[2] Abernethy received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
From 1961 until 1963 Abernethy hosted a weekly television news magazine for NBC, Update, which targeted teenagers and young adults.
[4] In August 1966 NBC transferred Abernethy again, this time to Los Angeles, and assigned him to anchor evening newscasts at its owned-and-operated television station KNBC.
Using his personal background as part of a family of Northern Baptist ministers, his education at Yale Divinity and having covered religion stories for NBC, Abernethy crafted the program to fill a void in objective reporting of faith-based issues in American television.
Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly premiered in September 1997,[6] produced by WNET in New York City and underwritten primarily by a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment.