An editor at the Christian Post announced his resignation after the publication came out with an editorial in defense of President Trump.
Napp Nazworth’s decision to quit comes amid a divide among evangelical publications concerning the president. Nazworth, who had been at the outlet for more than eight years, announced his resignation on Twitter Monday night, calling the decision a “difficult choice” and adding that he “can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”
“Like so many other media companies, they’ve chosen to silo themselves,” he continued. “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.”
Announcement: 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. …
— Napp Nazworth (@NappNazworth) December 24, 2019
They’ve chosen to represent a narrow (and shrinking) slice of Christianity. That might be a good business decision, short term at least. But …
— Napp Nazworth (@NappNazworth) December 24, 2019
… 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. {end}
— Napp Nazworth (@NappNazworth) December 24, 2019
Nazworth, whose Twitter biography now lists him as an “out of work writer, editor,” announced his resignation after the Christian Post published a scathing review of Christianity Today’s editorial from last week in which it came out in support of removing Trump from office.
The Christianity Today editorial has been ardently defended by the publication’s editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, despite it being detested by Franklin Graham, the son of the late religious leader who started the publication, among others.
The Christian Post’s response piece is titled “Christianity Today and the problem with ‘Christian Elitism‘” and attacks Galli for comments he made at the time of Trump’s election.
“I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian who voted for Trump,” Galli said, according to the piece. “I describe evangelicals like me as ‘elite’ evangelicals … and this class of evangelicals has discovered that we have family members so different they seem like aliens in our midst. These other evangelicals often haven’t finished college, and if they have jobs (and apparently a lot of them don’t), they are blue-collar jobs or entry-level work …They are deeply suspicious of mainstream media. A lot of them voted for Donald Trump.”
The piece then ridicules him for those remarks, calling them “the words of elitists who look down upon opponents as inferior human beings who need to be controlled, not debated” and “toxic emotional and spiritual stew.” It also notes that the president’s evangelical support could be a result of him being viewed as the “lesser of two evils in a binary contest.”
Christianity Today’s “disdainful, dismissive, elitist posture toward their fellow Christians may well do far more long-term damage to American Christianity and its witness than any current prudential support for President Trump will ever cause,” the editorial concludes.
