Honestly my mouth dropped open when this hit the internet:
Christianity Today, an influential evangelical magazine, says President Trump should be ‘removed from office’
I spoke with the author Mark Galli and president Timothy Dalrymple for the backstory:https://t.co/NOx2da2amC— Sarah Pulliam Bailey (@spulliam) December 19, 2019
Did you hear about the editor-in-chief of a leading evangelical magazine calling Donald Trump unfit to lead the nation?
But enough about the editorial that Marvin Olasky and World magazine wrote before the 2016 presidential election.
Christianity Today broke the internet — or at least crashed its own website — with retiring editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s editorial Thursday making the case for Trump’s removal from office.
Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey, a former online editor at CT, tweeted that her mouth “dropped open” when Galli’s piece hit the World Wide Web.
Me? I was about as surprised as I could be without actually being surprised.
As The Atlantic’s Emma Green noted:
Within hours of the article’s publication, the magazine’s website had crashed and Galli had been invited to speak on CNN and NPR, among other outlets. To be clear, Galli’s editorial in no way signals that evangelicals are about to defect, en masse, from Trump or the Republican Party. Christianity Today, also known as CT, mostly appeals to well-educated readers who are moderate in every way, including politically and theologically. Much of its readership is international, and many older print subscribers might not even register the small, seismic event that just happened on CT’s website. And polling over the past few months has consistently shown that white evangelicals remain among Trump’s staunchest supporters.
And at the New York Times, Elizabeth Dias pointed out:
The editorial was a surprising move for a publication that has generally avoided jumping into bitter partisan battles. But it was unlikely to signal a significant change in Mr. Trump’s core support; the magazine has long represented more centrist thought, and popular evangelical leaders with large followings continue to rally behind the president.
Trump himself replied this morning:
A far left magazine, or very “progressive,” as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
….have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
More later.
But for now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:
Thank you @getreligion for noting that @ReligionMag had the story underway for a month and broke it simultaneously with WaPo on Monday. https://t.co/hHaKno2yrl
— Paul Glader (@PaulGlader) December 18, 2019
1. Religion story of the week: On Monday night, the Washington Post and Religion Unplugged broke the story of a whistleblower’s claim that the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used member tithes to amass more than $100 billion in a set of investment funds and the Church misled members about uses of the money.” (Newsweek, among others, picked up the Religion Unplugged story by Paul Glader.)
GetReligion’s Julia Duin analyzed the coverage earlier this week.
Full disclosure: GetReligion and Religion Unplugged share some content, and I am leaving GetReligion at the end of the month to write a weekly column on religion and media for Religion Unplugged. More on GR’s future plans here and here if you missed the recent news.
First in a series? Ambitious AP feature examines waves of stress hitting Catholic priests https://t.co/axq4zl1yhl
— Terry Mattingly (@tweetmattingly) December 10, 2019
2. Most popular GetReligion post: We have a repeat winner.
For the second week in a row, Editor Terry Mattingly has the No. 1 most-clicked commentary with his piece headlined “First in a series? Ambitious AP feature examines waves of stress hitting Catholic priests.”
“The bottom line: This Associated Press feature touched on many valid subjects, but there was no way to cover — in depth — the complex nature of this subject in the American church as a whole,” tmatt wrote.
For starters, the feature focused in tight on New England — a region where Catholic demographics appear to be headed down, down, down. Are stress levels lower, or just different, in parts of the country where Catholicism is growing?
RNA members vote @HoustonChron‘s investigation of SBC sex abuse as the No. 1 religion story of 2019. Democratic U.S. Reps. @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib are named religion newsmakers of the year. https://t.co/UgHF8dvLhO pic.twitter.com/3TosyrFu1X
— Religion News Association (@ReligionReport) December 17, 2019
3. Guilt folder fodder (and more): The Religion News Associated has voted the Houston Chronicle’s investigation of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches as its No. 1 story of the year.
The RNA’s top newsmakers:
Religion Newsmakers of the Year honors went to Democratic U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who took office in January as the first Muslim congresswoman, and who immediately were at the center of bitter controversies challenging the bipartisan consensus on U.S. aid to Israel.
These parents lost a daughter. And then a son. Still, they have hope for the holidays.
I can’t thank the Wiedersteins enough for sharing their story with me in hopes of helping others who might be grieving at Christmastime. https://t.co/l36k7oa24d pic.twitter.com/uxSLfRPigk
— Bobby Ross Jr. (@bobbyross) December 16, 2019
4. Shameless plug: I had the opportunity to interview Allen and Jeanette Wiederstein — who lost an adult daughter and then a son — about grief and the holidays.
Read my Christian Chronicle story.
Santa Claus Converts To Calvinism, Moves Everybody To Naughty List https://t.co/dFpMH2TejW via @TheBabylonBee
— Eduardo Porter (@portereduardo) December 17, 2018
5. Final thought: That bit of satire news is a few years old now. But go ahead and enjoy a chuckle over it anyway.
Happy Friday, everybody! Enjoy the weekend!
ybvdadminuser
