Amid her mother’s disappearance, Savannah Guthrie’s steadfast faith has been on display.
Monday, Feb. 2, she asked for prayers on social media. “we believe in voices raised in unison, in love, in hope,” she captioned her request. “we believe in goodness. we believe in humanity. above all, we believe in Him.”
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was reported missing on Feb. 1. Authorities believe she was abducted from her Catalina Foothills home, near Tucson.
In a heart wrenching video shared Wednesday night, beside her siblings Annie and Camron Guthrie, the “Today” anchor referenced her faith.
“You are God’s precious daughter, Nancy,” Guthrie said in the video message. “We believe and know that even in this valley, He is with you… We speak to you every moment and we pray without ceasing and we rejoice in advance for the day that we hold you in our arms again.”
Savannah Guthrie’s ‘deep and abiding faith and goodness’ comes from her mom
Earlier in the week, Jenna Bush Hager said Nancy imparted Guthrie’s unshakable faith.
“What Nancy gave Savannah, but also her two other children, Cam and Annie, is this deep and abiding faith and goodness and hope and optimism and all the [reasons] why we love Savannah,” Bush Hager said on the Feb. 3 episode of “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.” “So much so that when I had my son [Henry ‘Hal’ Hager in 2019], I was like, who is the most faithful person I know? Who could like lead him in his path and whatever that takes? And that’s Savannah.”
Guthrie is the godmother of Henry, and Bush Hager is the godmother of Guthrie’s daughter Vale, 11. The hosts attend the same congregation Bush Hager said, with “a church family that I know is thinking about her today and thinking about her whole family.”
Guthrie’s interfaith marriage celebrates Christian and Jewish traditions
Guthrie, who has said she was raised Baptist and “went to church three times a week” growing up, wed Michael Feldman, a Jewish man, in 2014. Guthrie shared they expose their two children − Vale and Charles, 9 − to both customs.“We celebrate all the holidays!” Guthrie told Reveal magazine in 2020. “We light the Hanukkah candles and Mike is teaching our kids the prayers. They love Christmas − the presents and Santa Claus. We know that difficult questions may be coming, but we’re committed to raising them with full knowledge of their backgrounds. We hope as they get older, the kids will be inquisitive people of faith who find their own path.””I want my kids to have a relationship with God. I know how much it’s meant to me, especially as a mom. You’re not always going to be able to protect your babies. [I want them to know] God will always be there,” she told Us Weekly in February 2025. ““I don’t force religion on my kids. I come from a multifaith family. But I do think it’s my responsibility to bring God into the conversation.”
“Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie was reported missing in February 2026. See photos of the mother-daughter duo together through the years on NBC and beyond. Here, they’re pictured in an undated photograph. Arizona officials say they are investigating Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance as a “crime.”
Nancy Guthrie and “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie are pictured in an undated photograph provided by NBC.
Guthrie penned a ‘really vulnerable and personal’ book on her faith, ‘Mostly What God Does’
Guthrie, 54, took a leap of faith when writing about her relationship with God in her 2024 book, “Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere.”
“I actually told the publisher and the agent, ‘OK, let’s try this, but everyone needs to know that at any time, I might just say I don’t think I can do it or it doesn’t feel right and everyone has to be OK with that,’” Guthrie told USA TODAY. “For a long time, I felt like maybe this is just God giving me a project to work on to bring us closer together.”
The title comes from Ephesians 5:1-2 (The Message) which says, “Mostly what God does is love you.”
“It’s really vulnerable and personal. And it’s that way because in so many ways, this is the book that I need to read,” Guthrie said. “I need to be reminded, like we all do, that God loves us and is on our side and has an eternal promise to be present to us. It’s not a promise that everything’s going to work out our way, or on our timing, or that we’re just going to crush life. It’s simply a promise that I am here for you. And I’m here with you.”
For her ‘Today’ debut, an ‘utterly terrified’ Guthrie turned to God
In her book, broken down into six parts that she’s identified as the essentials of faith – love, presence, praise, grace, hope and purpose – she wrote openly of struggling with anxiety and being “utterly terrified” before her 2012 debut as “Today” host. In those moments, Guthrie turned to God.
“God is with me,” she wrote. “He’s got me. I am not alone. Whatever happens, I will never be alone. He has brought me to this moment, and he is not about to abandon me now.”
Guthrie: ‘Even if I’m mad at God, even if I don’t understand, I still need God’
Guthrie said in her book that she and her sister Annie referred to God as “the sixth member of our family” growing up. Their father Charles died of a heart attack when Savannah, the youngest sibling, was just 16.
“What I learned through that experience was, even if I’m mad at God, even if I don’t understand, I still need God,” Guthrie said before recalling a conversation with Nelba Márquez-Greene, who lost her daughter in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
“I wanted to meet her and understand how she could still believe. And what she explained to me was that a life without God was even scarier, even worse than the life that she had to live without her own dear daughter. And that was an earth-shattering conversation for me.”
People attend a vigil at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church after the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of journalist and television host Savannah Guthrie, who went missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, on Feb. 4, 2026.
People attend a vigil at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church.
Media broadcasts outside the home of Nancy Guthrie.
Guthrie believes ‘Faith and doubt are not opposite’
Guthrie told USA TODAY that the essays about suffering and tragedies happening to good people proved the most challenging when writing “Mostly What God Does.”
“Those were the hardest essays for me to write, but I felt I couldn’t ignore them,” she said. “I think what I’ve learned over the years that faith and doubt are not opposite. They are features, they are part and parcel. They go hand in hand. If you don’t have doubts sometimes or questions, then I’m not sure you’re thinking hard enough about everything, because this world invites doubt, and God invites our questions and is OK with those questions and is eager to engage.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Savannah Guthrie has said about Christianity, ‘multi-faith’ family
