Media bears false witness against Christians — and bares its own hate

For all of its aspirations to inclusivity, major media remain shockingly intolerant. Nowhere is this clearer than in the coverage of conservative Christianity — in which, ironically enough, journalists routinely display all the dishonesty, prejudice and ignorance they so often allege of their target. Sometimes the misreporting is pure laziness.

Sometimes it is plain stupidity. Either way, it abandons any pretense of journalistic integrity and takes on all the characteristics of a racist who’s 30 minutes deep into a tirade about those people. To the bigot, a black American is always on the verge of committing a crime; to the members of the legacy press, a traditional Christian is always one day 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 said no such thing. 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 recognize the evil of his positions and repent.

Yet — as if to prove the point about straying far from the path 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 think a self-described seminarian would recognize an obvious New Testament reference — and would also remember that bearing false witness is a grave sin. What’s genuinely distressing, though, is that Arianna Huffington’s zombie vanity project is not alone in peddling this calumnious sleaze.

In major-league media, it’s more of the same: Conservative Christians aren’t members of a faith tradition rich in poetic references, scriptural allusions and shared values that span wildly disparate cultures. They’re a single homogenous blob, a grotesque caricature filled with the most violent and imperious villains this side 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 bills known as Millstone Acts (a reference to Matthew 18:6) that ban chemical castration, vasectomies and puberty blockers for children. Or, as the WaPo put it, bills aimed at blocking “gender-affirming care” for what it euphemistically referred to as “young adults.”

Talk about twisting words for evil intent. CNN claimed similarly that year 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 dangerous beliefs: that the United States has Christian roots, that Christians are sometimes called to action, and that there is such a thing as a “real American.” ABC News made the same claim, warning that “the ideology of Christian nationalism threatens American democracy.” Funnily enough, for all its ominous bluster, the report never spelled out what, exactly, Christian nationalism is, or any specific, imminent threats to US governance.

That’s a theme with this style of reporting. We’re told only that those in the movement believe that “Americans kneel to God and to God alone,” that the US is “one glorious nation under God,” and that adherents wish to “bring God back into our culture.” Christian nationalists, the writer gasps, even expect Christian lawmakers to live out their faith in public life — or, you know, not hide their light under a bushel (Matthew 5:15).

Every allegedly horrific charge is based on primary, sometimes millennia-old Christian teaching. If you get the impression that “Christion nationalism” is not a plainly defined ideology and more of a vibes-based invention of the partisan fever swamps, that’s because it is. The whole concept is a political bogeyman.

Sadly, such know-nothingism is nothing new for our legacy media. The rich history of historical, cultural and theological illiteracy in media’s faith coverage 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 actually said he had saved the “body of Christ.” And there’s also the more intentional, long-running effort among angrier journalists to defame conservative Christians as a force for evil.

Recall the rush by major media, including the Times’ editorial board, to falsely blame them for the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. What drives this eagerness to believe the worst of those who subscribe to conservative Christianity? The very same factors that drive racial animus: ignorance and fear.

The ignorance comes from an inability or unwillingness to understand the faith. The rest is fear of the other, of that which is unlike them. Conservative Christianity has principles.

It emphasizes self-sacrifice and dying to oneself. Most “problematic” of all, it adheres to a detailed and thoroughly exegeted moral code, complete with clear dos and don’ts and delineated consequences. For those who embrace the modern affirmation mindset, in which nothing — not even the chemical castration of children — is wrong so long as it feels “right,” conservative Christianity’s message of self-denial, sacrifice and faithful obedience is not merely foreign.

To them, it is evil. T. Becket Adams is a journalist and media critic in Washington, DC.