Faith & Spirit Quote by Tom Brokaw

Brokaw lands the joke with a reporter’s ear for how Americans mythologize their leisure. “If fishing is a religion” isn’t just folksy exaggeration; it’s a shorthand for the way certain pastimes become identity, ritual, even moral posture. By upping the ante to “high church,” he’s drawing a bright line between the casual believer and the devoted congregant. Fly fishing, in this framing, isn’t merely a method. It’s liturgy: specialized gear, esoteric terminology, a code of etiquette, a reverence for place and practice that borders on sanctimony.

The subtext has teeth. “High church” carries class and culture in its suitcase: refinement, tradition, costly vestments, the whiff of hierarchy. Brokaw is gently needling the way fly fishing has been branded as the more elevated, more tasteful version of the same basic pursuit. You can read an affectionate admiration here, but also a wink at the gatekeeping - the idea that authenticity must be earned through expense, technique, and initiation.

Context matters because Brokaw’s whole public persona traded in a certain American civic nostalgia: the “heartland” as a moral center, hobbies as character. This line flatters that sensibility while puncturing it. It’s a compact piece of cultural anthropology: even in recreation, we recreate institutions, rank our devotions, and turn a quiet day on the water into a statement about who we are and who we think we aren’t.