The media’s anti-Christian falsehoods reveal – Latest News
For all of its aspirations to inclusivity, main media stay shockingly illiberal.
Nowhere is that this clearer than within the protection of conservative Christianity — through which, mockingly enough, journalists routinely show all of the dishonesty, prejudice and ignorance they so usually allege of their goal.
Sometimes the misreporting is pure laziness.
Sometimes it’s plain stupidity.
Either means, it abandons any pretense of journalistic integrity and takes on all of the traits of a racist who’s half-hour deep into a tirade about these people.
To the bigot, a black American is all the time on the verge of committing a crime; to the members of the legacy press, a conventional Christian is all the time someday away from embracing his true nature as an unrelenting sadist.
Exhibit A: “Pete Hegseth’s Pastor Says He Wants James Talarico to Die,” as a HuffPost headline declared this week.
This is a lie; the pastor stated no such factor.
He was referencing Galatians 2:19 (“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God”), and praying that the Texas Democrat and US Senate candidate would acknowledge the evil of his positions and repent.
Yet — as if to show the purpose about straying removed from the trail of righteousness — the performatively Christian Talarico amplified the slanderous headline.
“Jesus loves. Christian Nationalism kills,” he posted on X. “You may pray for my death, Pastor, but I still love you. I love you more than you could ever hate me.”
You’d assume a self-described seminarian would acknowledge an apparent New Testament reference — and would additionally do not forget that bearing false witness is a grave sin.
What’s genuinely distressing, although, is that Arianna Huffington’s zombie self-importance project just isn’t alone in peddling this calumnious sleaze.
In major-league media, it’s more of the identical: Conservative Christians aren’t members of a religion custom wealthy in poetic references, scriptural allusions and shared values that span wildly disparate cultures.
They’re a single homogenous blob, a grotesque caricature full of probably the most violent and imperious villains this facet of a Margaret Atwood novel.
In 2024, The Washington Post accused Christian “extremists” of twisting scripture to “justify violent goals.”
These so-called “violent goals” included sponsoring payments often called Millstone Acts (a reference to Matthew 18:6) that ban chemical castration, vasectomies and puberty blockers for youngsters.
Or, because the WaPo put it, payments aimed toward blocking “gender-affirming care” for what it euphemistically known as “young adults.”
Talk about twisting phrases for evil intent.
CNN claimed equally that 12 months that “white Christian nationalism” is an “imposter Christianity,” and that it threatens American democracy.
Christian nationalists, it reported, use “potentially violent and heretical” beliefs to “cloak sexism and hostility to black people and non-white immigrants.”
Those supposedly harmful beliefs: that the United States has Christian roots, that Christians are generally known as to motion, and that there’s such a factor as a “real American.”
ABC News made the identical declare, warning that “the ideology of Christian nationalism threatens American democracy.”
Funnily enough, for all its ominous bluster, the report by no means spelled out what, precisely, Christian nationalism is, or any particular, imminent threats to US governance.
That’s a theme with this type of reporting.
We’re informed solely that these within the motion consider that “Americans kneel to God and to God alone,” that the US is “one glorious nation under God,” and that adherents want to “bring God back into our culture.”
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Christian nationalists, the author gasps, even anticipate Christian lawmakers to dwell out their religion in public life — or, you understand, not conceal their gentle below a bushel (Matthew 5:15).
Every allegedly horrific charge relies on major, generally millennia-old Christian instructing.
If you get the impression that “Christion nationalism” just isn’t a plainly outlined ideology and more of a vibes-based invention of the partisan fever swamps, that’s as a result of it’s.
The complete idea is a political bogeyman.
Sadly, such know-nothingism is nothing new for our legacy media.
The wealthy historical past of historic, cultural and theological illiteracy in media’s religion protection goes back years — as when The New York Times reported that Easter is “the celebration of the resurrection into heaven of Jesus,” or when it claimed a French priest had rescued a statuette of Jesus from the Notre Dame fire when he’d truly stated he had saved the “body of Christ.”
And there’s additionally the more intentional, long-running effort amongst angrier journalists to defame conservative Christians as a drive for evil.
Recall the frenzy by main media, together with the Times’ editorial board, to falsely blame them for the 2016 Pulse nightclub capturing.
What drives this eagerness to consider the worst of those that subscribe to conservative Christianity?
The exact same elements that drive racial animus: ignorance and worry.
The ignorance comes from an incapability or unwillingness to know the religion.
The relaxation is worry of the opposite, of that which is in contrast to them.
Conservative Christianity has ideas.
It emphasizes self-sacrifice and dying to oneself.
Most “problematic” of all, it adheres to a detailed and completely exegeted ethical code, full with clear dos and don’ts and delineated penalties.
For those that embrace the fashionable affirmation mindset, through which nothing — not even the chemical castration of kids — is unsuitable so long because it feels “right,” conservative Christianity’s message of self-denial, sacrifice and trustworthy obedience just isn’t merely international.
To them, it’s evil.
T. Becket Adams is a journalist and media critic in Washington, DC.
