Christianity Today editor refuses to backtrack on anti-Trump statements: 'He is morally unfit'
The editor of Christianity Today magazine, Mark Galli, defended his comments against President Donald Trump, stating that he stands by his editorial piece calling for the president's removal. Galli made the statement while appearing on Face The Nation on December 22 morning amid widespread controversy over his piece published last week in a major evangelical magazine. Nearly 80 percent of the evangelicals still support Trump.
The critics of Galli's op-ed accused him of not having a good understanding of the Constitution and failing to cite any legal reasons why Trump should be removed from office. The magazine editor, however, doubled down on December 22, stating that he was making a "moral judgment" on Trump and how the Republican is unfit for the highest office in the country.
"I'm not really speaking politically — making a political judgment about him, because that's not our expertise at Christianity Today. I am making a moral judgment that he is morally unfit," Galli said. "It's his public morality that makes him unfit because all of us, anybody in leadership has — none of us are perfect. We're not looking for saints. We do have private sins, ongoing patterns of behavior that reveal themselves in our private life that we're all trying to work on."
"But a president has certain responsibilities as a public figure to display a certain level of public character and public morality," he added.
Galli has also faced criticism for failing to mention in his op-ed that he was resigning from the magazine. Many readers reportedly claim that this resignation is important contextual information that should have been included.
One Twitter user wrote: "The author of that article is resigning in two weeks... meaning he won't have to face the backlash that is sure to come from that piece." While another critic wrote: "If Mark Galli wasn't resigning in two weeks, I might take him seriously."
However, the editor-in-chief's replacement in the magazine, Dr Daniel Harrell, also appears to share his predecessor's anti-Trump sentiments. Harrell, who has taught at Harvard University and is set to take over the magazine on January 3, retweeted a link to an interview with Galli, where the 67-year-old criticized the president.
Hours after the publication of the piece, President Trump slammed the magazine calling it "far left".
“A far left magazine, or very ‘progressive', as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets.