Media Suddenly Slobbers Over Christianity Today
It’s been, well, amusing.
For the past few days we’ve watched the American left, that usually sneers at evangelical Christians, insist that evangelicals heed an editorial in a magazine few leftists ever heard of before last week.
“Christianity Today,” a conservative magazine founded in 1956 by evangelist Billy Graham, published an opinion piece on Thursday calling for Donald Trump to be booted from the White House.
In fact, it featured this blunt headline: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”
For some reason - and I think we all know what that is - this editorial caught the imagination of members of the media who as a rule ignore religious publications.
Suddenly cable news talking heads and newspapers around the country were enthusing about a point of view expressed in a conservative religious magazine.
Because it mirrored what THEY believe.
By Friday afternoon #ChristianityToday was trending on Twitter and Trump’s detractors in the media seemed hopeful that Christian fundamentalists would now be persuaded to abandon the president whom they helped elect in 2016. After all, this magazine called the president’s actions “profoundly immoral.”
I Googled “Trump” and “Christianity Today” and got almost 13 million hits. It was BIG news.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer actually read from the editorial on the air, calling it “Amazing!” Over on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell breathlessly asked guests if this could be a “crack in the wall of evangelical support” for Trump.
It has always bewildered the press that the thrice-married Trump enjoys such solid support among American evangelicals who go to church on Sundays, pray before they eat and don’t run around on their wives.
What they don’t understand is that family values voters have become pragmatic voters. In Trump they have a president who may not be one of them but who is likeminded on most issues. He’s opposed to abortion, appoints conservative judges and seems to side with those who are battling the government over issues such as Obamacare mandates and gender.
I‘m not an evangelical and I can’t speak for them, but assume they’re like the rest of us. They look at presidential elections as binary choices and vote for the candidate most likely to support issues important to them, not the one they’d most like to invite to Sunday dinner.
According to most polls, evangelicals got behind Trump in 2016 and have stayed there.
What are the chances that readers of CT who supported Trump will suddenly ditch the president over an editorial?
I assume evangelicals are no more likely to change their political views based on the scribblings of an editor in Illinois than the rest of us are when The New York Times tells us how we should vote.
When the national news outlets sent reporters out to flyover country this weekend to see if born-again Christians were dumping Trump after reading this CT piece, the answer seemed to be “no.”
Hence, this headline in the NYT:
And these from The Washington Post and New York Magazine:
Evangelicals are never going to vote for far-left socialists. The best Democrats can hope for next November is that Trump’s evangelical supporters stay home. Hence, the sudden embrace of a publication they’d normally ignore.
Despite Christianity Today’s condemnation of Trump, it’s unlikely evangelicals will stay home if Democrats do what they seem determined to do: nominate a radical who enthusiastically supports late-term abortion, the abolition of the Hyde Amendment and promises to appoint judges who are hostile to religion.
Still, it was fun watching members of the media suddenly care about what a Christian publication had to say.
If only for a few days.
