{"id":12878,"date":"2018-08-14T12:04:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T16:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=12878"},"modified":"2018-08-14T12:04:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T16:04:21","slug":"christian-podcast-demoted-itunes-hours-pastor-asks-america-pray-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2018\/08\/christian-podcast-demoted-itunes-hours-pastor-asks-america-pray-trump","title":{"rendered":"Christian Podcast Demoted on iTunes Hours After Pastor Asks America to Pray For Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12880\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12880\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2018\/08\/Prayer_for_USA-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12880\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2018\/08\/Prayer_for_USA-1.jpg\" alt=\"Wikimedia Commons\" width=\"300\" height=\"191\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12880\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The word \u201ccensorship\u201d normally conjures images of Nazis burning books or modern China\u2019s refusal to allow Google or Facebook to operate in the country without extraordinary concessions and government approved filters. Silent censorship, however, has been on the rise in the United States especially on the internet. Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have restricted conservative or Christian posts and pages for either no clear reason or under the guise of so-called \u201chate speech.\u201d Google drew fire when it ensured that certain opinions and conservative or Christian views do not appear in its search results. YouTube is gaining notoriety for blocking or demonetizing conservative or Christian videos. Now, it appears that Apple may have jumped on this worrying bandwagon.<\/p>\n<p>James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Illinois hosts a popular iTunes podcast called \u201cWalk the Word.\u201d The series frequently appears in the list of the Top 25 Religion and Spirituality podcasts on iTunes. Despite it consistent and incredible popularity, \u201cWalk the Word\u201d abruptly vanished from not just the list of the top 25 podcasts but from the list of the top 200. Dan Sumpter, the global creative director for Harvest Bible Chapel, said that they are trying to avoid \u201cjumping to conclusions\u201d and want to give \u201cApple the benefit of the doubt,\u201d but it is impossible to ignore that the sudden disappearance of \u201cWalk the Word\u201d from iTunes podcast charts came within 24 hours of MacDonald asking for Christians to pray \u201cfor wisdom for our President as his next SCOTUS nominee is chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is hardly the first time that big names in the electronic and internet business have attempted to silence conservatives and Christians, but Apple has so far managed to largely escape notice. While Sumpter remains hopeful that there is an innocent explanation for the podcasts abrupt demotion, he admitted that he is \u201crunning out of plausible, alternative explanations\u201d besides deliberate censorship. He stated that, according to the church\u2019s internal analytics, the podcast\u2019s performance had only increased recently. As such, the situation raised questions that \u201cthat only Apple can answer.\u201d Any hope for an innocent explanation, however, was strained by the avoidable fact that \u201cthe [demotion of the podcast] correlated almost exactly with [the] Facebook post made by Pastor James calling for Christians to pray for the president as he selected his nominee to replace Justice Kennedy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the suspicious timing and inexplicable demotion of \u201cWalk the Word,\u201d Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said that he \u201cwasn\u2019t surprised\u201d and felt it was another blow from the \u201cleft-wing initiative effort to silence conservatives.\u201d Two years ago such a statement would have sounded like the ranting of a conspiracy theorist. Now, however, it is nearly impossible to deny that there is truth to the statement and that Silicon Valley giants are testing to see how much of their weight they can throw around when dealing with Christians. One can only hope that backlash and pressure from Christian groups succeed in restoring the podcast to its rightful place as such groups did in other similar cases and tell the powers of Silicon Valley that the answer to how much censorship they are allowed to exert is a big, fat \u201cnone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word \u201ccensorship\u201d normally conjures images of Nazis burning books or modern China\u2019s refusal to allow Google or Facebook to operate in the country without extraordinary concessions and government approved filters. Silent censorship, however, has been on the rise in the United States especially on the internet. Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":616,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2384,2318,1128],"class_list":["post-12878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-anti-christian","tag-donald-trump","tag-internet"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christian Podcast Demoted on iTunes Hours After Pastor Asks America to Pray For Trump<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Apple appears to be testing the censorship waters by demoting a popular Christian podcast hours after the podcast host asked people to pray for Trump.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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appears to be testing the censorship waters by demoting a popular Christian podcast hours after the podcast host asked people to pray for Trump.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2018\/08\/christian-podcast-demoted-itunes-hours-pastor-asks-america-pray-trump","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2018-08-14T16:04:21+00:00","author":"Stephanie Hertzenberg","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_image":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/Prayer_for_USA-1.jpg","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2018\/08\/christian-podcast-demoted-itunes-hours-pastor-asks-america-pray-trump","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2018\/08\/christian-podcast-demoted-itunes-hours-pastor-asks-america-pray-trump","name":"Christian Podcast Demoted on iTunes Hours After Pastor Asks America to Pray For 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