You may have heard the news last week that Fox News is more fox than it is news. In a court filing pertaining to a Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, we found out that the big personalities and other higher ups at Fox all knew that the “stolen election” narrative after the 2022 Presidential election was false. While they knew this, and while they identified some of the people perpetuating the false story as untrustworthy, they broadcast the narrative and offered the very people they saw as untrustworthy, a platform to spew the lies.
Tucker Carlson plainly stated that what was important to him was not news, but money. He and others at the network feared losing viewers to the even foxier Newsmax and so, they gave their audience what they wanted to hear, even though they knew that what they were serving up was entirely false.
There are many things that might be considered from this story, but after the politics and public trust aspect, I was moved to think about church. I found myself saying, “I have seen that fear before. At times, I have even felt it.”
Tell the people what they want to hear.
In many evangelical churches, people want to hear what they already believe. This is the same thing that happened at Fox News. Come to think of it, some of the same people are demanding what they already believe from Fox and from church. They want to hear over and over again what they already think from all of their places of worship.
This is a word of sympathy for those who preach at evangelical churches. There can be an ever present tendency to simply tell people, over and over again, what they already believe.
If you tell people that a particular way of interpreting scripture might have mostly to do with prejudice or power, they might not want to hear that. The accusation can soon fly that the preacher is not “preaching the gospel,” and there’s always a “Newsmax Church” down the street willing to absorb the disgruntled audience and their cash. For example, the pastor might point out that for most of Christian history there was never a concept of “the rapture.” This whole way of interpreting a few verses came up barely 200 years ago and was embraced only by a particular part of the Christian church. Most Christians (let alone most people) have not believed in “the rapture.” If a pastor points that out, in some evangelical churches, they might just be - let’s say - “Tuckered”, as in “Carlsoned.”
Tucker Carlson clearly cares more about stock price, and thus likely his own wealth, then he cares about what is true. He could have chosen otherwise, but he allowed himself to be “Tuckered”.
Think about it in the church context. Are the people who preach at the church you attend (or used to attend) allowed to say things that might counter or challenge what the people listening already believe?
There is a proud counterfeit of the bravery to say what people are unwilling to hear. You can see forms of it on Fox News. Basically, it is a way of saying “Things are EVEN WORSE than you can imagine, and you might be part of the problem!” These are the sermons and pastors who scold the congregation by way of scolding the whole world. They present a world in which the truth that they speak each week (the unchanging truth) has been abandoned by the world and even by many people who consider themselves Christians. This scolding is then sold as a “I am willing to tell people the hard truths.” Not really. You are simply willing to say what you have always said, and to complain that people don’t seem to listen to you enough, even though you clearly are speaking the very truth of God, at least in your own estimation. Anger and resentment works well at Fox News, and in the church, to draw a crowd.
Yes, of course, this insistence upon wanting to hear only what we already believe is not exclusive to the evangelical church. The fundamentalists on the left have distressingly picked up some of the worst habits of the fundamentalists on the right. We can each think of examples where people on the liberal, left-wing side of issues are perfectly willing to “Tucker” anyone among their tribe who has the audacity to speak something other than what is already believed.
We ought to do better than this. It’s a low bar to say that we should be better than Fox News, but we should be better than Fox News. At least for evangelical pastors who have determined to keep saying what people in their churches already believe, we can ascribe a real quandary. They may face real uncertainty over their livelihood, how to pay the bills if they refuse to be “Tuckered.” Tucker himself will be just fine, in terms of cash, I think. Maybe it’s the adulation that he craves. He’s clearly willing to lie to keep it.
Oh, Tucker. Hard to believe that you weren’t really a believer (in the election lies, I mean). In the end, you can only “Tucker” yourself.
...and now he has all that video footage he can use to tell people what they believe about January 6th is true after all.......sigh.