The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 58 – Lauren Green

Episode 58: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Lauren Green, the chief religion correspondent for Fox News, at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference. Green discusses her career trajectory, explaining how her path from a music major and concert pianist to a journalist was guided by God. She shares how her study of music history deepened her understanding of faith, as it is deeply intertwined with church history. A significant portion of the interview is dedicated to a memorable personal story about performing a piano concert for Pope Benedict at the Vatican.

Green then offers her analysis on the state of faith in America, arguing that Orthodox Christianity is on an accelerating collision course with secular humanism. She highlights the spiritual dimensions behind geopolitical events, using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an example, and concludes by emphasizing the reality of the spiritual battle in every aspect of life and the all-encompassing nature of true worship.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. Available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, wherever you get your podcasts. Please give the show a review. This is the show where I interview major thought leaders from many fields of influence to show how our worldview changes everything.

My guest today is the chief religion correspondent for Fox News. She hosts a weekly podcast called Lighthouse Faith that takes the listener on a unique journey of spiritual discovery. We were able to connect at the recent National Religious Broadcasters Conference. Please welcome Lauren Green to the show. Lauren Green, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Lauren Green (00:41):
It’s a great pleasure to be here. Oh my goodness. It’s just so incredible.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:45):
It’s crazy around here. I mean, there are people everywhere.

Lauren Green (00:48):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:49):
We’re at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference and you’re here. You’ve got a camera person who’s going to be here. You’re going to be able to do some interviews. But I love this because you’ve asked me questions lots of different times.

Lauren Green (01:02):
I know. The table’s turn. Oh my gosh. I’m not in control anymore.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:09):
Well, I’ve always wanted to find out just a little bit about your trajectory, how you got into the news business, you’re a religion correspondent for Fox News. You’ve had lots of different positions there, where you’ve been in the morning and at night, and you’re the chief person that people ask when religious questions come up and all of that. Give us a little of that trajectory. How did you get there?

Lauren Green (01:34):
Well, first of all, I wanted to say that my life is an example of how God is really in control. He really is in control because I got into journalism. I was in the Miss America pageant and here, whatever, we’re not going to go through that.

But anyway, when I came back, and I’m a music major, but I had no journalism experience. I had done some modeling, but decided to try to see if I can get an internship at the local station. So I got an internship and realized that I really don’t have the writing skills to compete in this industry. So from that internship, I went to graduate school at Northwestern’s Model School of Journalism, and got a master’s degree in journalism. And then when I came out, I started working for the local ABC affiliate.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:13):
Okay. In Chicago?

Lauren Green (02:14):
In Minneapolis.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:16):
Minneapolis.

Lauren Green (02:16):
In Minneapolis. And then after that, I went to Chicago, worked there as a reporter and a weekend anchor. And then from there, came to Fox News Channel. And I’ve been there for more than 25 years.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:28):
Wow. Tell us, and you and I were talking just before the show, there are a lot of students who, they kind of have two paths.

Lauren Green (02:35):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:36):
They think I might go this way. I might go that way. You are a concert pianist as well as being a news journalist.

Lauren Green (02:45):
I actually have a CD out too.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:48):
What’s it called?

Lauren Green (02:49):
It’s called Classic Beauty. I don’t know if you can get ahold of it because it was really never sold through Amazon or anything else like that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:54):
Is it on iTunes?

Lauren Green (02:55):
I should try to get it on iTunes, but I tried and I couldn’t and I’m not very technologically advanced, so that’s where that ended. So I have to ask one of my nieces or nephews that are under 30.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:04):
I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to everybody who’s watching that somebody who’s been in the news business at Fox News for 25 years says I don’t have the technology down.

Lauren Green (03:12):
Well, when you work at a network level, what happens is the division of labor goes into the three different categories. I mean, you have a producer now and you have a camera person and you have an editor. They all do that technical side. I’m the writer. I’m the personable person who calls up and says, “Can I get an interview?” And then I hand it over to somebody else and then we do the work. It’s a team effort.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:32):
Yeah. You were saying that for you trying to choose between being a concert pianist and being a journalist, the choice was made for you.

Lauren Green (03:40):
Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:41):
Tell us what happened there.

Lauren Green (03:41):
At the age where I knew that I would either have to practice for 8 to 10 hours a day for the next 10 years or take a job as a reporter, I kind of think that that’s kind of what the path was. I mean, you’re trying to make a living. I didn’t have wealthy parents who could put me into, let me live in New York for 10 years and just practice all day long and try to play around.

This was the path that was open to me, but it was a path that I liked too. It wasn’t as if I didn’t like it. It was something that was really open to me. When I got to Fox News Channel, I was just amazed at the different paths that I was allowed to take because I had all these other talents. So Fox is very, very good about developing talent, whatever talent you have.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:32):
Yeah. What does that look like? I mean, for somebody who’s outside of the industry.

Lauren Green (04:37):
Fox started more than 25 years ago, 24 hour cable news network, and I was the first on air person hired for Fox News Channel. And when I was hired, I wanted to report on the arts and then anchor the news. So that’s basically what I was doing and how they were formatted that allowed for that. But then they changed their format because they were trying to get audiences. And so that whole arts reporting kind of went by the wayside. But when you study music, and I was always a person of faith, but I learned more about my faith.

(05:11):
And I wanted to, and also, when you study music as a degree, you study the history of music. And the history of music really is almost a history of the church because music developed with the church, and most of the early music, at least the Western diatonic system developed in the church. And so knowing and understanding things about the mass and about the church and about the early writings of Bach and Beethoven and the requiems, all of a sudden those things became real to me. And so God’s word was not just word, it was music to me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:49):
Incredible.

Lauren Green (05:50):
So combining these two things, my heart really wanted to know more about faith. And I remember reading J.I. Packer’s book, Knowing God, and talked about how there was just nothing more important in life than knowing God. I went to the CEO of Fox News Channel and I had read a bunch of different books and I said, “We should really do something based on Ravi Zacharias’s book, Can Man Live Without God?” We really should do this because I think it’s really important.

And he said, “Okay, let’s do it.” So we did a whole special on that. And from that point of view, as they made more changes, they decided that they wanted to revamp the early show, the Fox and Friends Show. And so, “Hey, how would you like to be a religion correspondent for us?” I went, “Oh yeah, okay, great.” And so then I was able to do more specials.

(06:36):
I went to Rome and Jerusalem and some other things. And yeah, I mean, and then the podcast and then I wrote the book, Lighthouse Faith: God As a Living Reality in a World Immersed in Fog. And that was really a working out of a lot of the things that I understood about God’s presence in our lives. And so that book then spawned the podcast, Lighthouse Faith.

So it’s a journey. I mean, you don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think if you go faithfully into whatever avenue was open to you and trusting in God and trying not to divert from his truth, then I think things will work out.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:17):
Yeah. Well, I’ve heard some of our instructors at Summit Ministries say, “Believe in God, obey God, stay in scripture and do what comes, what the opportunities are that come to you, just say yes.”

Lauren Green (07:31):
And that’s true. That’s very true, but people also have talents and they have passions. And I think that’s where young people are not being fed in terms of the church and the scripture. And they say, well, that’s fine, but what do I do if I have this brain for science? What if I have this brain for mathematics, if I love mathematics, but if I like philosophy or psychiatry or the law, how are all of those things going to work in God’s kingdom? And they all are.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:07):
They are.

Lauren Green (08:07):
They really are. I think the hardest thing probably today would be the entertainment industry, but we know why.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:13):
Yeah.

Lauren Green (08:15):
But even there, you’ve got things like peer flicks, you’ve got Angel Studios, you’ve got the fellowship for the arts in New York City, faithful Christians in New York City, putting on plays and doing work to glorify God in New York City, in Manhattan.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:31):
That’s incredible.

Lauren Green (08:32):
So it’s out there.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:34):
Yeah. That’s so cool. Tell us some stories, Lauren. I mean, you’ve had some experiences over the last 25 years that nobody, very, very few people ever get to have.

Lauren Green (08:44):
Oh my goodness.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:45):
What are some of the ones that really stick with you as great memories as a religious correspondent?

Lauren Green (08:51):
Oh my goodness. I’m getting to an age where a lot of the things I know are forgotten, so you know how that is. I think one of the most memorable things is always going to the Vatican, always going to see the Pope. I was not raised Catholic and I’m not Catholic now, but my husband is Greek Orthodox and I still have a great reverence for the Catholic Church and for all the things that they’ve stood for and stand for.

So I actually, this has nothing to do with my reporting, but it had everything to do with who I was because it was because of my religion correspondence that I was sent to Rome for this international music festival that they had at the Vatican, that was putting on. And I met a man there, an author, a German author who wrote a biography on Pope Benedict’s brother, My Brother, the Pope.

(09:51):
And he knew my work and he knew that I was a pianist and he invited me to Reagansburg, Germany to meet the Pope’s brother in person at his home for his birthday. And I went, “Oh my goodness.” So I packed up my 90 year old mother at the time and brought her and she met the Pope, Pope’s brother, Monsignor Ratzinger, who was a pianist and choir director. And it’s funny because my mom spoke no German and Monsignor Ritzenberg spoke no English. So my mom thought if she just spoke louder, he would hear her, but it was just, but she smiled so much and he was so delighted with her.

Anyway, that was in January and I went to Reagansburg, came back and this Michael Hesseman, who was the author, he said, “How would you like to play for Pope Benedict, play for Pope Benedict’s birthday?”

(10:54):
There was a chapel in Reagansburg, and I’m not sure if it was going to be… No, no, no. They were going to do a 90th birthday party for Monsignor Ratzinger in the chapel in Reagansburg. He says, “Would you like to play for that?” I said, “I would love to. I would love to.” Two months later, the Pope quits. I’m like, “Oh, well, say goodbye to that.” And that’s fine. He’s now the Pope emeritus and he’s living in the Vatican. And so Michael Hussleman calls me in early November and he said, “We’re still going to do the concert for Monsignor Ratzinger, but we’re going to do it at the Vatican with Pope Benedict. Do you want to do it?”

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:33):
Wow.

Lauren Green (11:33):
I went, “Oh my goodness.” Oh, man. Oh my goodness. So I had basically five weeks to learn new music and prep it and be able to perform it. And of course I brought my mom to the Vatican. It was the most memorable moment of my life. And I remember being so nervous and my mom was there and she was just enjoying the Vatican and you’re at the Vatican radio, which is a place they really don’t take you on the tours.

So here we are, these three musicians, a tenor and a violinist. They’re both German. And I was the only one, the only American, and of course the only woman. And I remember when Pope Benedict came in and he greeted all of the musicians first and I was the last and I said, “Hello, hello. Thank you.” We sat down and when you performed for the Pope, and it was only 45 people there in the room.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:21):
Incredible.

Lauren Green (12:22):
When you perform for me, you don’t stay off stage. You sit on stage. So there’s no room to pace or anything. You just have to sit there and wait for your turn. And I got up to play and you play one piece at a time. And I remember after everybody was done, Pope Benedict jumped up and came right to me and did this and shook my hand and thought I played so well. And we have that picture of him coming and greeting me. And I think that’s probably the most memorable thing of my life.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:52):
Wow. Wow.

Lauren Green (12:55):
And the ancillary to that story is that I introduced my mother to Pope Benedict and she was 90 at the time. His brother just turned 94. She’s a spry 90 year old. That was like almost nine years ago, but she actually passed in October. But she’s a spry 90 year old and I introduced her to Pope Benedict and I said, “She’s 90, too. She’s 90 as well.” And he went like, “Oh my gosh, you’re so incredible.”

And my mother who was raised in a Baptist church did not understand that you’re not supposed to hug the Pope. So she grabs him and just holds him and like that. And the picture they took was like two 90 year old people hugging and smiling at each other. For that brief moment, he was not the Pope and she was not some Baptist grown woman. They were just two elderly people just taking it, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:45):
That’s right.

Lauren Green (13:46):
And in the background, you could see a nun looking like…

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:51):
You can’t just hug the pope.

Lauren Green (13:54):
So I have to tell you, that was probably my most memorable time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:57):
Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Lauren Green (13:58):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:58):
Well, I know you’ve interviewed a lot of people, you study a lot of the key issues of faith that are going on. And I’d love to hear some of your take on what you see, put your finger on the pulse of faith in America right now and tell me some of your observations.

Lauren Green (14:18):
Observations are, what I’ve noticed for the last even 15 years is that Christianity, real Orthodox Christianity. I don’t mean like the Greek Orthodox or the Roman Orthodox or the Russian Ortho. I mean, conservative or Orthodox Christianity has been on a collision course with secular humanity for at least from the time of the resurrection. But in the last probably 15, 20 years, it’s been at an accelerated pace.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:45):
Okay. So it was the enlightenment, but you’ve seen an acceleration.

Lauren Green (14:49):
It’s an acceleration because you see and there’s always been challenges from the outside of the church always, but now the challenges are coming from inside the church and they’re coming from people who probably were nominal Christians in two or three generations ago and just didn’t understand the faith. David W. Miller who was at Princeton and wrote the book, God at Work. He says, “In the 50s and 60s, we are sort of breathing the air of Christianity.”

It was more culture, tradition. You go to church, you go to, you have the nativity plays at church and you’re an angel, but not a full blown understanding of the faith. And so when it’s challenged, there are very few people who could stand up and say, “No.” Then you’ve got the sexual revolution and Mary Eberstadt has a great book called Primal Screams that talks about the effects of the sexual revolution and that sort of decoupled things like sex and marriage, or love and sex, or sex and children.

(16:08):
I mean, these things were now torn apart, so they have no relationship to each other. Children are now a byproduct of recreational sex instead of these beloved children that you’ve conceived. It used to be when you knew you were pregnant, it was like this beautiful thing that you were now a mother, and that doesn’t exist.That’s really slowly existing. That viewpoint is slowly existing, becoming extinct.

You’ve got Western society, like I said. It used to breathe the air Christianity, and that was the standard of morality, objective morality. You’ve got Western culture now attacking Christianity. This case in Finland with the Finnish MP, the Minnesota Parliament, Paium, this is a scary thing and it should scare us too. Our constitution, yes, may keep us from getting that bad, but already there have been cases in the United States where somebody’s brought a lawsuit against a publisher because the Bible is hate speech.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:02):
Right.

Lauren Green (17:03):
Wow. And people ignore these things, but think about this. We are now focused full blown on Ukraine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Two years ago, nobody gave a hoot about the Ukraine Orthodox church breaking away from the Russian Orthodox church and Putin going ballistic over it. And that very same thing that was happening in the church is now part of why he’s invading Ukraine today.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:34):
Okay. Incredible.

Lauren Green (17:35):
We did not pay attention to what was happening because Putin is, the Russian Orthodox church is like the soft power in Russia, right? And Ukraine sees its Ukrainian identity, obviously, but there is a strong evangelical movement within Ukraine, bringing people to faith in Christ, not just the tradition of being the Orthodox church. And that’s, I believe, what also broke it away from the Russian Orthodox church.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:02):
Okay. Okay. So there’s a story behind the story.

Lauren Green (18:06):
It’s always a story, and there’s always a spiritual side to every news story.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:08):
It’s spiritual.That’s right. I think that’s it.

Lauren Green (18:10):
There’s always a spiritual side to every story that’s out there. Putin, he sees his religion as a tradition, as power, right? It’s not part of his soft power. You took that away from him and now he’s really angry.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:23):
Yeah. I remember hearing Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty saying that what a nation does about religious liberty is a tell. Oh, absolutely. For people who are playing poker, a tell is something where a person watching you very closely can see the nonverbal signs of what kind of hand you’re holding.

Lauren Green (18:44):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:45):
When attacks on religious liberty come, that is a tell about what the people who are in charge of running the government intend to do.

Lauren Green (18:55):
You see this whole idea of worship, we think of worship, the secular role and the political world thinks of worship as a sort of separate category. It’s like a card you carry in your wallet, right? But you understand theology and you understand this as well. Worship is something we do daily. What is your fundamental trust? What is the thing that gets you up in the morning? What is the thing that compels you to think that life is worth living? That is what you’re worshiping.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Green (19:22):
Right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:23):
So good.

Lauren Green (19:24):
And so you may think you believe in God, but something else is keeping you going. Is it God or is it just the fact that I’m going to be a great lawyer or I’m really beautiful. I’ve got a lot of money in the bank and that’s my security. And when God strips all that away, do you still have God?

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:44):
Wow.

Lauren Green (19:44):
Do you still have your faith? I have not been tested that far. Most of us haven’t. Most of us in this Western country have not been tested that far. But Christ has always said, “I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except by me.” Do you believe that or do you believe that Jesus is just a great teacher of love, which is really not an option in the Bible. We know that. Either Jesus is who he says he is or he’s nothing and those are your choices.

And I love this analogy that Dr. Keller talked about. If you talk about historical figures, he says, “If Queen Elizabeth is who she says she is, it doesn’t change your life.” If Queen Victoria is who he is, if Caesar is who he says he is, it doesn’t change your life. If Jesus is who he says he is, it changes everything.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:36):
It changes everything.

Lauren Green (20:37):
Because you must bow down to that authority and you must worship him.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:41):
Yeah, that’s right. And people in history, if you trace it back, that’s how science got started.

Lauren Green (20:46):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:46):
People who believed that there really is a real world, that it’s orderly and because it’s designed, it’s understandable because we were made to understand it.

Lauren Green (20:56):
Right. I mean, J. Warner Wallace does a great book about that, that Person of Interest.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:59):
Person of Interest.

Lauren Green (20:59):
Oh my gosh. What an incredible book. If you want to understand how the world really is Christ centered, read that book. And this is an atheist who came to Christ, who was a forensic detective and a cold case detective. And I’ve seen this so many times, of atheists who thought Christianity was a bunk and said, “I’m going to use my skills to prove it wrong.” And all of a sudden they’re the greatest evangelists ever.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:28):
That’s right. Because they found out. It really is that good. It really is that good. And of course, J. Warner Wallace is one of the key speakers at Summit Ministries events.

Lauren Green (21:36):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:36):
Yes. He’s with our students every session that we have and they love that. But the idea that Jesus is at the center of history, like John Stott said, Jesus is at the center, all else’s circumference, but you see that in science and the arts and education and all these different areas.

Lauren Green (21:53):
Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:53):
Yeah.

Lauren Green (21:54):
We have a great opportunity, but we also have to recognize the battle, the spiritual battle that is waging against us in every segment of our world, every encounter, every avenue that we have, either it’s law or it’s the arts or it’s fashion or every encounter is an opportunity to either serve Christ or serve not Christ, or just serve the devil.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:17):
That’s right.

Lauren Green (22:17):
And the devil’s always in every little thing that has legions. Dr. Kill talked about, if the devil can spare allegiance to corrupt one man, which in the Bible, right, don’t you think he’s got a lot of folks out there? Wow. He spared a legion to go after one.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:38):
Okay.

Lauren Green (22:38):
Right? So that should actually make you scared.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:42):
Yeah.

Lauren Green (22:43):
See, I don’t do scary movies. I don’t do devil movies. You couldn’t make me watch The Exorcist because I don’t play with the spirit world.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:50):
Yeah.

Lauren Green (22:50):
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the powers in the heavenly realms, against sources of evil.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:56):
Yeah.

Lauren Green (22:56):
Right? God’s word is living and active. That’s either true or it’s not true.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:01):
Yeah. This is so good. Yeah. Well, thank you. And thanks for investing in our audience and the students who’ve been through the Summit Ministries program. Thanks for everything that you do at Fox News to bring faith to the forefront. And I just wish you the best and I look forward to being on your show again sometime. Absolutely. New books or other projects.

Lauren Green (23:22):
Yeah, I’ve got a new book out. Come on, podcast.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:23):
Okay. Awesome. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Green (23:25):
Thanks, Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:26):
Special thanks to my guest, Lauren Green, for joining us on the show today. Lauren’s the chief religion correspondent for Fox News, the host of the Lighthouse Faith Podcast, so you can find her work in those places. The scripture says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear.” He’s our stronghold in times of trouble. Keep that in mind. Have a great week and we’ll see you next time.

Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show. It’s a podcast from Summit Ministries, summit.org. Summit is a nonprofit ministry that exists to equip and support the rising generation to embrace God’s truth and champion a biblical worldview. For nearly 60 years, Summit Ministries has been training students and those who work with students to develop, deepen and defend a biblical worldview through life-changing conferences, thoughtful church, homeschool and Christian school, curriculum books, free online resources and more.

(24:23):
If you want to live out a biblical worldview in today’s world and you desire to instill a lifelong faith in the rising generation, visit summit.org/thedrjeffshow for more information. Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place. For your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show, that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.