I wondered last night about the spiritual beliefs of Peter Jennings. After I posted, I found the following interview.
Jennings was a spiritual person, professed a belief in Christ but would not answer personal questions about his faith.
If you don’t read the entire interview, this is the exchange I found most interesting: Jennings: You’ve made me very self-conscious. I’m not ready to answer that (about his own relationship with God) because I know that when I go off to try to report on religion, faith, spirituality, it is just so easy to put a label on something, and people put labels on other people.”
Then the interviewer asked “Do you pray?” to which Jennings answered “Yes, I have prayed. But your question should be ‘when you pray, do you know what you are doing?’ And that question I won’t answer.”
I bring this up because in my years of watching Peter Jennings, I never did figure out which side of the coin he was on, on anything. I might think he favored one presidential candidate over another one night, but the next night thought I must have mis-judged him because he now seemed to be against that candidate.
Maybe it was because of his Canadian citizenship that helped distance himself of American politics and culture differences. I like to think it was because he was a professional journalist. He made the decision to be neutral on all issues and not let his personal beliefs (political, cultural or spiritual) be revealed, lest someone might attach a label to him.