The Eric Metaxas Show - Paul Glader

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

Paul Glader of The King's College and ReligionUnplugged.org, the answer to "fake news" and shoddy journalism, shares a story that examines the question, "Can Christians be part of the 'gun culture'?"

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. Why don't you pull up a chair and settle a while? Because a wizard fiction to learn your thing or two. If you can stand it. And it wouldn't hurt you nothing, neither. In fact, years, some folks say Eric wouldn't know whether the scratchers watch or wind his buttocks. Won't say who, but they said it anyhow. He's dark tooting they did.

You'll come back now, you hear. Here's America's sweetheart himself. Eric Mataxis. Hey, folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. As you know, whenever I have an opportunity, I get the John Zmirak. the program. I had that opportunity. I seized it. John Zmirak, how are you? I'm fine, Eric. It's good to be on. Listen, you wrote an article about systemic injustice, about systemic racism. I've been talking about this all week. What is your view, sir? Systemic racism does not exist. It is a conspiracy theory

that the radical left is using to try to destroy the whole American system of justice, of equity, of individual rights and of the Christian vision of the human being as morally responsible for his own actions and for no one else's. I think you put it pretty succinctly that I think we're done with you today. That's amazing. But what you just said, many others have been saying it this week on this program. You could also say systemic racism is the sound of one hand clapping. Yeah, it's the sound of, do you remember Pizza Gate, the conspiracy theory, that the Democratic Party were trafficking children for a sex trafficking ring? Yeah.

That went wild, and one guy went and shot up a pizzeria in, I think, Maryland or Washington, well, this is Pizza Gate with the mainstream media behind it. But the only problem is, this is not a news story, John. This is not a news story. This is a movement that has been going on for, you know, effectively for decades, at least for years. This is not just a thing that came up and will be dismissed. There are tons of people who have bought into this idea,

who have been fooled in thinking this way, and it's going to take a long time to make them understand that this is, in fact, wrong thinking. This is fundamentally wrong on every level. We're in the middle of a witch craze. Do you remember the Salem reading about the Salem witch trials? I'm not that old, but I know people who remember. Right. Things were much worse in Europe. In England and in Germany, thousands of women were falsely accused and hanged or burned at the stake. And it happened because respectable, ordinary people didn't want to get on the wrong side of the mob. If you deny that systemic racism exists, as I deny that it exists, like I deny the existence of a Jewish conspiracy, like I deny the existence of a Jesuit worldwide conspiracy. I didn't.

deny the existence of systemic racism in America or any other Western country since the passage of civil rights laws, since the end of apartheid in South Africa. They do not exist any more than a broad conspiracy of witches and warlocks and sorcerers existed in Salem, Massachusetts. And for that, people are going to say, well, then you must be secretly racist too. You're part of the racist conspiracy. The way they said that people speaking up for justice in Salem were secret witches, secretly elite with the death. and that's why they were calling for justice and fairness and evidence. There is zero evidence of systemic racism. There is zero connection between Christopher Columbus and what happened in Indianapolis.

And furthermore, the police in Indianapolis are all facing charges. They're under arrest or they're out on bail. These protesters won't tell us what they want. They won't tell us what they want. That means their demands are limitless. effectively they are holding America hostage. You know, John, what I keep saying is that we're all responsible. You know, we are our brothers keepers.

And when we talk about the question whether black lives matter, I think there is no question that anybody with a conscience, certainly in America, understands that, of course, black lives matter, but the movement black lives matter and the organization Black Lives Matter is a wicked pernicious movement in a wicked pernicious organization. And if you have a conscience

and you really care about black people in this country, you must do everything you can to stand against the movement and organization called Black Lives Matter. And if you don't, then you actually don't care that Black Lives Matter. Let's stop using their marketing phrase. Okay, let's start saying,

Black lives are sacred, born or unborn. Let's start saying that and demanding that liberals agree to that. And they won't agree to that because they care far more about abortion, about the money they make from Planned Parenthood, about the sexual revolution than they do about any black lives. They don't care that black babies are getting cut up in Planned Parenthood clinics and their organs sold to research companies so that rich white people can get organ donations

can get a new liver after their cirrhosis kicks in. They don't care about that. They don't care about Black lives at all. They see black people as muscle when they want to call out a mob as pawns on election day. And then as slaves on the Democrat plantation voting like they're told. And if they don't vote the way they're told, Joe Biden has a message for them. You ain't really black. I've never seen this with such clarity.

I mean, I've known this for years, but we're seeing it played out dramatically. And I think it's because Trump has been such a, a monkey wrench in the deep state. I mean, that they're freaking out, and they would have preferred to remain undercover. They would have preferred to march through the institutions, but they have come out of the bushes. And you've got the Vichy conservatives,

the collaborators like Mitt Romney, marching along with the mom, hoping that if he follows the people and gets out of the front of them, people will mistake him for a leader. These people are selling their souls, and the comforting thing is, they're not even going to get a mess of pottage.

They're not even going to be eaten last by the crocodiles at their feet. It is an unbelievable thing. What is the title of your article at stream.org? Systemic racism and other conspiracy theories. And the key line is, during a witch trial, the decent thing to do is to stand with the accused. It doesn't mean you're pro-witchcraft. It doesn't mean you don't believe in God, or that you don't believe witchcraft is possible. if you don't believe in the super night.

It doesn't mean any of those things. It means you don't want to be part of a mob hunting innocent people. You don't want to just be a coward going along to get along. Well, it's funny because I've said this a couple times, but people always say, oh, if I'd been alive in Germany in the 1930s, I would definitely would have stood up against Hitler. Well, here's my statement to those people. Now is your chance.

The woke mob is Hitler and the Nazis. It's not Donald Trump. It's the woke mob. They're Hitler and the Nazis. And they're going to bully you into submission unless you have extraordinary courage. But if you do not speak against them, you are harming blacks. And you have to live with that. You have to live with that on your conscience that if you actually care about blacks in America and others in America, you must speak against this.

Or you must at least not give this movement your support. it. Now's your chance to prove that you wouldn't be one of the silent voices in Nazi Germany. Go ahead. Exactly. This moment to step forth and say no. There's a famous picture of thousands of people cheering Hitler and one guy standing with his arm folded shaking his head and always the meme is be this guy. Time to be this guy. Don't find that is asserting white conspiracy or a Jewish conspiracy or an Asian conspiracy. Say no to racist conspiracy theories that are presented without any evidence. And systemic racism is that kind of lie. And when you see churches, like the Archbishop of Washington and Pope Francis, churches getting behind this kind of systemic lie, that's, I'm starting, that makes me think Antichrist.

I mean, when something tries to replace Christianity with an anti-Christian, pseudo-Christian cult, that's a very, very scary thing. And we always know that never, the devil's not going to appear with his horn. and say, worship me, he's going to appear as an angel of light. And this movement, and a lot of what has been, you know, the Marxism of the last 150 years, it has been that kind of a thing. It's been a substitute. And it is all the more wicked for pretending not to be what it is.

John, I know you don't have any more time. I want to thank you for coming on the program. Folks, in the rest of this program, we're going to talk. I'm going to be on with Paul Glader of the King's College talking about faith and journalism, about guns and churches. That's Paul Glader coming up. And, oh, man, in hour two, you'll see. A fellow with the King's College, and any time I get to talk to a particular professor at the King's College, I like to do that.

Today, I have my friend Paul Glader. He's a professor of journalism, media, and entrepreneurship at the King's College, also the director of the John McAndlish Phillips Journalism Institute. Paul, welcome the program. Thanks, Eric. Great to be here. You know, it's such a funny thing when something gets named after someone who was a friend of yours, John McAnlish Phillips, the Institute that you direct, he was a very,

dear friend. And he was one of the great journalists of the 20th century. And I want people to know that the King's College in New York City valued him. He was a reporter for the New York Times in the 50s and 60s mostly a little bit before they became activist, journalist. But we don't need to talk about that, Paul. You were a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal for 10 years, and you're now involved with something called the Media Project and Religion Unplugged where you wrote an article. So where should we start first? There's a lot to talk about.

Yeah. Well, you know, maybe a mention of McCandlish Phillips, who you and I know as a person who encouraged young people to go into journalism and who believed in the high standards and ethics in journalism and practiced those and was an exemplar of those. So I'm honored that we have an institute in his honor and that we have programs at the King's College through our institute that are growing.

We have a summer academy for high school students. Oh, actually, I don't want to forget about that. The summer academy, that's this summer. So people listening right now, if they're interested in journalism or whatever, they're in high school, just let's start there so people don't miss that, because this is a great opportunity for somebody looking, you know, to sort of see what New York is like, to see what journalism. might be like, tell us about that, please.

Yeah, right. So we've done this for several summers. This summer, instead of students coming to New York, we're giving a discount. They get one credit for learning with us, and it's only $200. So you get a college credit, a college class essentially all one week. Either July 12th to 17th is a top week on faith and finance with my colleague, Dr. Kimberly Reeves. or students can come to July 26 to 31st to study arts and culture reporting with myself, Terry Mattingly, and others, or they can take sports reporting with my colleague Clemente Lise,

all for 200 bucks, or if they want to do both weeks, $350, and it's a great way for your kid to earn something, get a college credit. And if people can have you as their professor, and my dear friend, Terry Mattingly, honestly, that is absolutely fantastic. Now, people want, you know, if high school students want to find this, where do they go on the web to look? Yeah, so they can go to Google Summer Academy at the King's College. It's on our website, tkc.edu, backslash admissions, backslash summer hyphen academy, backslash. But if you just Google Summer Academy in the King's College. The King's College in New York City. Okay, that's TKC.edu.

I just wanted to make sure we get that clear because that's been really a wonderful thing for so many young people. Basically, what we're, you know, what we're trying to do is pay it forward. John McAllish Phillips invested in a lot of people, and we, as professors, we get to invest in future generations, and we have amazing numbers of students going into this field. And, you know, to this story I wanted to bring up, John McAnlish Phillips, in his writing and conversations, he always dreamed of having an outlet where religion could be reported on seriously as an important part of people's lives.

And he wanted to start a national newspaper. He never was able to do that after he left the Times. He did start a church was his other goal. He was part of a church founding. But I think, you know, to me, religion unplugged is accomplishing some of that idea, which was, you know, religion unplug is a nonprofit news outlet,

a nonprofit news magazine operated by the media project. We have a network of journalists around the world who work in mainstream news, some Christian publications. We have friends from other faiths who report for our site. And we launched it as a standalone side a year ago. We won an EPI award. We just saw one of our photographer, photojournalist correspondence in Kashmir. Today I saw that she won a $20,000 prize for her photojournalism documenting what is happening in Kashmir.

So we're making an impact. We're growing traffic. And we're trying to approach religion, Eric, with a different lens. Our view is there's some great religion reporters out there doing great work. But I think there are typical narrative buckets. A lot of religion reporting tends to fall into within the mainstream media. And one of those is around conflict. There's always fighting in religion people.

Religious people just fight and cause backwardness in the world. And you and I know that's not true, that there's a lot more. The world is way more religious than some of my brethren in the media think it is. and there's a lot of good that religious people, religious institutions are doing incredible good. There's a richness to life that we need to show in religion reporting. So we're part of that movement. And frankly, editors at the New York Times and other places agree with that idea. And we're trying to, we're a platform, a magazine where international journalists, young journalists can write and report alongside seasoned veterans award-winning religion reporters.

and journalists. So we do 10 to 15 stories per week at religion unplug.com. You can sign, people can sign up for the headlines there. They can follow us on Twitter at Religion Mag. And I wanted to, I sent you a link to a story we did recently that I think showcases the kind of take that we have. It's about God and Guns. Very interesting. I have to say, this was very interesting. And it is at Religion Unplug. Is that the website? Yes, it is. Religiononplug.com.

So let's talk about that article, which people can find. There are tons of articles, but let's start there. Yeah, yeah. So it's titled God and Guns. American churchgoers are packing heat and opening a new era in Christendom. And so I'll talk about why we did this story. And you and I and everyone else probably followed the news of the West Texas shooting in December. basically a vagrant walked into a church service, pulled out a rifle during offering or communion, one of the two, shot, I believe, two people.

But this church in Texas, I can look up the name in a minute, they were armed. They had a life safety team, a security team, and several trained marksmen in the church who were in position. And this was all filmed and later put on YouTube. and a church member shot and took out the killer, killed him in the church service. It was dramatic Old West style footage. And I don't know about you, but back in December, when I was following that news, one of our writers, Bobby Ross, by the way, was the only one to get an interview with the pastor of that church because it was in his denomination.

And so we did have coverage of this story then. But I was also thinking about something, which was I put this on Facebook. some of our stories, and I asked what people thought about, you know, armed, armed church members in church. And I was astonished by what I heard from my own friends and networks on Facebook. I grew up in South Dakota, and I heard from people who explained that this is way more, it's way more important than some of us on the East Coast realized that churches in the Midwest, the South, other places are more concerned about security.

And part of it is based in these high-profile episodes. of, you know, and it's not just Christian churches, it's houses of worship. When we have in New Zealand a killer going to a mosque and killing dozens of Muslim worshippers, when we have someone going to a synagogue in Pittsburgh and killing people in a synagogue. And we have many examples of gunmen going to churches like this one in Texas. I didn't realize what has been happening in, especially Protestant evangelical churches. And the dialogue I was having to with people on Facebook indicated to me that our team at Religion on Plug needed to look into this more. And to take it seriously, not to have an opinion, but just to find out, you know,

why is this happening? And what are the reasons? And what's the sort of sort of history and theology around this? You know, I'm curious, Eric, have you ever thought about, you know, houses of worship in New York City having guns or should they? Well, I mean, there's a lot here. First of all, I want to say that I notice this myself. I speak in a lot of large churches around America. And a number of times I have been mystified by the security. You know, there's like guys following me around. Like I need security.

I'm thinking, guys, nobody knows me well enough yet where they would like try to come to a church and shoot me. But they give you the impression that they are like hyper-prepared and that, you know, and I there's a part of me, I think that, you know, it sort of rubs me the wrong way. I think, come on, this is ridiculous. But then I realize that there have been enough stories of people coming into places of worship that, you know, it's their worst nightmare that somebody would come in with, you know, an AK-15 and start blasting away. So there's a lot to be said on that. We're going to go to a break. When we come back, I want to

dissect this a little bit. Folks, I'm talking to Paul Glader with the King's College. Don't go away. We'll be right back. things that I have on. I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down. Living in the hopeless, hungry side of town. Hey, Hey, folks, President Trump's birthday is coming up June 14th. It comes up every year on June 14th, Flag Day.

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That's get the tea.com. Hey, folks, Eric Contactus show. I'm talking to Paul Glader with the King's College. And we're talking about an article that appears at Religion Unplugged.com about guns in church. Paul, you were just asking about how do I feel about that? And it's so interesting because this is exactly the conversation, largely speaking, that I have had over 10 years. as the author of this biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I go speak in a lot of churches,

and almost inevitably someone asks, how can a man of faith be involved in a plot to kill, you know, Adolf Hitler? It doesn't seem right. And I think to myself, well, David killed Goliath, and we don't say, well, then he repented. There's a role, you know, whether you go to Augustine's just war theory, but there's a role for violence.

Murder is murder. It's always wrong. Murder is wrong, but killing is not always wrong if it's in self-defense or so and so forth. So you can have a complicated conversation to think about this. And of course, there have been different sects over the years that have been ultra pacifist. But I think the idea of defending oneself as somehow wrong or defending, you know, Bonhoeff for himself said, look, if somebody is driving down a main street in a vehicle and he is killing pedestrians left and right, You have a gun.

Do you use it to stop him from killing the innocent? And it's one of these age-old puzzles. You really have to think. I mean, I think most people would say, yes, I would. But you don't say it with glee. You know, if you take out a homeless man with a gun in a sanctuary, I think probably you need to do that. But you don't do it with joy.

You do it with tears. because we don't want ever to be put into that position. And so this is a, it's a deep concept, it's a deep concept. It's very deep ethically. But when you ask about New York City, I mean, New Yorkers, they ain't Texans. Let me tell you that. And I would be perfectly comfortable with, you know, carrying a firearm or having people carrying firearms.

But New Yorkers are very, very skittish about that. Yeah. Well, you know, what was interesting is we, our videographer and I went out to, we did phone interviews with dozens of members of these life safety teams. It's amazing the intricate apparatus. Some of these big churches have created. And so we wanted to get behind the scenes and actually go to a gun range with them and, you know, be part of the training. So we flew to Colorado Springs right before COVID hit. And, you know, one, we found there's five military bases.

So there's a gun culture. There's kind of a dude culture there. And there's an evangelical culture too in Colorado Springs. And frankly, they've had attacks. One of the gurus we spoke to of this church security movement is named Carl Chin. And he worked at Focus on the Family. And he awoke to this whole, you know, what he sees as a need for security when there was a bomb threat at folks on the family. And he was taken hostage.

And then he started setting up a life-season. safety team at New Life Church in Colorado Springs shortly thereafter. And a gunman came there and shot two girls and was taken out by a woman toting a gun on the life safety team. And he started tracking the data, this guy, Carl Chin, who we feature in our sort of mini documentary on YouTube. And he's been tracking the data of violent incidences or, you know, life risk incidences at churches. And he found strangely like, you know, it's because you wonder why our church is a target. schools, why are they a target for people who are trying to do evil and harm others? And it seems like sometimes there's a person who left the church or has family at the church. The case at the

West Freeway to the church in West Texas, it was the guy was familiar with the church and was upset that he wasn't given more money or, you know, what he wanted from the church. But sometimes people are on a high-speed chase and pull into a church parking lot. They're prominent places in our on our communities. And so Carl Chin's just been tracking with data every single incident and basically sees that it's a huge, a huge zone for danger. And, you know, when we got out there, we did go to a training, a quarterly training for one church called Mountain Springs Church, and we went to the gun range. I mean, these guys take it so serious, Eric, we watched indoors in the youth group room, they broke down the YouTube video of the West Texas shooting and

deconstructed point by point, what they thought that team did well, what they didn't do well. Then they had a scenario and a practice in the church lobby, the same way the Marines do when they're guarding an embassy. And then we went to a gun range and spent hours and hours doing drills. I watched. I didn't shoot at that one, but watching how they train. And one thing I think we discovered unearthed in this report is a lot of these guys who are part of these life safety teams, our military guys, police, you know, retired. Some of them themselves, they find this is their way to serve. It's their way as a man to be involved in their church community. And their mindset is so different than, say, yours or mine, I think,

in our context, one I remember asked me, you know, they say things like this, we want the hurting to come to our church, but we don't want them to hurt anyone else. And that's why they say they're doing this, where they say, you know, if someone does come trying to harm others, we're going to make sure they leave in a pine box, you know, some dramatic things. That's right out of scripture. Come on, Paul. Yeah, right. I mean, that's, listen, you and I, you know, being part of the Beltway elites, I'm sorry, the cultural elites in New York, it is a cultural thing.

I really do think that it's no different than, you know, if I have a hamburger or McDonald's, I have never killed a cat. I've never butchered an animal. And so I sneer at it or I sneer at hunters killing an animal and then eating it. Because I sort of think it arrives, you know, in styrofoam, you know, in the supermarket. And I don't go there. I don't look there. And I think it is a cultural thing.

We're going to a break here. Important conversation. We're talking about guns and churches. And we're talking about journalism and religion. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, I'm talking to Paul Glader, who is with the King's College here in New York City and part of the media project and their online publication, Religion Unplugged. You can find it at Religion Unplugged.com. And there's an article there. We're discussing it right now. Paul, you co-wrote the article with whom? This was Michael Ray Smith, another journalism professor. He started reporting, and then I went to Colorado Springs and we did this sort of longer magazine feature together. We want to. wanted to be the most in-depth look we'd ever seen at the church security movement,

the life safety team movement, the movement that Lifeway Research is showing a majority of churches are making plans for security. They're thinking of security more than ever. And these guys, when I told them how it is in New Jersey and New York with our churches that I don't think many of our churches carry guns are armed here. Maybe it's because we have more strict gun laws and we haven't seen violent incidences in our churches. Right. And to our friends at churches in the Midwest, they think that's lunacy. They think it's tomfoolery or that we're sitting ducks, you know. Well, I mean, look, you have to think of it this way.

When if someone comes into my church and kills my wife or daughter, suddenly I'm going to think, wow, you know, this is not a statistic. This is real. And so for folks around the country who have, they've seen this happen, I do think they probably think, look, that's like having no medical insurance or life insurance or, you know, like these are basic things that we need to think through. And I mean, some people will have a theological problem with it or a political problem with it. I wouldn't. I understand where people are coming from. But it's an odd thing that, you know, we're talking about metal detectors in schools and arming teachers in schools because, of course, we care about kids.

And so certain things just seem strange, but when you look at it in the harsh light of the logic, it seems to make sense to me. I think if you talk to people about this issue, as I have with the Bonhofer issue, you know, you get a lot of different emotions, and so it's tricky stuff. Yeah, I mean, Bonhofer was part of the plot

to assassinate Hitler, as we know, right? It's a great... I believe so. Yeah, yeah, you know better than anyone. You know, it's also the other thing I wanted to, we wanted to explore in our reporting is the theology in play here and sort of scriptural interpretation of violence and when it's necessary. And by the way, I had a friend, I sent the link to a friend the other day and he texted me that I can't tell, he said he couldn't tell what my opinion is. And to me, that was important. And to be honest with you, I don't have, I wanted just to understand.

I wanted to talk to Michael Smith and I, the reporters on this piece and the videographers. We wanted to talk to people on both sides of the issue. And I think that's what journalism and good magazine journalism or newspaper journalism, any journalism, when it's labeled news reporting or feature reporting, it should seek that kind of, you know, what we hope to strive for is intellectual honesty. And it made me happy when my friend said, hey, I really can't tell what's, you know, what side. you're on because and look i personally um i don't judge these people for uh if they're following the law and protecting their own in church and they're not you know doing harm um uh and given the events i i think my reporting and i hope people who read this story at religion unplugged um it just helps us understand them um i enjoy the dialogue and i think maybe i help them understand why churches and where

I live, but we don't have the same kind of practice. But I asked, here's a couple of quotes from Carl Chin. You know, when I was asking him, is this a new epoch in Christendom? It was Christendom, you know, we have some statements. We could look at the Bible and say, you know, turn the other cheek. Or, you know, we could see examples of nonviolence. We could also see examples of Jesus casting people out of the church, right? Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

Some of these groups point to, you know, with a sword in one hand and a trial to rebuild the wall and the others. And I asked that to Carl Chin, you know, is this a new epoch, though? And we got into this story, epochs of Christianity. And he said, clear back to the times of Christ, protection was taken seriously in his view. David was the model of the warrior, the warrior king. He was a special ops king, he said. He also, Chin also pointed to circuit-riding preachers in the old American West who carried a Bible in hand in hand. and a pistol in their pocket.

Protection was a way of life in those days. And so he said, we may be in a new era of security and protection for houses of worship, because he thinks the U.S. skipped a century of security and became complacent. He thinks we got a westernized, pacified idea that police will protect us.

We started shirking our responsibility as citizens, in his view. That's actually, that brings up so many things right out of the news today. What are our responsibilities as citizens? I think that the defund, the police movement that we've been hearing about lately, it makes you think, I mean, living in New York City with a mayor who I think has been terrible, I mean, unspeakably terrible, and allowing what were violent, scary riots to get out of control. I mean, of course there are some peaceful protesters, but largely there was looting and really scary stuff going on.

And when you start to think that the police will not protect me, and more importantly, my family, you immediately think, what should I do? Obviously, I should have a gun. I'm not going to risk because we have a mayor whose head is in the sand that my family could die or my neighbors could die. It's common sense. And then you start thinking, historically speaking, Americans always had a gun. That gun was not to commit murder. We have to be really clear that as Christians, you know, murder is always forbidden, but using it to protect and not even pulling the trigger, but to have it, you know, to threaten somebody and say, hey, if you don't put your gun down, I'm going to take action. You know, we don't think about that. So a lot of this stuff is just kind of coming up, what does it mean to be a citizen and to what extent am I self-governing? I mean, if we don't have, if we can't afford a police force,

then everybody needs to think about having a gun. Absolutely. And, you know, you're hitting the nail on the head, and you're also touching on, I think, the importance for good information. I mean, on social media, you can see all kinds of deep fakes, doctored videos, or whatnot. And I think more than ever, we need good reporting, good journalism, about what's going on in the world. When we come back, we're going to go to break.

I want to talk to you more about that. I learned all about, you know, faith and journalism through our friend Terry Mattingly and his blog, getreligion.org. And this idea that the cultural elites often, they just miss this. They're living in a different world and how important it is that we get this kind of stuff right and that we have this kind of journalism. So we're going to be right back talking to Paul Glader of the King's College. Don't go away.

Folks, welcome back to the Erfman Taxes Show. We're talking to Paul Glader of the King's College. He's a professor of journalism, media, and entrepreneurship there. and the director of the John McAnlish-Philips Journalism Institute, which has a summer possibility for high school students. Don't want to forget to say that again. You can go to tk.edu admissions, but it's a wonderful opportunity.

Paul, I was just mentioning our friend Terry Mattingly. He was the one that made me understand that oftentimes people in what I always call the cultural elites, people in newsrooms and in the media and whatever, tend to be kind of in a secular, bubble. Some of them just don't speak the language of faith and don't know anybody who speaks the language of faith. Some of them have open disdain for it based usually on some kind of ignorance. And it's important because journalism is so central to America and to our freedoms that we have

people in journalism who do understand faith issues. And that's a big part of your whole life. Yeah, absolutely. And we want to, we need to understand faith from so many angles. You know, the media has to, and we're trying to, instead of cursing the media when they get it wrong, we're trying just to be part of it and try to help get it right. And so, you know, when we saw the George Floyd story emerging, we had an, a writer named Eliza Vanibum who early on connected with, saw that there was a spiritual side to George Floyd's life and connected with a pastor and friends. And we were one of the first, if not the first news org with a story about his faith and his attempts to minister to others. And I think that helped me and many,

other people understand that, hey, this was a person who had a soul and a spirit, and the world needed to see that. The same with his funeral this week. These are stories, these are parts of life that we need to show, we need to tell. I could go on. You know, the Hebrew, the Hebrew-Israelite group in Harlem, we had a writer who went and attended a service and reported on it when that's been in the news with the last year's Covington Catholic story.

So we believe this, we're on to something with religion unplugged, and we, we, we love for people to subscribe to our emails, follow us on Twitter. And we love at the King's College where I work as a professor. We love training future journalists. We want to be part of the solution for if the world is going through big tectonic shifts, more than ever we need reporting that verifies information that helps us through this to understand, to make changes in society that we need to, but to get the story right and not to leave out key parts of the story. So We'd love to see more high school students sign up for our summer academy, July 26 to 31. So they get one college credit.

They can study arts and culture reporting with me and some others or sports reporting. $200. It's a great way for your kid to get a college credit. I was going to say, that is the cheapest college. That is awesome. And because I know two of the professors, I'm thinking this is, if you have a high school student looking to get a college credit, boy, this would be, even if you're not interested in journalism, it seems to me, that this would be fantastic.

And so what are the dates again real quick before we go? Yeah, so it's July 26 to 31. We'd love to see sign us by July 1st. This is totally remote. That's why we have the awesome price tag. So you can get a taste of the King's College and journalism training, July 26 to 31st to sign up at Google Summer Academy at the King's College. There's also a faith in finance track July 12th to 17th,

which is coming up sooner. So students should run to sign up. Our students at the King's College are getting amazing jobs all over Wall Street. In our finance program, they're getting amazing jobs all over the media in New York City, from Wall Street Journal to the New York Daily News to NBC News all over the place. It's incredible. Well, I just want to salute you for staying in the game in the media world because I think a lot of us are tempted to get cynical.

I broke my heart to cancel my subscription to the New York Times recently, but I had finally said this has gotten so bad. And knowing where we can find real news and real journalism has become tougher and tougher. So I'm just grateful to you, Paul Glader and your role with Religion Unplugged. Thank you so much for being my guest.