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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The U.S. immigration policy that allows U.S. citizens and green card holders to sponsor other relatives to come to the U.S. was first introduced 50 years ago by an immigration hard liner in Congress. President Trump now wants to end "chain migration."
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In part, Trump's recent vulgar slur appeared to be favoring the revival of a discriminatory immigration policy abolished by the U.S. Congress more than 50 years ago. -
Conservative Christians and Mormons vote the same way on many social issues, but religious differences still spur harsh criticisms between the groups. -
Conservative Christians are often allied politically with conservative Mormons, especially around social issues, but major theological differences remain between evangelical Christianity and Mormonism.
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According to some pro-Israeli Christians and Jews, God wants Jerusalem to be the capital of a Jewish state. That argument, however, is not universally accepted among those faith groups.
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Several Jewish-American groups and evangelical Christians applauded President Trump's announcement. Other Christian and Jewish leaders as well as some Muslim-majority nations criticized the move. -
Christian nationalists like Senate candidate Moore argue that the United States was established as a Christian nation, to be governed by Christian principles. -
Mladic's conviction "serves as a reminder of the evil one man can do with an army at his command," writes NPR's Tom Gjelten, who covered the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. -
White Evangelicals have been more willing to overlook Republican moral transgressions than those of Democrats. But the recent allegations against Roy Moore may be testing that tolerance.
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The $500 million privately funded project focuses on biblical history, biblical stories and the Bible's impact on the world.
