Friday 29th of March 2024

the battle within the CP religious publication...

trumptrump

As a rabid atheist (GOD DOES NOT EXIST), Gus Leonisky is fascinated by the dilemmas faced by Christians, especially the extreme “evangelicals”. I thus read a few Christian websites, I keep an eye on the ludicrous bible verses (less these days as I know where to find the conflict of ideas) and keep an eye upon the religious hypocrisy that filters morality into restrictive political opinions. I have exposed a few of these “hypocrites” or “moralisators” that will take you around the paddock with circular arguments, in which the "love from god” features as icing-sugar on top of turdy arguments. 

 

One of the latest blooming idiotic article by Michael Brown at the Christian Post, a committed Trump voter, is about abortion…:

 

If you are a woman who believes that it is your moral right to have an abortion, you are likely quite angry or frightened over the enactment of the Texas Heartbeat Bill. All the more is the case if you live in Texas. And you likely think that people like me, conservative, male, pro-life Christians who are glad to see the bill enacted, are heartless, controlling, misogynistic monsters.

 

After all, you reason, what gives us the right to tell you what you can do with your own body? What makes us any different than the religious fanatics in other countries who put all kinds of restrictions on women? And how dare we interfere with these critical, life-impacting decisions that only the woman should make? Who do we think we are?

 

EXACTLY… But Brown has not finished with you, woman… He carries on like:  “Okay, woman, you’ve been raped and are pregnant, but have you seen the result of an abortion, the destruction of a new DNA brimming creature”. This is the gist of the argument by Brown who ends with: 

 

Third, know that, while we are thrilled to see the Texas bill enacted and hope that it will be the first of many similar bills nationally, many of us are thinking about you too. We are saddened and burdened because of your own fear and anger and are praying for God’s best in your lives.

 

As pro-life followers of Jesus, we care about your life too.

 

 

This is beyond hypocrisy… Brown is a creature from god’s delusion. He oozes god from all his being. 

 

 

At this stage, it is ludicrous for a poor woman to be made to carry the child of a rapist (or a killer/murderer) because it’s god’s will or the new life, which is not conscious, is valuable to… To whom? I can tell you, I’ve seen many of these poor women, because most of them cannot afford the “procedure” or the “rape pill”, and end up in despair for the rest of their life — a despair that can only turn as anger towards "the god that loves ya”. Depressed? You ain’t seen depression! 

 

Beyond this the kid is likely to be traumatised to learn that his father was/is a violent man and that his mother murdered his dad. Eventually the pastor of the church where the kid tries to find solace, rapes him. Good, mate. If this was fiction, I would not mention it, but this is often what life is for the destitute. God or no god… I know abortion is a delicate subject for loony Christians but the decision is that of a woman — especially if she’s not a believer. A state like Texas that decides to ban abortion on religious ground is the pits of old smelly conservatism… 

 

But I was fascinated to read the article below by Napp Nazworth, whom I had noted a few times at CP for being a bit more conscious — I mean somewhat more awake — about the reality of being human, despite Napp being a strongly committed Christian. 

 

Here I will reiterate that GOD DOES NOT EXIST and that religious beliefs in any form or shape, whether Taliban, Muslim, Jewish or Christian, or Martian, are only delusions — manufactured psychological illusions — devised by “old men” to control other people into submission, even with "the love of god" — and this includes Michael Brown. 

 

To my personal views, the concepts of the original sin and of the last judgement do not make any sense whatsoever. As an atheist, this is not my place to explain this, but for you to ask the questions and discover the depth of the religious nonsense and its various implication from the Taliban control of women to the often sexist of various evangelical organisations. Satan does not exist for the same reason that “he” does not make any sense either. Humans are their own relative good or bad destiny.

 

Religion is ingrained from a young age in most people, using rituals and theatre of behaviour with props…. I know it can be very depressing to let go of this brainwashing induced godly illusion. It takes an enormous amount of courage to become human. It takes an enormous amount of acceptance of nature to become an intelligent human for whom death, like that of a fading leaf, is a final oblivion of purpose. It takes an enormous bright spark to enjoy life as it is and make it serene, peaceful and productive while knowing the end is rewardless. And this realisation is the amazing reward if we look for one. 

 

Sorry, I digressed… Here is the interesting article by Nazworth which raises a lot of questions, including why many evangelicals supported Trump. My own conclusion is that even if Biden was a Christian (Catholic), he had to go with the progressive to be elected... The progressive are in favour of abortion when needed... thus many evangelicals had to go against Biden.

 

I have truncated some parts of the article as to present a “digest” of the content.

 

Read the lot at:

 

https://medium.com/arc-digital/how-the-christian-post-sold-its-soul-for-trump-4294662f7781

 

-------------------------

 

How The Christian Post Sold Its Soul For Trump

 

The inside story of a major Christian publication gradually joining Team Trump and losing itself along the way

 

 

Napp Nazworth

 

 

22/10/2020

 

I was politics editor of The Christian Post from 2011 to 2019. I watched it go from anti-Trump to reluctant-Trump to pro-Trump. When leadership made it clear the site would pledge its allegiance to Trump, I faced a tough choice: Should I stay or should I go?

This is the story of CP’s gradual descent into Trumpism, and how its embrace of a man who is a walking repudiation of all that Christianity holds dear provides a microcosm of the festering wounds within American evangelicalism itself.

 

The Nightmare Before Christmas

On December 23, 2019, I was told by Michelle Vu, my boss at The Christian Post, to publish a pro-Trump op-ed as an editorial, meaning it was to express the position of the media organization. It can’t be an editorial, I explained, because I don’t agree with it and I’m an editor. Vu said she would call me back.

The second call from Vu came quickly. When the conversation took a more ominous tone, I grabbed my voice recorder.

“… right now I know that you’re very upset about this and it is your decision whether you can accept that or not. If you can’t, then we will discuss after that. OK?” Vu said.

I replied, “You just … we had this conversation where you were like, ‘we don’t want to position ourselves as being pro-Trump or anti-Trump.’ Do you understand what this op-ed is doing?”

“Actually, OK, let me backtrack,” Vu said, “I know what I said and why you think that, but we have ‘NeverTrump’ articles on CP. It’s not like we’re only, but actually [CEO] Chris [Chou] and my view, we agree on this. This is CP’s view, you know, and within CP there may be people who disagree and we publish it. It’s not like we’re not letting you publish.”

 

That wasn’t true; more on that later.

“But this is CP’s view,” Vu continued. “So that is the fundamental question. Can you work in this? If you can’t, then we need to discuss. Like, you know, if you can continue. CP is not firing you, but you might quit over this. I understand that.”

I responded, “You will destroy the reputation of The Christian Post if you go in this direction.”

After I continued trying to convince Vu that she was making a bad decision, she said, “I understand that you strongly disagree and you, this is unbiblical blah blah blah, but I really, it’s just a fundamental issue right now, because we strongly want to publish this. This is our view. So, we need to discuss now if you can continue to work in this environment or not.”

“I can’t. Of course I can’t,” I answered.

The conversation continued for several more minutes. Vu assured me that she didn’t want me to leave and wanted to know if there was a compromise we could reach. The compromise, I explained, was to publish it as an op-ed rather than an editorial, but Vu wouldn’t accept that.

It used to be that CP would deal with disagreements through what we called “editor chats.” But those days were gone. They had no desire to even seek my input, let alone to arrive at a compromise editorial position. I pointed out that the editorial’s claims about Trump’s evangelical support were incorrect in an analysis I had just published on the site the day before. That article was still on CP’s homepage as we spoke.

“OK, Napp, like, I’m not having an editor’s chat right now,” Vu responded. “Do you want to take time to think about this and then talk to me? … No one wants you to leave but we have to publish this. This is really our view.”

Later in the conversation Vu clarified the purpose of the editorial.

“Think about what you’re saying with this,” I said. “You’re going to be telling the world, ‘We are now on Team Trump.’ That’s what this editorial is saying, if you put it under CP editorial.”

“I understand. Yeah. We are,” Vu replied.

After the phone call, I got a text from Vu offering one last compromise: Would I stay if I could publish a response to the editorial?

I considered her offer. I asked myself, could I still do some good if I stayed?

To understand the choice I made, I first need to take you back.

 

New Kids on the Block

The Christian Post was founded in 2004, in the early days of internet journalism, and its style reflects that. In those years, clicks were king. Few news sites had gone subscription-based, so revenue was pretty much exclusively based on ad placement and how many people visited your pages. This meant quantity over quality, and great headlines were prioritized above mediocre content.

Success was fleeting. What worked one day might not work the next. As online news matured and the Google gods demanded quality for higher search placement, CP adjusted its model, but continued to be haunted by its founding ethos.

About midway through my tenure, editors began the odious task of quietly deleting all the crap that had piled up on the site over the years. More focus was placed on quality, but old habits remained.

While I never got the sense that CP’s peers in the publishing world respected us all that much, whenever we did get recognition for our work, such as when we received praise from an evangelical leader or megachurch pastor, the praise was shared across the company.

While I was there, CP was never run by evangelicals of the Trumpian sort. Trump-supporting evangelicals are generally like Trump supporters in general — old, white, male, and rural or suburban. Most of the staff at CP are none of those, and instead tend to be young, urban, non-white, and first or second generation immigrants. I reported to women younger than me. A typical Trump voter is more like me, a middle-aged white male, but few at CP fit that mold.

Before joining CP I worked in academia for six years. Working at CP was an uneasy fit at first, but academics and journalists share a common mission: to be truth seekers and truth tellers. This overlap really helped.

My job at CP was a mix of frustrating and exciting. My Ph.D. specialized in religion and politics and my dissertation was on the Christian Right, so I was able to continue writing on the topics that interested me. But the quick turnaround times meant I would never really do any deep research or carefully construct a paper like I would in academia. I didn’t have any training in journalism when CP hired me, but like many new reporters they brought on, the editors were patient with me and helped hone my craft. The quantity of writing also made me a much better writer.

Eventually, CP editors gained enough confidence in me that I didn’t have to pitch my articles before writing them. It wasn’t long before I was promoted to editor. For someone like me — a politically and theologically conservative evangelical with a non-journalist academic background — CP may have been the only news site where that would’ve been possible.

 

Grano and Land

Senior Managing Editor John Grano was previously the founder and editor of a publication that specialized in national defense news. After selling his company, the self-described “New York cowboy” bought a farm in northern Virginia to raise cattle and ride horses. He was living his dream when he got the call from CP to serve in a part-time advisory role. The editors leaned on him often for help. Grano occasionally reminded us that his cows come first.

Executive Editor Richard Land led the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission when CP first hired him, then later became president of Southern Evangelical Seminary. He was often relied upon for his theological insights and his deep knowledge of Washington politics and the SBC.

It was wise of CP to bring Grano and Land on board. All the upper management were young, in their 20s and 30s, which meant they needed people with experience they could turn to for advice.

Land is nothing like Trump on issues of race and immigration. He was one of the primary figures leading the SBC to grapple with its racist past. The ERLC also joined the pro-immigration Evangelical Immigration Table under his leadership.

Land is also nothing like his public image. He has a great sense of humor. Since his public interviews discuss serious topics, those who don’t know him don’t get to see this other side. If the multiverse is real, there’s another Richard Land somewhere doing stand-up right now. Sharp-witted, his humor often worked on many levels. One of my favorites was when he joked that Matt Drudge, founder of The Drudge Report, is what he would be like if he had never become a Christian.

I brought the idea of doing a yearly April Fools article to CP. I usually came up with the headlines and wrote several of them under the pseudonym “D.S. Tractor.” Other editors were skeptical at first but Land was always supportive.(Land was my partner in crime when it came to comedy. When the other editors would moan at my cheesy jokes, they often evoked a hearty, infectious belly laugh from Land.) Our 2015 entry was titled, “Grape Juice Companies Concerned About Profits After Southern Baptists Announce Switch to Wine for Communion.” Land thought it was hilarious. He got some angry phone calls from some Southern Baptist pastors. “It’s just a joke,” he’d tell his humorless colleagues.

Land’s political views are mostly aligned with a majority of Southern Baptist pastors, but there were occasions when his convictions led him to go against the grain. In 2003, he spoke out against Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defiance of a court order to remove a 10 Commandments display from government property. And he was outspoken against the George W. Bush administration’s use of torture in the War on Terror. He knew that most Southern Baptists disagreed with him on those issues, but that didn’t silence him.

Those who don’t know Land personally might also be surprised at how progressive he is on women’s issues. Privately, he criticizes the misogyny of fellow Southern Baptist pastors. Evangelical views on the role of women in the home are more formed by 1950’s era white suburban American culture than by the Bible, he once declared on an editor’s chat.

I mention these things at the beginning of my story to show that Land had the capacity to make different choices, better choices, than what you’ll see at the end of this story.

 

Trump Runs for President

In February of 2016, Trump was leading in the race to become the Republican presidential nominee. In some of the media coverage, Trump was being presented as the preferred candidate of evangelicals. The editors — Melissa Barnhart, Grano, Land, Vu, and myself — were concerned about this development. As one of the nation’s leading evangelical news sites, we all believed at the time that we needed to make it clear that Trump didn’t represent us.

I suggested that we write an editorial. The editor chats were frequent at this time, at least twice a week and every day some weeks. It was common to bounce ideas off each other to come up with plans to improve our coverage. We had never published an editorial before so I wasn’t sure how the idea would be received. Barnhart and Vu seemed reluctant at first, but Grano and Land were immediately enthusiastic and the idea took off.

Most evangelicals, especially evangelical leaders, didn’t support Trump in the early days of the nomination contests.

Gallup surveys in 2015 found that only 22 percent of “highly religious” Republicans had a favorable view of Trump. Ten other candidates had higher favorables. Ben Carson was the most favored among highly religious Republicans at 55 percent. (Not-religious Republicans were the least favorable of Trump at 17 percent. Trump had his strongest support among the moderately religious, 36 percent, at that time.)

March 2016 analysis of American National Election Study data by political scientist Tobin Grant found that Trump’s strongest support came from evangelicals who don’t attend church and hold racial resentment. Another study looking at the same data by researcher Sean McElwee and political scientist Jason McDaniel similarly concluded that racism and anti-immigrant bigotry, not economic anxiety, best explained Trump’s support.

An April 2016 PRRI survey found that 55 percent of self-identified white evangelicals had an unfavorable view of Trump.

Evangelical and Christian Right leaders also opposed Trump. In Dec. 2015, about 50 of them met at Tyson’s Corner, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., to discuss which Republican candidate to support. They had difficulty deciding, but not because of Trump. They were debating between Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. A supermajority, over 75 percent, decided to back Cruz after that meeting.

Jan. 2016 LifeWay survey of 1,000 pastors found only 4 percent supported Trump. Even eventual Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton had more support among pastors at 6 percent. Among evangelical pastors, the strongest support was for Cruz (18 percent), Carson (8 percent), and Rubio (8 percent).

World magazine, an evangelical publication, conducted an ongoing survey of evangelical leaders throughout the presidential nomination contests. The first survey, conducted July 2015, showed Rubio had the strongest support, at 39 percent of the 94 respondents. Only three of those surveyed said they would support Trump. Clinton got two votes. Sixty-eight of those surveyed, or 75 percent, said they “absolutely” wouldn’t support Trump in the primaries. In the final survey, conducted Aug. 2016, after Trump won the nomination, 32 of them, 44 percent, said they would vote for Trump in the general election (73 evangelical leaders answered that survey). Clinton only got five votes. Six said they wouldn’t vote. The other 30 said would vote for a write-in or third party candidate.

Evangelical leaders were sounding the alarm about Trump in print as well. In an August 2015 New York Times op-ed, Russell Moore, who had replaced Land as head of the ERLC, wrote, “Most illogical is [Trump’s] support from evangelicals and other social conservatives. To back Mr. Trump, these voters must repudiate everything they believe. … His attitude toward women is that of a Bronze Age warlord. … When evangelicals should be leading the way on racial reconciliation, as the Bible tells us to, are we really ready to trade unity with our black and brown brothers and sisters for this angry politician?”

Many of CP’s regular op-ed contributors also came out against Trump.

Matt Barber wrote in Sept. 2015, “Trump is no conservative. He’s a big-government, tax-and-spend liberal who has spent most his life supporting Democrats and Democratic causes. Mr. Trump’s moral compass lacks due north. Its needle spins faster than Hillary Clinton on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Donald Trump believes what Donald Trump believes because he’s Donald Trump — not because what he believes has any basis in fact.” (Barber is a now a strong Trump supporter.)

Pastor Mark Creech, a CP editorial adviser, wrote a Feb. 2016 op-ed titled, “Trump Represents Everything Opposite to Christianity.”

“Is there anyone who better personifies a worldly lifestyle than Donald Trump? He’s the perfect example of everything [the Apostle] John warns believers to stay far away from becoming,” Creech wrote.

“His face has donned the cover of Playboy magazine, and he’s bragged about his sexual escapades with numerous women. He’s owned strip clubs, cheated on his wife, and has married three times. It’s not that any of this is beyond the vast scope of God’s grace, but Trump has also said he’s never asked God for forgiveness. Grace is for the repentant.” (Creech later became a Trump supporter.)

Among CP’s regular op-ed contributors, Pastor Wallace Henley is its best writer. Smart, thoughtful, and level-headed, I always looked forward to reading Henley’s columns. In August 2015, Henley wrote a three part series warning about the dangers of Trump under the themes populist progressivismjudgment-impairing presumptuousness, and selfie-solipsism.

“Does the country need another monarchical solipsist in the White House? Solipsist chief executives end-run Congress, seat themselves as law-givers, and delight in the edict mentality that drives executive orders,” Henley wrote in a prescient warning about Trump. (Henley now says he will vote for Trump in 2020.)

There were a few rumblings of support among evangelicals early on, however. Land mentioned speaking to some SBC pastors who did support Trump and said he was confused by that. “I don’t understand it,” he said. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress were the most outspoken early evangelical supporters of Trump.

 

 

Jeffress is a celebrity hound. It wasn’t uncommon for Jeffress to personally email me or our reporters to show us one of his many TV interviews in the hopes we would report on it. We often obliged. Land liked to tell a joke he heard in Southern Baptist circles that the most dangerous place in Texas to stand is between Jeffress and a television camera.

Falwell Jr. recently stepped down due to a sex scandal.

 

 

Trump is a Scam

I was tasked with writing the first draft of our anti-Trump editorial and we all worked together on refining it. I initially wrote it as a “Never Trump” position, stating that evangelicals should oppose Trump even if he becomes the nominee. Land rejected this idea, thinking at the time that he might have to reluctantly vote for Trump in the general election. We all urgently hoped and prayed he wouldn’t become the nominee. Our editorial was our contribution to that discussion.

Grano and Land went back and forth on headline ideas and we settled on, “Donald Trump Is a Scam. Evangelical Voters Should Back Away.”

“As the most popular evangelical news website in the United States and the world, we feel compelled by our moral responsibility to our readers to make clear that Donald Trump does not represent the interests of evangelicals and would be a dangerous leader for our country,” we wrote.

“The grievances of Trump’s supporters are legitimate. Politicians for too long have promised to represent the best interests of all Americans before an election, only to represent the interest of their cronies after the election,” we said.

Then, in a warning that Grano and Land would later fail to heed, we wrote, “But Trump’s followers are being fooled into believing that he can help them.”

Our editorial became a national news story. Grano was interviewed on Fox Business Network. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof mentioned us in an op-ed. Grano was nurturing relationships with some evangelical Hillary Clinton supporters who spread news of the op-ed in their networks. We were happy for their help. Vu had been the most skeptical at first but was walking on air when she saw how much traffic we were getting. There was a euphoric mood in the newsroom.

 

Paula White

In July 2016, CP was offered an opportunity to interview Pastor Paula White-Cain, who went by Paula White at the time. White is white and pastors a mostly black church, an unusual combination but not unheard of among Pentecostals and charismatics, which have historically been more multi-racial than other types of evangelical churches. Long before she came to national prominence, CP reported on White’s many scandals. Her life has been like a soap opera. I was mostly uninvolved in those articles. It was a world I was unfamiliar with.

White had known Trump for many years and was described as his spiritual adviser. Her role got more attention after James Dobson, a child psychologist and Christian Right leader who founded Focus on the Family, claimed he heard that Trump was a “baby Christian” who had been led by White to become a follower of Jesus Christ.

 

White taught the prosperity gospel, a heretical view that God will bless you with wealth or healing if you engage in certain acts, such as giving money to prosperity gospel preachers. Among most evangelicals, especially those without charismatic or Pentecostal ties, these preachers are understood to be hucksters preying on the poor and weak, much like Trump.

In September of 2015, Trump had a meeting with about 40 pastors. In an interview with Politico, Russell Moore noted, “The people that Trump has so far identified as his evangelical outreach are mostly prosperity gospel types, which are considered by mainstream evangelicals to be heretics.” Jeffress was the only Southern Baptist at the meeting.

At the time, I agreed with everything Moore said. But in retrospect, his description of evangelicals opposed to White’s theology as “mainstream” sounds naive. The 1950s saw the emergence of what was called “neo-evangelicalism” at the time, challenging the dominance of fundamentalist evangelicals. Billy Graham was one of the leaders of this new movement and Christianity Today became its flagship publication. This was the evangelicalism I was familiar with most of my adult life and what I considered mainstream. Now I would say that there are many streams of evangelicalism and none is the “mainstream.” Sometimes these streams merge in theologically incohesive ways, driven more by media marketing or political power brokers. Working at CP helped open my eyes to this because we often reported on what some might call “fringe” evangelicals.

In recent years, White attempted to shed her prosperity gospel image and present herself as something more like a “mainstream evangelical.” In 2019, her book Something Greater: Finding Triumph Over Trials received endorsements from prominent evangelical leaders Franklin Graham, Jack Graham, Jeffress, Greg Laurie, and Johnnie Moore, all of whom were also part of Trump’s evangelical advisory board. After a backlash over their support for a prosperity gospel preacher, Franklin Graham and Laurie deleted their endorsements from their social media, though Laurie’s endorsement still appears on the book’s back cover.

Early in Trump’s presidency, I recall visiting the Paula White Ministries website and noticing many prosperity gospel elements, such as promises of health or wealth if you donate money or buy whatever products she was hawking at the time. When I revisited the site recently, all those elements had been scrubbed. In retrospect, her CP interview was likely part of that effort to broaden her appeal among evangelicals.

An opportunity to be the first media organization to ask White about Trump’s supposed “baby Christian” status was a tremendous scoop for CP. It was arranged through Johnnie Moore, a CP editorial adviser.

 

Johnnie Moore founded a public relations company that represented White. Today he represents many pro-Trump evangelical leaders and is the main organizer and contact person for Trump’s evangelical advisory board. He graduated from Liberty University and was its senior vice president of communications before he founded his own company. While he’s involved in many issues, he’s most known for his global religious freedom advocacy, and has written several books on the topic.

In an email, Johnnie Moore said White wasn’t talking to any other reporters about Trump, but “I have convinced her she can trust you guys. Ask anything. Even a tough question or two is fine.”

All the editors immediately began working together on a list of questions and quickly sent them to Johnnie Moore, who would forward them to White. Her response was delayed a day due to the birth of her granddaughter.

After the wait, we got a message from Johnnie Moore saying he just got her answers. Then he wrote, “Her expectation is that these questions/answers will be published as they are. She’s not answering questions for an exclusive story you are writing from them. Rather, we’re providing an exclusive Q/A to you to be published as it is (of course with the exception of any typographical errors). She also added a question about the ‘prosperity gospel’ which I think you’ll surely be OK with.” (This quote is lightly edited for grammar.)

Publishing an article with a question that appeared to be written by CP, but wasn’t, was problematic from a journalism ethics standpoint, but we let it slide. Besides, she asked herself a good question, and we wouldn’t let that derail us from this scoop. In her answer to her own question, she denied being a prosperity gospel preacher.

Vu answered that “it shouldn’t be a problem” to post her full answers Q&A style. I agreed. The public should see her full answers.

After we got White’s answers, I was assigned to write the article. It was Q&A style, like Johnnie Moore wanted, but I included an introduction to provide the context for the questions we were asking. I wrote,

Throughout the campaign, Trump has struggled with issues related to his claim that he is a Christian. He declined to name his favorite Bible verse. Later, he cited a verse that’s not in the Bible as his favorite while claiming no one knows the Bible better than him. He said he never asked for forgiveness, a necessary step to becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, because he hasn’t done anything that needed to be forgiven. He claims to be a Presbyterian and a member of Marble Collegiate Church, but Marble Collegiate is not Presbyterian and has no record of him being a member. And, at a Liberty University speech, he referred to 2 Corinthians as “two Corinthians” and then blamed Tony Perkins for giving him the scripture and writing it as “2 Corinthians.”

Trump also has taken positions considered anathema by his Christian critics. He advocates the use of military force that might result in the killing of family members of terrorists, including innocent civilians and children, in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. He has made supportive statements about Planned Parenthood. And, he has made many statements considered anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim, and anti-woman.

I also added Russell Moore’s Politico quote calling White a heretic.

White was angered by my intro, we learned through Johnnie Moore. The article was meant to promote White, so my intro must’ve been seen as a failure from Johnnie Moore’s viewpoint.

In an email with the subject line, “Disappointing guys,” Johnnie Moore argued that we had made a “bad business decision” because White “would have tweeted and posted this to the WORLD” (emphasis his) and her 3 million Facebook fans.

“Trump would have read it, now he won’t,” he continued. “Probably will effect his team’s advertising decisions. I have been preaching CP to them. Now you’ve embarrassed me. Just being honest.”

 

Grano had to explain to Johnnie Moore why we weren’t going to remove the intro. According to Grano, he told Johnnie Moore that White benefited from us not writing it the way he wanted. A soft interview would’ve made White look soft, Grano argued. Taking the heat and answering some tough questions made her look tough. I don’t know if Johnnie Moore or White bought that argument.

White’s description of Trump in that interview was nothing like the man we have come to know as president. She claimed that “faith has been instrumental in his life,” and “his understanding of the Bible has grown and is growing.” In a June 3, 2020 interview with his former press secretary Sean Spicer, Trump was asked if his faith has grown as president and if he prays. He dodged the question by pointing to his supposed accomplishments as president.

White also wrote that she “heard Mr. Trump verbally acknowledge his faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of his sins through prayer.” But Trump has claimed in several interviews that he has never asked for forgiveness, and doesn’t need to because, “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” On Trump’s character, White claimed he was “extremely giving, charitable, and doesn’t seek the credit for the numerous acts of kindness he does,” a description that Trump disproves almost daily through his petty vindictiveness.

Trump Wins the Nomination

After Trump became the Republican nominee, I wrote an op-ed titled, “Don’t Blame Us. Evangelicals Led the Opposition to Trump.” I pointed out the plethora of opposition to Trump among evangelicals. “Anti-Trump evangelicals are many,” I wrote in the last sentence. I figured at the time that evangelicals would continue standing strong in their beliefs. How incredibly naive I was.

We held another editor chat to discuss a follow-up editorial. Land thought we should offer a reluctant endorsement of Trump. I disagreed. After lots of discussion, we decided the best we could do for our readers was to put our disagreements onto our pages. We would explain why the election presented such a difficult choice for evangelicals. We wrote another editorial saying evangelicals shouldn’t vote for Clinton due to her habitual dishonesty and extreme positions on abortion, but whether to cast a protest vote against both candidates, or vote for Trump and pray for God’s help knowing he would be a horrible president, would be a difficult choice.

Our evangelical Clinton supporting friends and our evangelical Trump supporting friends were both disappointed by that editorial. However, I was proud of what we did and I still look back on it as a high point. It was a good example of how editorials should come together. We often evoked the biblical metaphor “iron sharpens iron” from Proverbs 27:17 to describe what we were seeking to accomplish. Through discussion, debates, and arguments, our understanding of the issues and each other became more refined. The sharpened iron then inspired our news coverage and editorials. Explaining our beliefs in editorials benefited readers by honestly showing them the thinking that undergirded our coverage.

We followed up the editorial with two op-eds. Land argued in favor of voting for Trump to prevent a Clinton presidency. I argued in favor of protest voting, by voting for a third party or independent candidate.

“Mr. Trump will in all probability not be a good president, and he will do many things with which I profoundly disagree,” Land wrote. He had joined Trump’s evangelical advisory board by then. Some of the other evangelical leaders complained to him about that sentence.

Land’s argument was similar to another well-known op-ed, called “The Flight 93 Election,” that was published in the Claremont Review of Books a week later by an anonymous writer (later understood to be Michael Anton). Trump will be a bad president, but a Clinton presidency would mean the end of American democracy, the argument went. It was like the “lesser evil” argument on steroids.

“However,” Land wrote, “I fear Hillary Clinton may be a terminal president who will destroy this venerable republic.”

Land’s argument pointed to just how bad of a president Trump would become. He had to contrive an extreme view of a Clinton presidency — the end of America — in order to convince himself that Trump would be the better option.

On an editor chat I told Land that a Clinton presidency couldn’t mean the end of American democracy because we live under a Constitution with federalism and separation of powers, plus in only four years we would have another presidential election. A President Clinton wouldn’t have the power to destroy the republic even if she wanted to. Land had no answer to that. He asked me to accept his word on the matter without any evidence.

After I wrote the first draft of my counterpoint op-ed, I sent it to the editors for some feedback and then took some time off to attend my grandmother’s funeral. There was a misunderstanding and they published it while I was at the funeral. Besides wanting more time to work on the op-ed, I revealed for the first time publicly that our office had received death threats after our anti-Trump editorial. But I had actually wanted to discuss with the editors whether we wanted to make that information public.

 

I wrote,

Trump feeds bigotries and instigates violence. Rather than calling us to live up to the better parts of our nature, he encourages the worst parts of our nature. Videos of his rallies tell the tale. Racist slurs are shouted from mouths and proudly announced on T-shirts and signs. Trump encourages supporters to punch demonstrators and they comply.

CP has taken many controversial stances over the years on issues like homosexuality and abortion, but it was only after our anti-Trump editorial that threats became a security issue. The main office of The Christian Post recently had to increase security due to death threats. This is the type of behavior Trump encourages.

Imagine the damage Trump could do with the bully pulpit. Four years of that would shred this country to pieces. …

What does it say about Evangelicals that we could fall for such a ruse?

What does it communicate to politicians that the vote of Evangelicals can be so easily bought?

What do non-Christians think when they see Evangelicals looking to Trump for revival and political power?

 

Access Hollywood

The infamous Access Hollywood tape was first reported by The Washington Post on October 7, 2016, a month before the November 8 election. It should’ve been easy for the Christian Right to denounce Trump, given all it stood for over the previous four decades. Instead, we witnessed a host of evangelical leaders defend and make excuses for Trump.

Still, I had difficulty accepting the degree to which my fellow evangelicals would compromise their values for political power. I focused on amplifying the voices that didn’t compromise their values and were willing to denounce Trump, such as Beth Moore, Russell Moore (no relation), and Julie Roys.

We followed with another editorial, “Ignorant Secular Press Too Eager to Label Evangelicals Hypocrites,” expressing our frustration with how secular reporters were covering evangelical support for Trump. I wrote it and the other editors agreed to let me publish it as an editorial, essentially signing their names to what I wrote. I was the ignorant one, however. I was eager to prove evangelicals weren’t hypocrites, but many evangelicals went on to disprove my thesis.

While the Trump wing of evangelicalism is much larger than I wanted to admit, it’s not nearly as large as Trump evangelicals and many media figures claim.

The 81 Percent Myth

One of the most frequently cited statistics about the 2016 election — 81 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump — is incorrect.

The number comes from exit polls conducted the day of the election. The poll did show that 81 percent of a certain set of respondents told pollsters they voted for Trump, but that group was not a sample of all evangelicals. To understand this, we need to look at the question wording and how the poll was conducted.

The 81 percent figure came from exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of major media outlets. Voters at 1,000 polling locations across the country were interviewed after they voted. They were handed a survey to fill out, but they were able to decline to fill out the survey. The response rate was 45 percent. Edison Research tries to account for nonresponse bias by recording the perceived age, gender, and race of those who decline to fill out the survey, but the interviewers can’t record the religion of nonrespondents.

Exit polls are great for a quick snapshot that the media can report the night of the election. Experts understand, however, that these polls have weaknesses and will look for more accurate results later. This is why Pew Research subtitled its article on the exit polls, “Preliminary 2016 analysis” (emphasis mine). The 81 percent figure was reported the night of the election and that was the number that stuck in the minds of many and has been repeated ad nauseam, even though more accurate results were reported later.

When Pew Research got a more accurate picture of the 2016 electorate, using surveys of validated voters, the number was four points lower — 77 percent. An analysis by Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan Burge using the Cooperative Congressional Election Study placed the number at 75.8 percent.

Even worse, the polling question doesn’t accurately record which respondents are evangelical.

The “81 percent” number too often gets cited without an important modifier — white. Only whites were asked in the exit poll if they identify as evangelical.

To complicate matters even more, the question wording asked voters if they identify as a “born again or evangelical Christian.” The phrase “born again” is taken directly from a story in the gospel of John. Jesus told Nicodemus, a Pharisee, that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). It’s a story familiar to many Christians, so by including “born again” in the question, some mainline Protestants and Catholics will answer “yes.” One recent study found that 40 percent of mainline Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics identify as born-again.

The “81 percent” figure also doesn’t take into account evangelicals who didn’t vote. Research tells us that non-voters are young or have a lower socioeconomic status, and are “apathetic, uninvolved, and ill-informed” (See Flanigan and Zingate’s Political Behavior of the American Electorate). Though we have no surveys of non-voting white evangelicals, we can deduce they weren’t Trump supporters in the same high numbers, if they even had an opinion about Trump, because young evangelicals and low-socioeconomic status evangelicals are less likely to support Republicans than older, wealthier, and better educated white evangelicals when they do vote.

When non-white evangelicals are included, only 60 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for Trump. This doesn’t even include black Protestants, who share some, but not all, theological similarities with evangelicals. Researchers usually treat black Protestants separately due to the unique historical circumstances — slavery and Jim Crow — in which their denominations formed.

Many white evangelicals support Christian Nationalism, a belief that the United States is like Israel in the Old Testament, blessed by God for a divine purpose. In Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry found that belief in Christian Nationalism was better predictor of voting for Trump than identifying as a white evangelical. Black Protestants never adopted this philosophy, for obvious reasons: Slaves don’t view their enslavement as a blessing from God. For them, the more apt biblical comparison was Jewish captivity in Egypt and Babylon.

In our public debates over religion and politics, white evangelicals suck up all the oxygen. We too often treat their political views as normative for religious people in general. But black Protestants are the most religious people in America. This is true across a wide range of measures — worship attendance, daily prayer, daily Bible reading, and religious beliefs. No matter how you slice it — all three B’s of religious measurement: belief, belonging, and behavior — black Protestants come out on top. So, black Protestants have a rightful place in any discussion of how religious people in America vote. In the 2016 presidential election, 88.1 percent of black Protestants voted for Hillary Clinton.

Young evangelicals were also less likely to vote for Trump. Only 61 percent of 18–29-year-old evangelicals voted for Trump, compared to 82 percent of those 65 and older. This 21-point age gap is larger than in 2012 when there was only an eight point age gap between 18–29 and 65+ in voting for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (71 to 79 percent). This shows that there is something uniquely off-putting about Trump for the young evangelicals who would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican.

To complicate matters further, self-identification isn’t the only way to operationalize the concept of evangelicalism, and in many respects isn’t the most accurate. The other two methods are based upon evangelical beliefs or membership in an evangelical church.

 

The National Association of Evangelicals defines an evangelical as one who strongly agrees with these four statements: The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

 

…….. (GUSCUT)

 

And while many evangelicals may have only reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016, their support for him has grown since the election, even amid his most un-Christian policies and behaviors.

 

President Trump

I thought I would be the only editor not to vote for Trump, but in an editor chat after the election, Grano said he couldn’t do it. Acknowledging the influence of his wife, he couldn’t bring himself to pull the lever for Trump.

Sadly, after Trump’s election our editor chats became less frequent and eventually stopped. The open debate and discussions we had were replaced with one-on-one phone calls among like-minded editors, sometimes regarding what to do about their rogue NeverTrump politics editor. I had also moved to Texas in 2016, so face-to-face interactions had stopped as well. We mostly communicated through Spark, a messaging app.

There were many reasons the editor chats stopped. Among them, CP had stopped paying Grano and Land in 2017. It was struggling financially during the early years of the Trump presidency and wasn’t able to make payroll some months. Reporters became frustrated both at the lack of pay and the lack of communication regarding their paychecks. CP would eventually pay what it owed but it was a rough time. Grano and Land were willing to help when asked, but their CP positions were not their primary responsibilities to begin with, so their daily involvement with the company became diminished. They were less involved in day-to-day operations but were called in for situations the managing editors didn’t know how to deal with, which sometimes meant me.

While most of my time at CP I could write on the topics I wanted, I recall two separate occasions when I was told I couldn’t criticize prominent evangelical leaders Franklin Graham and Eric Metaxas. This made sense from a business perspective. Graham and Metaxas each have a huge and influential media presence and their audiences closely overlap with CP’s audience. All they would need to do is tell their followers to not read CP and CP would take a big financial hit. This is why it was easy at CP to be sharply critical of liberal leaders — their audiences didn’t overlap with ours, but criticizing prominent conservatives was problematic.

CP was good at reporting on church scandals, when it put forth the appropriate effort and resources. But sometimes certain leaders were viewed as off limits unless the scandal became too big to ignore. There was some squeamishness, for instance, over reporting on Falwell Jr.’s scandals, partly because Liberty University was an ad partner. We would eventually report those stories to show that we weren’t ignoring them, but never more than the bare minimum. There were some exceptions, but CP’s reporting of those scandals often led with headlines like, “Falwell Jr. denies …,” or “Falwell Jr. apologizes …”.

 

Barack Obama was president when I was first hired by The Christian Post in 2011. We were always tough on Obama, which is generally how I think reporters should cover presidents. We had some positive Obama stories, but by and large, I think our political leaders should undergo intense scrutiny. I assumed we would cover Trump the same way. Boy was I wrong. But the change came slowly.

During Trump’s first year in office, the editors were mostly on board with our coverage reflecting the extreme discomfort we all felt about our new president. Shortly after the election, I asked if I could take a leave of absence to write a book about evangelicals and Trump. The editors, especially Grano and Land, liked the idea. I explained that I would need the full support of The Christian Post. Publishers wouldn’t sign with me, I reasoned, because I had no national prominence and my social media presence was small. But if I could pitch the idea that The Christian Post would help me promote the book, I might be able to get a contract. The editors agreed and assured me I had their full support.

After a while, stories that presented Trump in a negative light were met with additional editorial drama and scrutiny. Sometimes they were softened or pitches were rejected altogether. CP’s coverage of Trump was also changing because CP readers were changing.

Evangelical Trump-supporters adjusted their views to accommodate Trump. When asked if “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life,” white evangelicals shifted a staggering 42 points. Only 30 percent said yes in 2011, but 72 percent answered yes in October 2016, just before the election, a report by PRRI and The Brookings Institution found. This means that the ethics of a significant number of white evangelicals are formed more by devotion to their chosen political candidate than scripture. Twenty-five percent of white evangelicals said there was nothing Trump could do to lose their support, a Sept.-Oct. 2018 PRRI survey found. These evangelicals aren’t seeking spiritual formation in the life and teachings of Jesus. They’re rooting for Team Trump. CP readers in this group didn’t want to see negative stories about Trump and CP began accommodating their wishes. This wasn’t a financial decision (articles critical of Trump often got lots of traffic); it was about pleasing a vocal segment of readers.

In other ways, though, our journalism was improving. Lillian Kwon returned as managing editor in January 2017 and was better than Vu in that position. She led our coverage away from quick, click-bait stories to more in-depth reporting. Under her leadership, we published some excellent series on gun violence in schools and ex-Christians.

Kwon shared Vu’s distaste for politics, however, preferring most of our coverage to focus on church stories. It’s challenging as an editor when your managing editor doesn’t have much interest in what you cover. Regardless, most of the time we worked well together and saw eye-to-eye on many issues. Our Trump coverage was the only source of tension.

Kwon was not pro-Trump and shared with me that she agreed with my critiques. But Kwon was also anti-controversy, an unusual quality for a news editor, and criticizing Trump was certainly controversial, for a noisy segment of our readership at least. Since Kwon only called Grano when she had questions about my Trump coverage, Grano may have had the impression there was more tension between Kwon and I than was actually there.

The first time it really hit me that we wouldn’t cover Trump the same way we covered Obama was when I pitched the idea of reporting on Trump’s declining mental health. The issue would later become a big national news story but it had only just started being reported at the time. Even though I was the politics editor and it was a typical politics story that should be reported, an editor’s chat was called to decide whether to pursue it. The other editors wanted me to drop it but I continued to push and got it published, arguing that our president’s mental health is an issue of national importance. If Obama were still president and had similar issues, we would’ve just run the story without any debate.

 

Russell Moore

Not long after the election, Land gave us a scoop: There was an effort afoot among Southern Baptist pastors to punish Russell Moore for his anti-Trump positions.

Russell Moore had replaced Land as head of the ERLC in March 2013. Land was forced to step down after he made some controversial remarks about Trayvon Martin, an innocent black teen shot and killed while walking through a neighborhood in February 2012. Land remarked on his radio show, “the civil rights leadership focuses on racially polarizing cases to generate media attention and to mobilize black voter turnout” and “this is being done to try to gin up the black vote for an African-American president who is in deep, deep, deep trouble for re-election and who knows that he cannot win re-election without getting the 95 percent of blacks who voted for him in 2008 to come back out and show they are going to vote for him again.”

His remarks were both true and insensitive. Of course, in an election year Democratic leaders were using the incident for political mobilization purposes. But Land’s mistake was speaking more as a political operative, concerned about getting Republicans reelected, than a pastor listening to the shared grief of black communities. Land wrote a two-page apology. He acknowledged “making injudicious comments” and apologized to the family of Trayvon Martin, Obama, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton.

When he was forced to step down, one of Land’s disappointments was that Russell Moore supported his ousting, before Moore was selected to replace him.

Throughout the 2016 election cycle, Russell Moore criticized Trump and evangelicals who defended him. In addition to the op-ed mentioned above, after the Access Hollywood tape was released, he tweeted, “The political Religious Right Establishment wonders why the evangelical next generation rejects their way. Today illustrates why.” And the next day, remarking on a Daily Beast article with the headline, “Evangelical Leaders Shrug At Donald Trump’s Lewd Comments,” he tweeted, “What a disgrace. What a scandal to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the integrity of our witness.” The article included comments by Ralph Reed and Jeffress arguing Trump’s character issues shouldn’t be a factor in voting.

Moore’s criticisms had gotten the attention of Trump earlier in May 2016. Trump tweeted, “Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!”

But what really ticked off certain Southern Baptist pastors, Land told us, was Russell Moore’s October 24, 2016 Erasmus Lecture for First Things, “Can the Religious Right Be Saved?” It’s easy to see why. It was the clearest denunciation yet of pro-Trump evangelicals. Rereading it now, it’s amazing to me how many themes later became major issues during the Trump presidency.

Russell Moore pointed out more than once that his critique wasn’t about reluctant Trump voters, like Land at the time, who viewed Trump as a way to prevent a Clinton presidency but had strong concerns about a Trump presidency. Rather, it was the evangelicals who actively supported his campaign, and excused or downplayed his worst behaviors and policies. He said,

The crisis before us now is not that many among the national religious right’s political establishment have endorsed a candidate but that they also ignored or downplayed some of the most morally troublesome questions of personal character, and, for instance, issues of torture and war crimes, an embrace of an “alt-right” movement of white identity ethno-nationalism and anti-Semitism, along with serious matters of sexual degradation towards women. Some — mostly Evangelical — political leaders have waved away misogyny and sexually predatory language as “locker-room talk” or “macho” behavior. Some have suggested that their candidate has never claimed to be “a choirboy” — thereby defining deviancy down to such a degree that respect for women, protection of the vulnerable, and a defense of sexual morality are recast as naive and unrealistic. One said that his support for his candidate was never about shared values anyway. Others suggested that we need a strongman (implying a strongman unencumbered by too many moral convictions) in order to fight the system and save Christians from a hostile culture. Some prominent Christian political activists said that those who could not in good conscience stand with either of the major party candidates last year were guilty of “moral preening” and of putting our consciences before the country, sometimes even putting the words “conscience” and “witness” in scare quotes, a rhetorical gesture worthy of an Obama administration solicitor general.

Russell Moore also directly addressed some of the criticisms directed toward him and other “NeverTrump” evangelicals, saying,

We were told that we should not put practical considerations — as important as they may be — above objective moral, transcendent standards. “I don’t vote my pocketbook,” we were taught to say, “I vote my values.” Yet many public spokesmen for the religious right now tell Evangelicals — including Evangelical women who have spent their lives teaching Evangelical girls and young women to resist the sexualization of their identity and worth in a hook-up culture, and Evangelical men who learned at Promise Keepers rallies that racial reconciliation is a moral imperative — to “grow up,” to stop being “panty-waists.” They even label those who will not go along with the normalization of vice as “closet liberals.” The people who warned us to avoid moral relativism now tell us that we should compare our choices not to an objective standard but to the alternative, as if an election transcends moral principle.

These evangelical Trump defenders are hurting their gospel witness, he added.

The question of moral credibility is real, but a loss of moral credibility is not the most traumatic wound of 2016. Some Christian leaders and publications pronounce a self-described unrepentant man a “baby Christian” or as representing “Christian values and family values.” With this, we have left far behind quibbles about which candidate is the lesser of two evils or about the future of the Supreme Court or even whether we should support candidates we never could have imagined supporting before. This is instead a first-order question of theology — overheard by the world of our mission field — a question of the very definition of the Gospel itself, and what it means to be saved or lost.

Regarding the evangelical defenders of Trump in light of his remarks on the Access Hollywood tape, Russell Moore said they “were about the only group in America willing to defend serious moral problems, in high-flying moral terms no less.” Then later added, “The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us about.”

He also rebuked Christian nationalism:

Those who do care about politics, and who lead populist movements, tend to be theologically vacuous, tied to populist “God and country” appeals that seem simultaneously idolatrous and angry to younger Christians. The same political and populist activists form a kind of “protection racket,” seeking to brand as “liberal” those Christian voices that wish to speak about matters such as racial justice.

In a preview of the Grano and Land editorial I describe later, Russell Moore took aim at the notion that Trump critics are intellectual snobs.

The fundraising structure of political activism, left and right, means that often the most extreme and buffoonish characters are put forward. Too often the world sees the strangeness of the religious right not where the New Testament places it — in the scandal of the Gospel — but in a willingness to say outrageous things on television. Some would suggest that even broaching this topic is “intellectual snobbery.”

A paragraph about the dangers of aligning with “prosperity gospel hucksters” was also in the speech.

When, however, Evangelical Protestants treat prosperity gospel hucksters as fellow Christian leaders, we have declared war on the Gospel itself. Health and wealth prosperity theology — in its hard or soft forms — is not another stream of historic Christianity. It is the old Canaanite fertility religion, except worse because it takes the name of the Lord in vain under the pretense of apostolic Christianity.

Russell Moore then accused the religious right of “theological liberalism” by turning their faith into “a political project in search of a gospel useful enough to advance its worldly agenda.” By putting political goals ahead of the gospel, he warned, “it will end up pleasing those who make politics primary, while losing those who believe the Gospel.”

In what can partly be read as a rebuke of the “Flight 93”-type arguments, he added,

Nostalgic appeals to the fact that “we are losing our country” can only work if one defines success in terms of a cultural, nominal Christianity. Such success can restrain some aspects of overt immorality, but the outcome can be worse than paganism if there is, in fact, a hell. Likewise, an apocalyptic language that presents every presidential election as Armageddon is another kind of theological liberalism.

Moore’s speech (read or watch it here) was what a prophetic voice looks like — speaking truth to power and saying out loud what people need to hear but don’t want to hear. Like the Old Testament prophets, Moore was attacked for saying those things.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story of the SBC backlash against Russell Moore on Dec. 19, 2016, followed by a story on NPR the next morning. I’m still not sure why CP hadn’t broken the story, since we had known about it weeks before. Maybe we were protecting Land as our source, though there would’ve been ways around that. Or maybe it was just due to CP’s old habits of reacting to what other media were reporting rather than making our own news.

As the pastors opposed to Russell Moore were threatening to withhold funding from the ERLC, Land pleaded with them, both publicly and privately, not to go that route. He had spent most of his career, from 1988 to 2013, building up the ERLC. From his perspective, they were threatening to dismantle his life’s work.

After reconciliation efforts by SBC leaders, Russell Moore would keep his job and the ERLC would keep its funding, but the prophetic voice heard in his Erasmus Lecture became greatly diminished.

 

Johnnie Moore

We were often pressured to become more Trumpian by Johnnie Moore.

Johnnie Moore doesn’t officially work for the White House but is possibly the most important White House figure when it comes to outreach to evangelicals. Paula White-Cain is technically the leader of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, but Johnnie Moore is the workhorse that makes it run.

In 2017, Johnnie Moore was being mentioned as a candidate for the position of Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He asked CP for help in advertising his credentials for the position, while also claiming he didn’t want the position. It was an odd email. If he didn’t want the position, why should we publish articles promoting him for the position? We published two articles after Johnnie Moore’s request, “Meet the 3 Leading Candidates for Trump Religious Freedom Post,” and an op-ed by Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and also a CP advisor, titled, “President Trump Should Appoint Johnnie Moore to Top Religious Freedom Post.” Trump selected Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback for the position.

We heard from Johnnie Moore often by email and occasionally on an editors’ chat. While he was supposed to provide advice to CP, when Johnnie Moore spoke, we couldn’t tell if he was really thinking about the best interests of CP or the interests his clients and Trump. This problem was understood and discussed by both editors and reporters. We appreciated that he was well connected and sometimes helped us get interviews with his clients. But sometimes he would ignore our emails and requests for weeks, then suddenly we would hear from him again when we published a story he didn’t like. Those stories were about his clients or Trump. He wanted to help us, but only to the extent we could help his clients. When it came to Trump, he expected us to behave like state media. Kwon became increasingly frustrated with this side of Johnnie Moore.

In one editor chat, we asked Johnnie Moore for help in getting interviews with Trump administration officials. He remarked that our previous “Donald Trump is a Scam” editorial was a stumbling block. Was he fishing for a quid-pro-quo? Positive coverage in exchange for an interview? I’m still not sure. After that call, I asked Grano if Johnnie Moore was speaking for the administration or himself. Grano answered that he wasn’t sure.

CP editors all understood then that our relationship with Johnnie Moore had to be kept at arm’s length. He was on Team Trump, and would always want us to spin the news in his team’s favor.

Access is an important tool for journalists. Burning bridges harms the mission of a journalist, but sometimes can’t be helped in order to serve the truth-telling mission. Maintaining the bridges you have is also part of the work of a journalist. We had many good relationships with Christian organizations and leaders like Johnnie Moore. Both sides of those relationships benefited. We had access and they had a reliable place to report their positive stories. The coziness of these story/storyteller relationships should not hinder the truth-telling, however; the truth-telling mission is preeminent. Often, our daily reporting felt like we were just part of an ecosystem in which organizations would provide us with content and we would provide them with positive coverage. It was easy to fall into those habits when your business model is to post a lot of content and to prefer more positive than negative stories. Most of it seemed innocent enough, but when you’re devoting time to that work, you’re necessarily doing less investigative journalism.

 

Disagreeing Well

In the Fall of 2017, I told the editors I wanted to spin off some of what I wrote for my book into a series of op-eds, hoping to get more attention from potential publishers. I was giving the editors regular updates and they knew at this time it was an anti-Trump book and were still supportive.

The first op-ed was taken from the book’s intro and published May 30, 2018: “Evangelicals Don’t Agree on Politics, but We Must Learn to Disagree Well.” I’ve often heard Evangelical Trump supporters argue that not supporting Trump demonstrates something lacking in one’s faith, or even worse, that you can’t be a true Christian if you don’t support Trump. For instance, in a July 31, 2020 Fox Business interview, Jeffress said, “The only evangelicals who are going to vote for Joe Biden are those who have sold their soul to the devil.” In an August 22, 2020 interview with Liberty University’s Falkirk Center, Pastor John MacArthur said, “any real true believer is going to be on [Trump’s] side in this election.” Southern Baptist Pastor Jack Graham, a Trump evangelical advisory board member, shared MacArthur’s statement and called it “patently true.” Plus, Trump himself claims he’s the candidate representing faith, Christianity, and God while Democrats are anti-faith, anti-Christian, and anti-God. On August 6, 2020, Trump said a Biden presidency would bring “no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God.”

 

As I prepared to post a series of op-eds on why evangelicals shouldn’t support Trump, I wanted to make clear at the beginning that I didn’t view their position as a faith test. Christians can be both very devout and very wrong. Evangelicals are diverse, I argued, so political differences are expected.

I wrote in part,

God wants us to grow into Christ-likeness. We are blessed to live in a country where our involvement in governmental decision-making is expected and necessary. This political involvement should be part of our growth process, when done correctly.

Our political diversity can be a blessing, not a curse. None of us know everything. But in conversations and civil debates with each other, we can all gain in shared wisdom and understanding. As Proverbs 27:17 puts it, “Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another.”

The Bible doesn’t provide specific guidance on who to vote for or what policies to support. Instead, it provides foundational principles. How to apply those principles is debatable, and those debates should happen, but in a loving manner that honors Christ. Christian growth happens in community. We should debate political issues through our communities, and if we’re doing that well, the way we contribute to public life through our democratic processes will improve.

But don’t assume that arguing well about our political differences will lead to the same preferences for political candidates. If evangelicals did agree on our election day options, that would certainly make a powerful voting bloc. But the goal of our political involvement shouldn’t be to win elections, but to make disciples. The manner in which we’re involved in the political process is more important than election day results.

Land emailed me to let me know he agreed with it.

Pence at the SBC Meeting

On June 13, 2018, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting. Even before the speech, Pence’s appearance was controversial among the attendees. Two days before the speech, SBC President JD Greear gave a speech warning the delegates about becoming a “stooge for one party.” The day before Pence arrived, several motions to disinvite him were offered on the floor. While the motions never came close to a majority, the fact that a Republican vice president speaking at the convention had become so controversial was itself a major news story.

That’s not the story Johnnie Moore wanted us to tell, however. He was heavily involved in Pence’s speech and was feeding information about it to us, which makes sense given his leadership within Trump’s evangelical advisory board.

The critics within the SBC were concerned that Pence would deliver a partisan speech and that, in turn, would reflect poorly on Southern Baptists. When the speech came, their concerns were realized, maybe even worse than they imagined. It was a stump speech, praising what Pence considered to be Trump’s accomplishments throughout, appropriate for the campaign trail but not a Christian conference.

Our coverage of the speech, written remotely by reporter Michael Gryboski and edited by me, focused on the criticisms of the speech under the headline, “Mike Pence SBC Meeting Speech Slammed for Focusing on Trump, Politics.”

Johnnie Moore emailed some of the editors, complaining that our story was “at least myopic and probably hyperbolic. We cannot lose the nuance in this stuff,” and that Pence “received a standing ovation and many, many incidents of rousing applause and the speech wasn’t entirely political.”

“So — sure — some slammed [Pence] …. it’s a minority (and influential minority) but a minority in the audience,” he added.

Grano and Land agreed with Johnnie Moore. In an email chain, Land wrote in part, “I had numerous people express to me their irritation with the critics and I witnessed even more groans and rolled eyes … with the critics not taking the hint after they were defeated so badly the first couple of times they raised their objections. This article fails the most basic test of journalism I apply: would the people that were actually at the event recognize the event as described in this article as the one they attended? As an attendee my answer would be, ‘no way!’ I am confident that at least 80 percent of my fellow messengers would enthusiastically agree. The problem then becomes that some of those, if and when they read this article, will lose at least a little of their trust in CP’s objectivity, and that is something hard to win back once people begin to question it.”

Some of Land and Johnnie Moore’s critiques were legitimate. There should’ve been more details in the story about Pence’s support among the attendees. But they were wrong to criticize the headline and lede.

 

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The Decision

I return now to Vu’s compromise offer, which was tempting. They would publish my response to the Grano and Land op-ed, and I would continue working there as an anti-Trump politics editor for a pro-Trump publication.

Two things came to mind as I weighed my decision. They had already put me on a short leash and I was feeling strangled by the collar. Plus I was haunted by Vu’s response when I said they were joining Team Trump: “I understand. Yeah. We are.”

I realized I could not accept her offer.

I texted back, “You agreed that CP is joining Team Trump. I can’t be a part of that.”

 

Vu never responded.

I called Bailey to let her know what happened. My “The Christian Post is not pro-Trump” statement was obviously bogus at that point. Then I composed an announcement about my decision and posted it to Twitter and Facebook. It read,

Today, rather abruptly, I was forced to make the difficult choice to leave The Christian Post. They decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump. I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice. I’m saddened by what happened for many reasons. I’ve been with CP for over 8.5 years, made many friendships, and had lots of exciting opportunities along the way. As long as I was with the company, they strived to be a place that represented the diversity of evangelicalism in the US. I even wrote about this diversity in the last published article I wrote on Sunday. When the editors had disagreements, we would work through them, letting those discussions and debates inform and improve our coverage. Now, CP has chosen to go in a different direction. Like so many other media companies, they’ve chosen to silo themselves. They’ve chosen to represent a narrow (and shrinking) slice of Christianity. That might be a good business decision, short term at least. But it’s bad for Democracy, and bad for the Gospel. It means there will be one more place where readers can go for bias confirmation, but one less place where readers can go to exercise their brains on diversity of thought.

I was surprised at the attention it got. The post went viral. Already dealing with my sudden and unexpected job loss, I became overwhelmed. I decided to stop looking at social media until after the vacation, but I wouldn’t turn down interview requests. I understood how quickly hot news could extinguish.

 

 

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Perils of Partisanship

I tell this story because it contains a warning for us all. There was nothing inevitable about the choices CP made. You won’t find any red MAGA hats at The Christian Post. The company is pro-immigrant, pro-refugee, and anti-racism. The editors knew Trump was a scam, but they joined his team anyway. How could this happen?

Political science taught me political parties are good. The Christian Post taught me partisanship is bad. Democracy isn’t possible without political parties. All democracies must build governing coalitions. Parties are the vehicles we use to do that. But when parties represent competing cultural symbols rather than governing philosophies, our politics devolves into groupish sniping. They become vehicles for attacking our perceived enemies rather than constructive debates over the common good.

For the Church in particular, there’s an added dimension: Partisanship hinders the gospel. When Christians or churches become allegiants of a political party or politician, they’re no longer ambassadors for Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3: You foolish Trumpians! Who has bewitched you? … In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. … There is no longer Republican or Democrat, there is no longer black, brown or white, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Many evangelicals feel unfairly maligned these days. They may view this article as part of that. About 25 years ago I read Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), a book that inspired me to pursue a Ph.D. As I think about the purpose of this article, my last sentence will be to recall his first sentence: This article “is an epistle from a wounded lover.”

 

 

Napp Nazworth

 

 

 

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Take care.

 

Gus Leonisky

 

Rabid atheist.

 

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