Tom Gjelten
Tom Gjelten reports on religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and conflict arising from religious differences. His reporting draws on his many years covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world.
In 1986, Gjelten became one of NPR's pioneer foreign correspondents, posted first in Latin America and then in Central Europe. Over the next decade, he covered social and political strife in Central and South America, the first Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins), praised by the New York Times as "a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder." He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent's View (Carnegie Corporation) and a contributor to Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W. W. Norton).
After returning from his overseas assignments, Gjelten covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, first from the State Department and then from the Pentagon. He was reporting live from the Pentagon at the moment it was hit on September 11, 2001, and he was NPR's lead Pentagon reporter during the early war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Gjelten has also reported extensively from Cuba in recent years. His 2008 book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking), is a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. The New York Times selected it as a "Notable Nonfiction Book," and the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and San Francisco Chronicle all listed it among their "Best Books of 2008." His latest book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (Simon & Schuster), published in 2015, recounts the impact on America of the 1965 Immigration Act, which officially opened the country's doors to immigrants of color. He has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other outlets.
Since joining NPR in 1982 as labor and education reporter, Gjelten has won numerous awards for his work, including two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, he began his professional career as a public school teacher and freelance writer.
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Kissinger's guiding foreign policy principle was that strategic national interests take priority over more idealistic aims, like the promotion of human rights and democracy. -
Some religious groups fear the Equality Act could undermine the freedom to exercise traditional faith beliefs. Other denominations say anti-LGBTQ discrimination cannot be tolerated. -
Catholic bishops say the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines did not use abortion-derived fetal cell lines, but that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is acceptable, if it's the only available option.
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The work of ministering to the sick and consoling the grieving has been a heavy burden for many faith leaders in the time of COVID-19. -
In addition, most white evangelicals and Republicans say Biden's election was illegitimate and Trump was not behind the attack on the Capitol. -
Speakers at the service see a "new America" and embrace a range of progressive causes. "The only way to establish domestic tranquility is to establish justice," the Rev. William Barber II says. -
The conviction of some Christians that God has a particular plan for America gave extra potency to efforts in support of Trump's attempts to overturn his election defeat. -
Some of the extremists who assaulted the U.S. Capitol are Christian nationalists. They believe they are on a divine mission to challenge government institutions in the name of God.
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President Trump has had the support of evangelical Christians throughout his presidency, but his incitement of the assault on Congress has proved costly. -
The Trump administration has issued a new rule this week that allows federal contractors that claim a religious mission to exclude any job applicant who does not share their beliefs.
