks firestorm, while NPR offers Easter spit-take (and more!)

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First things first: Yes, your GetReligionistas received your messages and saw your many tweets about National Public Radio's amazing Easter correction. 

However, it's important to see the larger picture.

In terms of strange news and social-media -- Twitter in particular -- was this an amazing (Western) Holy Week  and Easter or what? Is the pope Catholic?

I'll deal with some of the tweets first, but it's important to know where we are going -- which is the larger story linked to what Pope Francis did or didn't say about hell, in his latest sit-down with his 93-year-old atheist friend, and journalist, Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica.

Hold that thought, because we have quite a distance to go before we get there. In my opinion, the most amazing part of that Holy Week story was the Vatican's sort-of denial that was issued to straighten out this latest Scalfari drama.

The now famous NPR correction was attached to a story about this Francis statement, under the headline: "Pope To World: Hell Does Exist." 

The Washington Post actually published an analysis piece about this correction, placing it in the context of decades of debate about media bias linked to religion. Here is the top of that piece:

An NPR report on Good Friday described Easter inaccurately and, in doing so, practically begged Christians to renew charges that the media is biased against them.
“Easter -- the day celebrating the idea that Jesus did not die and go to hell or purgatory or anywhere like that, but rather arose into heaven -- is on Sunday,” read an article on NPR’s website.
Easter, in fact, is the day when Christians celebrate their belief in the earthly resurrection of Jesus.


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