Elizabeth Dias

Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

Say what?

Jon Ward, chief national correspondent for Yahoo! News, writes in an essay for Christianity Today that his profession has made him a better Christian.

Ward knows many of his fellow Christians may find that hard to believe:

Conservative Christians are far more hostile toward the media now than they were when I was growing up. Some of my own family members have told me I should be ashamed of myself for doing my job. In fact, most people don’t like the media — and that’s bad for society. The media shares some of the blame for that, as I’ve written recently for Yahoo! News.

But he explains the profession’s role in his own life:

Journalism has empowered many of the most noble, the most Christian elements of my character. I have been discipled for two decades in how to discern what is true and false, and — probably more importantly — how to discern when there are no easy answers or solutions. I have been trained in pursuing truth without regard to whom it offends.

I have also been given a sense of humility about what we can know for sure and how often we need to acknowledge that our point of view is limited and incomplete. This is sometimes called “epistemological modesty,” and it is a quality that we badly need more of in our discourse.

Hey dude, you’re preaching to the choir.

Seriously, I authored a recent Christian Chronicle editorial that focused on the faith of one of my journalistic heroes: Jerry Mitchell, a Mississippi investigative reporter whose stories helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars.

From that editorial:

Mitchell recalled that a radio show host asked him once, “How can you be a Christian and a journalist?”


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Plug-In: Big winners, and some surprises, in Religion News Association's annual awards

Plug-In: Big winners, and some surprises, in Religion News Association's annual awards

For the second year in a row, the Religion News Association’s annual awards were presented in virtual fashion because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kudos once again to Jeff Diamant, RNA’s contest guru, for a fun and informative presentation of winners Thursday night. You can watch it all here.

For regular Weekend Plug-in readers, many of the first-place recipients’ names will be familiar, including the New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Peter Smith, The Atlantic’s Emma Green, The Tennessean’s Holly Meyer and the Chattanooga Times Free Press’ Wyatt Massey. (By the way, Smith and Meyer now work for The Associated Press.)

But there were surprises, too, in some of the major categories.

Britta Lokting and Sam Adler-Bell of Jewish Currents won the Story of the Year prize for “Welcome to Lammville: How the Hasidic housing crisis led to the largest case of federal voter fraud in modern American history.”

Dan Stockman of the Global Sisters Report earned top honors for reporting at online-only outlets for a series on Catholic women. And Peter Clowney, John DeLore, Abigail Keel, Ash Sanders, Sarah Ventre and Amy Westervelt received the Gerald A. Renner Award for Excellence in Enterprise Religion Reporting for their podcast "Unfinished: Short Creek."

Congrats to ReligionUnplugged.com’s own honorees: Alexandra Radu took first place for a photo from Malaysia, and the “God and Guns” project by Paul Glader and Michael Ray Smith (with videos by Micah Danney) received third place both for Story of the Year and online-only reporting.

Check out the full list of winners here.


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Plug-In: Worship gatherings are safe again? Alas, the Delta variant raises new concerns

Plug-In: Worship gatherings are safe again? Alas, the Delta variant raises new concerns

ORLANDO, Fla. — At the Equip Conference last weekend, most people saw no need to wear a mask.

Fully vaccinated myself, I enjoyed the feeling of normalcy as nearly 1,000 worshipers sang and prayed in a Central Florida hotel ballroom.

“It’s great, especially being vaccinated, to feel safe to shake hands with everyone, to give hugs, to talk and be in close proximity,” church planter Roslyn Miller told me at the regional gathering of Churches of Christ. “I’ve seen so many old friends and people I’ve known for years.”

Since then, concerns that vaccinated people may spread COVID-19’s highly contagious delta variant have kept rising.

“The war has changed,” according to an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document cited Thursday night by the Washington Post and early today by the New York Times.

Oh boy, here we go again.

Houses of worship “are weighing the benefits and potential backlash of mandating masks again,” the Post‘s Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports. However, some religious leaders remain skeptical of the virus.

White evangelical Christians “are more resistant to getting the vaccine than other major religious groups,” the Wall Street Journal‘s Ian Lovett notes in a story on new survey data.

On the positive side, “America’s religious communities have played an important role in upping acceptance of vaccines designed to thwart COVID-19,” the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner explains, quoting the same Public Religion Research Institute study.

While some houses of worship contemplate a return to COVID-19 safety protocols, others never ceased such measures, The Oklahoman’s Carla Hinton points out.

In an open letter to fellow Christians, a Missouri church elder makes a biblical case for getting the vaccine.

When will this pandemic finally end?


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New podcast: What could go wrong? NYTimes explores Facebook's religious ambitions

New podcast: What could go wrong? NYTimes explores Facebook's religious ambitions

Truth be told, I am not prone to flashbacks — even though I did come of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Anyway, I had a big flashback recently while reading a very interesting New York Times feature that ran with this headline: “Facebook’s Next Target: The Religious Experience.” In this case, the subhead is also crucial:The company is intensifying formal partnerships with faith groups across the United States and shaping the future of religious experience.”

Whoa. What does “shaping the future of religious experience” mean? I imagine that to learn details, readers would have to hear from some of the participants in this trailblazing online work. But there’s a problem with that. When asked about some specifics, an official with the Atlanta branch of the trendy Hillsong Church couldn’t answer, because “he had signed a nondisclosure agreement.”

Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Anyway, here’s the passage the stirred up lots of conversation, and my multi-decade flashback, during the recording of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

A Facebook spokeswoman said the data it collected from religious communities would be handled the same way as that of other users, and that nondisclosure agreements were standard process for all partners involved in product development.

Many of Facebook’s partnerships involve asking religious organizations to test or brainstorm new products, and those groups seem undeterred by Facebook’s larger controversies. This year Facebook tested a prayer feature, where members of some Facebook groups can post prayer requests and others can respond. The creator of YouVersion, the popular Bible app, worked with the company to test it.

Now, combine that mind-spinning information with this passage, which very gently raises the issue that millions of Americans — on the cultural right and left — are convinced that the Facebook gods have lost control of much of the information that is located on their platform:

The company’s effort to court faith groups comes as it is trying to repair its image among Americans who have lost confidence in the platform, especially on issues of privacy. Facebook has faced scrutiny for its role in the country’s growing disinformation crisis and breakdown of societal trust, especially around politics, and regulators have grown concerned about its outsize power.

This brings me to my flashback to a graduate-school class at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign that changed my life.


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U.S. Catholic bishops OK drafting Communion guidelines: Press asks about politics -- period

U.S. Catholic bishops OK drafting Communion guidelines: Press asks about politics -- period

Any short list of classic Pope Francis remarks about abortion would have to include the 2018 speech in which he asked, using a Mafia image: “Is it just to resort to a contract killer to solve a problem?”

There was more: “Interrupting a pregnancy is like eliminating someone. Getting rid of a human being is like resorting to a contract killer to solve a problem.” While some people support abortion rights, Francis added: “How can an act that suppresses innocent and defenseless life as it blossoms be therapeutic, civil or simply human?”

Or how about this quote, drawn from a 2020 address to the United Nations?

“Unfortunately, some countries and international institutions are also promoting abortion as one of the so-called ‘essential services’ provided in the humanitarian response to the pandemic. … It is troubling to see how simple and convenient it has become for some to deny the existence of a human life as a solution to problems that can and must be solved for both the mother and her unborn child.”

While there is no question that Pope Francis is a progressive on many issues linked to economics, immigration and other political topics, he has continued — sometimes in blunt language involving evil and the demonic — to defend the basics of Catholic moral theology.

So what are readers supposed to make of the Sunday New York Times story that opens with this summary statement:

WASHINGTON — Pope Francis and President Biden, both liberals, are the two most high-profile Roman Catholics in the world.

But in the United States, neither of these men is determining the direction of the Catholic Church. It is now a conservative movement that decides how the Catholic Church asserts its power in America.

Perhaps that is a bit simplistic?

The context, of course, was the decision by U.S. Catholic bishops — after three days of contentious debate — to approve a measure on to draft a statement that could deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion-rights politicians like President Joe Biden.


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On the religion beat: Alma mater hails New York Times and Washington Post alums

On the religion beat: Alma mater hails New York Times and Washington Post alums

Three important women working the religion beat right now all graduated from the same small college within a span of six years.

Coincidence? Perhaps not when their alma mater is Wheaton College, the elite and devout evangelical campus whose magazine's current issue surveys a dozen alums in media careers.

(That's Wheaton of Illinois, not the Massachusetts school of the same name where religious roots are long distant. Disclosure: The Guy's late wife Joan was a 1961 Wheaton graduate, journalist and college journalism teacher.)

The three: Ruth Graham, '02 (no relation to the famed evangelist) was hired by The New York Times last year to report on "religion, faith and values" out of church-saturated Dallas. The influential daily bragged that Graham forms "a powerhouse team" with the Washington bureau's Elizabeth Dias, '08, a "faith and politics" reporter since 2018. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, also '08, joined the Washington Post's equally talented religion crew in 2015, based in New York where husband Jason (class of '07) is a Times editor.

Outsiders may assume that seriously religious colleges inculcate a narrow view of life and of religion. But The Guy observes that good liberal arts education, as much or even more at a religious school than today's secularized campuses, does not wall off students from a broad outlook. Moreover, the best way to understand any and all religions is immersion in a specific believing community, whether through education or personal experience.

It figures that a Wheaton graduate will comprehend the influence of religion on individuals and societies with sophistication. Whatever their private beliefs, nobody can claim these Wheaton alums show religious favoritism. If anything, they're more likely to lift rocks on evangelical embarrassments thanks to good sources.

Perhaps employers in the East Coast cultural bubble have come to realize that evangelicalism is the nation's largest and most dynamic religious sector, and that "Wheaties" are well-equipped to interpret its vast complexities. Just so, the media scouted for writers of Catholic background during the Second Vatican Council e.g. John Cogley at the Times, writer John Elson and Rome correspondent Robert Kaiser at Time and Kenneth Woodward at Newsweek.


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Podcast: How do New York Times editors handle 'real' news when it's linked to religion?

Under normal circumstances, GetReligion’s weekly “Crossroads” podcast focuses on a discussion of a major religion-beat story or perhaps a trend related to it. Every now and then, we talk about the topic addressed in my weekly syndicated column for the Universal syndicate.

This week’s discussion (click here to tune that in) is different, because the online professionals at The New York Times recently dedicated one of their “Insider” features (Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together”) to a Q&A with the newspaper’s two religion reporters.

As you would expect, the hook for this piece is political — as clearly stated in the introduction. Spot any significant buzzwords in the first sentence?

The discourse surrounding the background of the Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the support of white evangelicals for President Trump has deepened political divisions in the country, and the conversations are two examples of why it’s important to understand conservative Christians and their impact.

The double-decker headline for the “Insider” chat says pretty much the same thing: “When Faith and Politics Meet — Two Times journalists talk about the challenges of covering religion during a pandemic in a campaign season.”

All of this reflects one of the major themes of GetReligion’s work over the past 17 years. If you want to write a religion-beat story that will automatically make it to A1, then you need to have a news hook centering on (a) politics, (b) scandal, (c) sexuality or (d) all of the above.

For way too many editors, politics is the most important thing in the “real” world — the way things that really matter get done in real life. Religious faith, on the other hand, is not really “real,” unless it overlaps with a subject that editors consider to be “real,” and politics is at the top of that list.

I would say that 90% of “they just don’t GET religion” problems that your GetReligionistas discuss here, week after week, have little or nothing to do with the work of religion-beat specialists. We cheer for religion-beat pros way more than we criticize them.

No, most of these journalism trainwrecks occur when editors assign stories that are linked to religion (or “haunted” by religious facts and ideas that journalists fail to see) to reporters who are assigned to desks dedicated to “real” topics — like politics or national news.

Before we get to the “Insider” talk with reporters Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham — both of whom are graduates of Wheaton College — let’s look at a recent Times story about a “real” topic, the potential political sins of a Supreme Court nominee. Looking at this piece will illustrate the topic that really needed to be discussed. That would be this — how do Times editors decide when a story deserves input from the religion-beat pros, or not?


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Plug-in: No anti-Catholic sequel, as Democrats avoided loud dogma at Barrett hearings

This time, the Democrats avoided the dogma. So far.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s faith was a big focus going into this week’s Senate Judicial Committee hearings.

In advance of the confirmation proceedings, The Associated Press’ Mary Clare Jalonick and Elana Schor noted:

WASHINGTON (AP) — “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

It’s that utterance from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s on the minds of Democrats and Republicans preparing for this coming week’s hearings with Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein’s 2017 remarks as she questioned Barrett — then a nominee for an appeals court — about the influence of Barrett’s Catholic faith on her judicial views sparked bipartisan backlash, contributing to the former law professor’s quick rise as a conservative judicial star.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca and Lindsay Wise pointed out:

In her 2017 confirmation hearings, senators from both parties brought up the connection between Judge Barrett’s faith and her rulings. But Democrats, especially California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, got backlash for their questions.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley asked, “When is it proper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law?”

Sen. Feinstein said, “Whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma…I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

In response to the line of questioning, Judge Barrett said, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”

With the 2017 backlash in mind, Democrats steered clear of Barrett’s religion at this week’s hearings, even as Republicans focused on it.


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Plug-in: Press handles religion differently in news coverage of Ginsburg and Barrett

The big news this past week was, of course, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the furor over President Donald Trump’s intention to nominate a replacement before the election.

There were faith angles galore and — for added intrigue — questions over whether journalists applied different standards to the religion of Ginsburg, the liberal icon, and that of 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the justice’s possible conservative successor.

For example, Religion News Service extolled Ginsburg as “passionate about Judaism’s concern for justice,” while characterizing Barrett as a “controversial Catholic” — a designation questioned by Religion Unplugged’s own Clemente Lisi. (P.S. Don’t miss Lisi’s fact check on Barrett’s faith.)

“Yes RBG’s religion shaped her approach,” RNS’ Bob Smietana said on Twitter. “And yes if (Barrett) is nominee it will be controversial. We can report both things.”

A Reuters story about “a self-described charismatic Christian community” to which Barrett purportedly belongs also drew scrutiny. At the conservative National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out a series of edits to the wire service’s original report.

“We all know what this means, in terms of press coverage,” GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly argued in a post in which he singled out praise for a story by New York Times religion writer Elizabeth Dias and her colleague Adam Liptak. “Many of the same reporters who are perfectly comfortable calling Joe Biden a ‘devout’ Catholic — while his actions clash with church doctrines on marriage and sex — are going to spill oceans of digital ink warning readers about the dangerous dogmas that dwell loudly in the heart and mind of Barrett.”

However, the focus on religion in the battle over the Supreme Court concerns Ira Rifkin Of GetReligion.org, a former RNS national correspondent who has covered domestic and foreign religious issues since the 1980s.

“It should not be about Amy Coney Barrett’s traditional Catholicism any more than Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s key attribute was that she was an ultra-liberal Jew. Or Martin Luther King Jr.’s liberal liberation Protestantism,” Rifkin said on Facebook.

“It should not be about ‘bad’ religion vs ‘good’ religion,” he added.


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