Fox News spent a segment Saturday evening attacking a NCS documentary it selected to not present in full. That alternative is itself an argument.
Kayleigh McEnany teed up NCS’s forthcoming The Whole Story episode on Christian nationalism by calling it a “hit piece on the resurgence of Christianity in America.” She questioned whether or not the documentary would come with proof of real religious revival somewhat than caricature. Then she rolled tape.
What viewers noticed was a sliver of NCS’s teaser. What they didn’t see was the portion that immediately addressed the very query McEnany raised.
NCS correspondent Pamela Brown interviewed Andrew McIlwain, an avowed Christian nationalist in Taylor, Texas. In the complete promotional clip, McIlwain displays on Charlie Kirk’s funeral: “Just the brutality of it. I mean, the way we had all these political leaders proclaiming the name of Christ at his funeral, it was amazing.” Brown follows up: “Do you think it marked a turning point for mission and for America?”
McIlwain solutions in explicitly theological phrases: “With the rise of interest in Christianity? I think there’s a sense that this way of life, the way America has been heading, that’s not the answer. Well, where is the answer? Well we find that answer in scripture in Christ.”
And then Brown delivers the road Fox’s viewers by no means heard: “Kirk’s death happened at a moment of unprecedented alignment between Christian nationalists and the Trump administration.”
That sentence isn’t an apart. It is the documentary’s thesis in miniature. It clarifies that the challenge isn’t an assault on churchgoing or orthodox perception. It is an examination of the political alignment between a self-described Christian nationalist motion and govt energy.
Fox reduce it.
Instead, McEnany introduced the movie as an assault on religion itself and amplified a Georgetown professor’s warning about “radicalized” Christians. She insisted the framing was “so off base,” collapsing any distinction between Christianity as faith and Christian nationalism as an ideology looking for to form public coverage.
Sunday morning, viewers of Fox & Friends Weekend gave the NCS doc the identical therapy, with duplicitous omissions. While Griff Jenkins allowed “And, look, in full context — we haven’t seen the whole thing but…” earlier than criticizing the documentary. Charlie Hurt insisted that the documentary (he hadn’t watched) was proof of “bigotry” in opposition to Christians.
By trimming Brown’s contextual line and McIlwain’s personal articulation of a faith-centered political imaginative and prescient, Fox remodeled a documentary about political theology into an imagined assault on believers. The viewers was invited to reject a caricature whereas being shielded from the precise argument.
The central query Brown is asking — whether or not a motion that overtly ties America’s future to “scripture” and enjoys “unprecedented alignment” with a presidential administration warrants scrutiny — by no means made it to the folks most definitely to vote on it.
Not all conservative Christians are preemptively aggrieved by Brown’s documentary therapy of Christian Nationalism. David Goodman, co-author of Sec of Defense Pete Hegseth’s guide, Battle of the American Mind, mentioned that the promotional section was a good therapy:
The NCS documentary airs Sunday night at 8 PM.
Watch the unique section above by way of NCS.
The publish Fox News Attacks NCS’s ‘Hit Piece’ On Christian Nationalism With Misleading Edit first appeared on Mediaite.