Meet the Press

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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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Muslim-Americans are uncomfortably yanked into center of new political storm

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Muslim-Americans are uncomfortably yanked into center of new political storm

Time for beat reporters to dig out their lists of good U.S. Muslim sources again.

Quite suddenly, the United States has tumbled into a major interfaith moment. The current episode began with a New Hampshire town hall question tossed at GOP candidate Donald Trump on September 17. In case you missed it, a man wearing a TRUMP T-shirt stated:

“We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American -- birth certificate, man. But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?”

 Note: Get rid of alleged training camps? Or get rid of American Muslims, who are the country’s “problem”?  

Either way it was an unusually perfervid attack, compounded by raising of the oft-refuted but persistent claims that President Barack Obama is Muslim and also wasn’t born in America so  is an illegal president. Trump’s fuzzy response didn’t address any of that and he was uncharacteristically silent the following day.

Meanwhile Washington’s Council on American-Islamic Relations was quick on the uptake, as usual. Its chief lobbyist Robert McCaw said that “in failing to challenge the questioner’s anti-Muslim bigotry and his apparent call for the ethnic cleansing of American Muslims, Donald Trump sent the message that Islamophobia is acceptable.”


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Listen! Eric Metaxas gives GetReligion a shoutout in interview of David Gregory

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As we noted earlier this month, David Gregory, former moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," has written a new book titled "How's Your Faith?: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey."

On his national radio show, Eric Metaxas just interviewed Gregory about his new book.

Here's one cool thing about the interview: Metaxas gives a nice shoutout to GetReligion and our illustrious leader, tmatt.

Metaxas suggests that GetReligion "isn't snarky at all but just wonderful reporting on how the press doesn't get religion." Actually, we are snarky occasionally, but on our best days, we try to be nice and informative.

By all means,  listen to Metaxas' conversation with Gregory. (The part with the former NBC newsman starts about the 10:30 mark.) 

For a little more insight on Gregory and his faith, check out Religion News Service senior national correspondent Cathy Grossman's recent feature.


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A newsman's faith: David Gregory opens up about his spiritual journey

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Mostly, GetReligion critiques religion news coverage in the mainstream media.

But occasionally, we simply make note of stories that point to the relevance of religion as an issue and a part of life in the journalism marketplace.

Such is the case with this post, which calls attention to news that David Gregory, former moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," has written a new book titled “How’s Your Faith?: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey."

Gregory shares his story firsthand in today's Wall Street Journal:

The top of Gregory's Journal column:

I’ve spent a career in journalism questioning others, and yet it was three questions asked of me that pushed me to figure out, as everyone must at some point: What do I believe, fundamentally, about life and the world? The first question came, however unusually, from a president of the United States.
“Gregory, how’s your faith?” George W. Bush asked me one December afternoon in the Oval Office. We had met privately before, as I had covered the entirety of his presidency, but that day in 2008 stood out in part because I had recently been promoted to moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”


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While faithful fill pews, movers and shakers can’t get enough of Sunday a.m. TV gabfests

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While faithful fill pews, movers and shakers can’t get enough of Sunday a.m. TV gabfests

Movers and shakers from the realms of media and politics can’t get enough of those five Sunday morning TV news gabfests from Washington. Meanwhile, millions of churchgoers ignore the weekly action, unless they religiously remember to set their DVRs.

It’s an important season for these influential shows due to the upcoming  presidential campaign, tight competition for ratings, and three big changes in the cast of characters.

On behalf of his fellow geezers, the Religion Guy is tickled that spry Bob Schieffer, 78, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” regularly grabs more viewers than the younger hosts.  This summer he retires to be replaced by John Dickerson  (a former colleague at “Time” magazine). After last year’s tumult over David Gregory, NBC’s venerable “Meet the Press” is gaining ground with replacement Chuck Todd. In the third switch, CNN cable has tapped Jake Tapper as Candy Crowley’s “State of the Union” successor come June.

The other two personalities: Chris Wallace, Son Of Mike and a onetime “Meet the Press” anchor, has led “Fox NewsSunday” the past dozen years. It’s much the ratings also-ran on broadcast but nears audience parity due to Fox News cable reruns.  Onetime Friend Of Bill George Stephanopoulos continues on ABC’s “This Week.” (Religion beat veterans know his father Robert as the longtime dean of Greek Orthodoxy’s archdiocesan cathedral in New York, and his mother Nikki as the Greek-American church’s news director.)

Here’s what we got in the entirety of the five shows for May 10, chosen because there was no one commanding news story gobbling up air. That would have allowed for a timely little roundup on religion and the 2016 race.


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