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I’ve been asked the same question for a few months now. It goes something like this:
“Why the religion beat?”
That’s usually followed by: “I’ve never heard of religion as a journalism beat.”
This question came up a lot earlier this summer during Report For America’s national gathering in Chicago. Several hundred of my fellow corps members and I met at Loyola University, a Jesuit college campus that borders Lake Michigan.
We spent most of our time in Mundelein Auditorium, a stunning art-deco building that, from the outside, looks a bit like a smaller version of the Empire State building in New York City.
But one wall of the auditorium felt more like a cathedral. Several rows of stained glass windows added an ambience to the space that made me feel – well – like I was in church.
My fellow corps members took out their phones, snapping photos of the windows which cast shards of pastel-colored light across the room.
Then my eyes settled on an image: a Jesuit priest standing, face snow-white, framed by a golden halo cast his eyes downward. At his feet, two Native Americans kneeled, clad only in colorful loincloths. One man looked up to the priest, chains around his wrists; it looked like he was begging for freedom.
Freedom, no doubt, from his “pagan” beliefs, which the priest would provide (through Jesus, of course).
America’s discontent enshrined in stained glass.
Like many Appalachian families, mine moved around a lot growing up in pursuit of good employment, and because of that, my religious experience was a hodge-podge of mainline Protestant denominations. Sometimes, we were American Baptists (the quiet Baptists, someone told me recently); sometimes Lutheran. Then, I wound up marrying a United Methodist pastor.
For 8 years, I was the director of communications for the United Methodist Annual Conference in West Virginia. I had a front row seat to many of the trends mainline denominations are grappling with: declining church membership; the rise of the “nones” – those who say they are unaffiliated with organized religion; and internal fissures on culture war issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage.
I came into this job reporting on religion at 100 Days feeling like I had a good handle on religion, especially Christianity.
But I quickly realized I had a lot to learn.
As I began my first story earlier this summer, an exploration of how two interpretations of Christianity and the cultural organizing groups attached to them intersect with our politics, I realized there was so much about faith and culture and power I didn’t yet understand.
For one thing, I did not yet grasp the way some harmful, religious-tinged rhetoric has woven itself into American political life under the guise of Christianity. And I’m not alone. Many of the mainline clergy I have spoken to in the past few weeks hadn’t either.
But that has changed this summer so I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned as a way to answer that always present question: Why the religion beat?
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