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:
More later.
But for now, let’s dive into the Friday Five:
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!