This year, The Interfaith Center of New York is pleased to bestow its 13th annual James Parks Morton Interfaith Award on Bob Abernethy, Executive Editor and Host of PBS/Thirteen’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Bob is a veteran television news correspondent who coincidentally launched his program the same year ICNY was founded. Growing up with grandfathers as Baptist ministers, his father as a religion teacher, and several uncles and cousins as pastors, Bob was keenly aware of the “growing breadth of religion news” and believed that “there was an important religion component to almost every major national and international story-about war, health care, environmental protection, and a host of other issues.”
Bob is the founder, executive editor and on-air host of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly (R&E), which he created for PBS in 1997. His proposal for the program grew out of his longtime interest in religion and the concern of many observers that network television paid inadequate attention to religious news.
The half-hour newsmagazine covers religion’s role in American life and presents moving profiles of individuals talking about their deepest beliefs. Bob, along with William Bole, co-edited The Life of Meaning (Seven Stories Press, 2007), a collection of many of the eloquent statements made by R&E interviewees.
Prior to launching R&E, Bob was a correspondent for NBC News for more than four decades, reporting from Washington, Los Angeles, London and Moscow, where, in the early 1990’s, he covered the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bob is an alumnus of Princeton University, holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees from its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 1984, he took a one-year leave from NBC to study theology and social ethics at the Yale Divinity School.
Bob is married to the former Marie Cheremeteff and has two daughters, one stepdaughter and three stepsons. He lives in Washington, DC and is a member of the Cleveland Park Congregational United Church of Christ.
Our gala takes place Monday, June 8th at Tribeca Rooftop beginning at 6:30 for cocktails and followed by a three-course dinner. Tickets range in price from $275 for nonprofit/religious organizations to $1,000 for premiere seating and can be purchased here. The net proceeds of the gala support ICNY’s purposeful educational programs, social service projects, and advocacy linking religious communities in meaningful engagement. For more information, kindly contact Ellen Greeley at Ellen@interfaithcenter.org or 212.870.3511.
