'Morning Glory' officially out at EWTN
Following this summer's racist backlash against their contentious coverage of 2020's racial reckoning, EWTN Radio's two Black hosts are no more.
"Morning Glory", a daily show featuring Black Catholics Gloria Purvis and Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers (alongside various co-hosts, including Msgr Charles Pope and Fr Bjorn Lundberg), has been quietly dropped.
It is being replaced for 2021 by the expansion of an existing (and all-White) show.
Having apparently been introduced to the network earlier this decade, Morning Glory garnered plenty of fans over its years-long run, covering topics across the Catholic spectrum and often holding no punches.
Trouble began earlier this year, however, when the George Floyd protests reached their zenith, as calls for an end to police brutality (and to conventional police forces in general) began to crowd headlines.
Morning Glory covered the topic soon after, in the context of Minneapolis' impending vote to defund their police force.
While Purvis questioned the existing police budget and endorsed the community's right to govern themselves how they see fit, conservative hosts Deacon Harold (a former cop) and Msgr Pope (a highly-problematic lockdown critic), took a decidedly "Back the Blue" position.
A week later, a similar exchange occurred on the topic of the federal George Floyd Policing Act, though with Fr. Vincent De Rosa filling in for Msgr Pope. Purvis, supporting the legislation, was once again shot (and even shouted) down by her co-hosts.
Guadalupe Radio Network, EWTN's largest radio affiliate, soon after suspended the show, later releasing a statement citing listener complaints (and the offending clips)—though appearing to target Purvis specifically.
Accusations of racism on the part of GRN and its listeners was nearly immediate, and Purvis was soon profiled in the New York Times (among other outlets) for her anti-racist positions in a conservative Catholic media landscape.
She has continued to speak out for Seamless Garment positions, both on her show and on her Twitter account.
Though GRN (heavily) emphasized in its statement that the show's removal was "temporary", the show never returned and they later scrubbed the announcement from their website.
EWTN, on the other hand, committed in late June to continuing the show despite its ban in their largest market.
Alongside today's hard-left announcement of its cancellation, EWTN appears to have scrubbed from their site of all Morning Glory episodes prior to December, though they remain on Soundcloud—for now.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder of Black Catholic Messenger, a priesthood applicant with the Josephites, and a ThM student w/ the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA).