She was a Libra and lived on a peacock farm on California’s Central Coast. The Chicago Tribune also reported that Black was “a devout Catholic and a devoted follower of astrology, which holds that the position of the stars and planets has a direct effect on human affairs and personalities.”

This is interesting since the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that: “All forms of divination are to be rejected. … Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers.”

Then there was the tragic case of Lucille Hamilton, who paid $621 to have her, or his, “spiritual grime” removed by a voodoo high priest. However, something went wrong and Hamilton — a 21-year-old male living as a female — died on the second day of the “Lave Tet” voodoo baptism rites.

The Philadelphia Daily News noted that, “Hamilton was a devout Catholic, with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on her foot.”

Yes, you read that correctly. You see, of all the labels used by journalists to describe believers — from “apostate” to “zealot” — surely “devout” has become one of the most meaningless. While this is true in a variety of world religions, for some reason things get especially interesting when “devout” appears in front of “Catholic.”

The bottom line: What’s the difference between a “practicing” Catholic and a “devout” Catholic? Do journalists simply know one when they see one?

Wall Street Journal editors recently raised questions about this “devout” issue in an online “Style & Substance” newsletter. This editorial note warned that it’s important for journalists covering criminal cases to consider whether a person’s faith background — devout or lapsed — is even relevant. For example, religious references may add vital information in reports about frauds committed by a Catholic individual against a number of Catholic organizations.

Meanwhile, the editors asked, “Hasn’t devout Catholic become a cliche, rather like oil-rich Kuwait? It would seem that only Catholics and Muslims qualify as devout, since devout Catholic has appeared in our pages four times in the past year and devout Muslim twice. Zero for devout Jews and Protestants.”

There is no question that the term “devout” is used far too often and in a sloppy manner, said Richard Ostling, a religion-beat veteran best known for his work with Time and the Associated Press. This fact could be a comment on how little exposure many mainstream journalists have to religious life and practice.

“Perhaps, to someone with only secularist experiences and friends, any level of religious interest of any type might seem ‘devout,’ ” he said. But, in the end, “reporters can only observe outward behavior, not the inner soul. … There’s usually a connection between observance and personal faith, so generally it makes sense to assess personal belief by externals.”

Many of these common labels used to describe believers — terms such as “serious,” “practicing,” “committed” and, yes, “devout” — are completely subjective, agreed Debra Mason, director of the Religion Newswriters Association, which is based at the University of Missouri. Different people define these words in different ways. With the “devout” label, there is even the implication that these believers may be fanatics.

When in doubt, reporters should simply drop the vague labels and use plain information, she said, echoing advice offered by Ostling and others.

“Since journalists do not have a direct line into the soul to discern a person’s faith, it is far better to use precise descriptions of a person’s religious practice and observance,” said Mason. For example, a reporter could note that, “Joe Smith attended Mass every day” or that “Jane Smith attended worship every week, even when ill.”

The goal is to use clear facts instead of foggy labels, an approach that Mason admitted may require journalists to add a line or two of context or background information. Non-Catholics, for example, may not understand the importance of a Catholic choosing to attend Mass every day.

However, she stressed, this extra work is “a small price to pay for more accurate and precise reporting.”

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The odds were also good that the Religion Newswriters Association would pick the White House race as its top news story. But there was a problem. There were so many faith-based issues in play during this election year that America’s religion-beat specialists had trouble deciding which of these hot stories was No. 1.

In the end, this was the winning item: “Controversial sermons delivered in recent years by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surface, resulting in pressure on Barack Obama, who eventually withdraws his membership in his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Meanwhile, John McCain rejects the endorsements of evangelists John Hagee, a critic of Catholicism, and Rod Parsley.”

However, it’s important to note that this RNA poll was held before two other stories broke, each demonstrating why it will be hard for the Obama administration to find middle ground in America’s wars over religion and public life.

The first was the resignation of the National Association of Evangelicals official Richard Cizik, who drew fire when he endorsed civil unions for gays and lesbians and hinted that he was willing to compromise on gay marriage, as well. In an interview with National Public Radio, the veteran lobbyist said: “I’m shifting, I have to admit. I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining traditional marriage, I don’t think.”

In the end, it was impossible for the association’s leaders to ignore those crucial words, “I don’t think.”

Then, soon after that controversy, Obama was criticized by leaders on the secular and religious left for selecting another high-profile evangelical to give the invocation at his inauguration.

The Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church had also made cautious statements suggesting a willingness to compromise on civil unions. However, Warren drew fierce attacks from gay-rights supporters due to his strong support for California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which defined marriage as the union of husband and wife.

The rest of the RNA top 10 looked like this:

(2) Led by Obama’s example, Democrats reach out to religious voters. At a crucial stage of the campaign, Obama participates in a debate with John McCain moderated by Warren and held in his megachurch sanctuary. Conservative Christians are given a few moments in the Democratic National Convention spotlight.

(3) The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as the GOP vice presidential nominee energizes evangelical activists, who are excited by her defense of unborn children — both in her personal life and in public policies. Many religious conservatives reluctantly back McCain.

(4) The California Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, but voters in November — including a large majority of African-Americans — approve a constitutional amendment enforcing a traditional definition of marriage. Gay marriage also fails at the polls in Arizona and Florida.

(5) Pope Benedict XVI makes his first U.S. visit, drawing massive crowds in Washington and New York. The pope also meets with a few Catholics who had been sexually abused by clergy and openly addresses their concerns from the pulpit.

(6) Backed by Anglican traditionalists in Africa, Asia and Latin America, conservatives alienated from the U.S. Episcopal Church appeal to the Anglican Communion to create a parallel jurisdiction — the Anglican Church in North America. This open split follows decades of doctrinal fighting in the Episcopal Church, including the consecration of a noncelibate gay priest as a bishop five years ago.

(7) India is rocked by terrorist attacks, including a three-day siege in Mumbai that results in the deaths of almost 200, including an American rabbi and his wife at an Orthodox Jewish center. Authorities pursue links to radical Islamists in Pakistan. Meanwhile, fatal attacks on Christians in the eastern state of Orissa continue during 2008.

(8) The Chinese government makes strategic moves to suppress Buddhists seeking Tibetan independence in an attempt to stage peaceful Olympics games. Still, some demonstrations mar rites to pass the Olympic torch.

(9) Religious groups are hit by effects of a struggling economy and begin to face declines in offerings, forcing many to cut staff and expenses while the need for social services increases nationwide.

(10) Chaledean Archbishop Paulos Rahho is kidnapped and murdered in Mosul, Iraq. Meanwhile, Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups continue to trade attacks. Reports of stability increase toward the end the year, including the return of some persecuted Christians to their homes.

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week off — at least when it came time to write a Scripps Howard News

Service column.

Sue me. I have missed four in 20 years and, two of those times, I was just

in or just out of the hospital.

So here is something to read, anyway. It is a recent post from my weblog —

GetReligion.org.

If you want to read the interactive version, with the links to the stories

that I mention, then just go to this URL: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3796

***

Who gets to ?reform? what?

Posted by tmatt

As any regular GetReligion.org reader would know, we go out of our way to

note the exceptionally good work that many religion reporters do on this

very complex and difficult beat. A quick glance in the archives will also

tell you that, more often than not, we are fans of the work of Tim

Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

This brings me to Townsend?s latest piece on one of the most complex

ongoing stories in American religion right now — the battle for control

of the historic St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in St. Louis. Normally you

would add the word ?Catholic? to that title, but, you see, the status of

that term is what the battle is all about.

The battle for control of this parish is unfolding on several levels and

Townsend does a great job of explaining the background.

Basically, this is a showdown between St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke

and the powers that be in this massive Polish parish. The archbishop tried

to establish control by refusing to send another priest to the parish,

thus denying the people the sacraments. But the parish, toward the end of

2005, found a priest who was willing to serve at their altar without

permission and, thus, thumb his nose — that?s what Townsend writes — at

the Catholic hierarchy.

Now, that priest — Father Marek Bozek — is in the middle of a new round

of controversy that has divided the parish itself. The bottom line: It

turns out that a priest who is willing to monkey with Catholic doctrines

about episcopal authority may, in the end, be willing to be more than

flexible about other doctrines, too (which is bad news for many Polish

Catholics, who tend to be rather traditional at heart). Here is the key

section of Townsend?s long and detailed report:

“… Bozek has reshaped the church into a community that would be

unrecognizable to those 19th-century founders. His vision for a

reformed Roman Catholic faith calls for supporting female ordination,

allowing priests to get married and accepting gay relationships.

Bozek?s stands have attracted hundreds of new St. Stanislaus

parishioners who share the priest?s reform-minded vision.

“But they have also divided the church, pitting newer members against

traditional parishioners unhappy with how far the priest has gone in

condemning the Roman Catholic church. There have also been questions

about the priest?s trappings. He has negotiated a 143 percent salary

hike, moved into a $157,000 Washington Avenue loft and leased a 2008

BMW for $450 per month.

“Some parishioners point to another sign that alarmed them: Bozek,

while in Poland last year, bought a silver ring custom-made for a

bishop there. When he returned, he showed the ring to his parish at a

Sunday Mass and spoke about it from the pulpit. Because it?s a

bishop?s ring and he is only a priest, Bozek says, he has not worn it.

But he won?t say he never will ? he does not rule out the possibility

of becoming the leader of what he calls an ?underground Roman

Catholic? movement.”

All kinds of people are involved in this story, literally from the Rev.

Sun Myung Moon to the Womenpriests network that causes earthquakes in the

GetReligion comments pages whenever its name is mentioned.

Like I said, this is a very complicated story. Read it all.

But here is my question. Let?s back up to that crucial paragraph in which

Townsend has to describe what Bozek is up to at the parish. The story, you

see, is about the priest?s ?vision for a reformed Roman Catholic faith?

and his ?reform-minded vision.?

You see, ?reform? is one of those loaded religion beat words. If you look

that term up online you see a number of definitions, but you?ll get the

drift. To ?reform? something means to:

* make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and

injustices; ?reform a political system?

* bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life,

conduct, and adopt a right one; ?The Church reformed me?; ?reform your

conduct? …

* a change for the better as a result of correcting abuses; ?justice

was for sale before the reform of the law courts? …

* improve by alteration or correction of errors or defects and put

into a better condition; ?reform the health system in this country?

* a campaign aimed to correct abuses or malpractices.

I think you get the point. When traditional Catholics read that kind of

language, this is what they see. They see a newspaper saying that the

liberal priest is trying to reform the abuses and injustices of the

Catholic Church. So there.

Why doesn?t the story say that the archbishop is trying to reform the

priest and the parish? Who is reforming what? In other words, who is

guilty of corruption and abuses?

However, please note that Townsend has tried to attach the word ?reform?

directly to the views of the priest. This is his vision of reform. It is

what he considers reform.

My question is simple: Does this work? Is there a wording that would be

fair to both the priest and to the archbishop? Is it any better to say

that the parish is attracting Catholics who share Bozek?s ?progressive?

vision? That share his desire to ?innovate,? when it comes to crucial

doctrines in Catholic moral theology? Is there a better way to say this,

one that is both accurate and fair to partisans on both sides?

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Yet it’s hard to probe the contents of a journalist’s head without asking big questions. And it’s hard to ask some of the ultimate questions — questions about birth, life, suffering, pain and death — without mentioning religion.

William Burleigh carefully explored some of this territory when he was running news teams, both large and small. His half-century career with the E.W. Scripps Company began in 1951 when he was in high school in Evansville, Ill., and he retired several years ago after serving as president and chief executive officer.

“I always thought that it was interesting to talk to reporters and editors about their education,” said Burleigh, who remains chairman of the Scripps Howard board. “How many people in our newsrooms have actually studied history and art and philosophy and even some theology? …

“I have to admit — quite frankly — I always showed a partiality toward people with that kind of educational background. I didn’t do that because I am a big religious guy. I did it because I wanted to know if we were dealing with well-rounded people who could relate to the big questions in life.”

Burleigh won some battles. For example, a few editors decided to let a religion-beat specialist try writing a column for the Scripps Howard News Service and I’ve been at it ever since. This week marks the “On Religion” column’s 20th anniversary and I owe Burleigh, and other editors who backed religion coverage, a debt of gratitude.

However, it’s crucial to know that Burleigh — a traditional Catholic — didn’t push this issue because he wanted editors to hire more journalists who liked sitting in pews. No, he didn’t want to see newspapers keep missing events and trends that affect millions of people and billions of dollars.

Some journalists, he said, don’t think that religion matters. Thus, many editors get sweaty palms when it comes time to dedicate time, ink and money to the subject. Few seek out trained, experienced religion-beat reporters.

“The prevailing ethos among most of our editors is that the public square is the province of the secular and not a place for … religious messages to be seen or heard,” said Burleigh, in an interview for my chapter in “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” Oxford University Press will publish this book, produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, late this fall.

“As a result,” Burleigh said, “lots of editors automatically think religion is out of place in a public newspaper. That’s what we are up against.”

The key is that this is a journalism problem. Any effort to improve coverage will fail if journalists are, as commentator Bill Moyers likes to put it, “tone deaf” to the music of religion in public life.

That’s a great image. I tell editors that religion news is something like a cross between politics and opera. The laws and structures that govern religious life can be just as complicated and technical as those that control our government and there are hundreds of religious groups and movements in most news markets, not one or two.

Yet there is more to religion than laws, facts, creeds and hierarchies. Every now and then, a reporter will be sent to cover a picky, boring, tense meeting and, suddenly, someone will start to preach or pray. The words can be folksy or Byzantine, inspiring or bizarre. But, suddenly, people are crying, hugging, shouting or walking out.

Reporters look on, dumbfounded. What happened? What did they miss?

Truth is, they were covering a political meeting and then someone, in effect, began singing one of that group’s sacred songs. The reporters could hear the words, but they couldn’t hear the music.

Burleigh could hear the music and he wanted to link that to news. He argued that editors should insist on quality religion-news coverage for one simple reason — a desire to cover stories crucial to the lives of their readers.

“It’s how we answer the big questions about birth and death and the meaning of life that provide the foundation for our culture,” he said. “Those questions define our culture and tell us who we are. How do we get those big questions into our newspapers? How do we cover those stories?”

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The American Heritage Dictionary defines this term as a “vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.” Wikipedia calls it a “branch of theology … that attempts to reconcile

the existence of evil in the world with the assumption of a benevolent God.”

There were three “theodicy” events in 2005, so the Religion Newswriters Association combined them into one item in its top-10 story list. What linked Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asia tsunami and another earthquake in Pakistan? Each time, journalists asked the timeless question: What role did God play in these disasters?

Last year, it was the schoolhouse massacre of five Amish girls in Bart Township, Pa. The stunning words of forgiveness offered by the families of the victims added yet another layer of drama to the story.

“Every year there is going to be some great tragedy or disaster and that causes people to ask, ‘Where was God?’ These events may not seem like religion stories, but they almost always turn into religion stories because of the way people respond to them,” said Richard N. Ostling, who retired last year after three decades on the religion beat, first with Time and then with the Associated Press.

“This tells us something important — that it’s hard to draw clean lines between what is religion news and what is not. … Religious faith is part of how people think and how they live. This affects all kinds of

things.”

This is true in Iran and in Israel. It’s true on Sunday mornings in American suburbs and during riots in the suburbs of France. It’s true on the border between India and Pakistan and numerous other fault lines around the world.

Religion is a factor when people go to worship or when they decline to do so. For many, faith plays a role when they vote and when they volunteer to help others. Sadly, religion often plays a pivotal role when people go to war.

Thus, noted Ostling, events on this beat often seem to go in circles, with certain themes and conflicts appearing year after year, world without end — amen.

This is frustrating for editors, who struggle to understand why religious believers “keep getting so upset about what seem to be the same old stories,” he said.

For example, mainline Protestants have been fighting for decades over hot-button issues linked to ancient doctrines about marriage, gender and sex. More often than not, this leads to headlines about another round of changes in the U.S. Episcopal Church. One of the major stories of 2006 was the election of the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori — an articulate feminist from the tiny Diocese of Nevada — as the denomination’s first female presiding bishop.

“This was an important story,” noted Ostling. “But was there anything all that surprising about it? Not really.” Meanwhile, the bigger story — a chain reaction among parishes leaving the denomination — is “probably harder to cover because it is spread all over the country,” he said.

The fall of the Rev. Ted Haggard as president of the National Association of Evangelicals was a big story in 2006, but the typical news year always includes at least one sexy scandal of this kind.

The list goes on. Every election year will include a wave of reports about the degree to which religious issues did or did not drive Republicans, and increasingly Democrats, to the polls.

There are annual stories that pit science against religion and Hollywood against people in pews. Can journalists separate politics and faith in the Middle East? Are clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq about religious faith, political power or some combination of the two? What will the pope say that upsets people this year? Which church-state case split the U.S. Supreme Court this time around?

“The problem is that it’s hard to know if any one event in this stream of events is the definitive one, the truly landmark event,” said Ostling. “At some point, things change and they stay changed.”

But journalists have to be patient, he said, because “people are looking for answers to the big questions and they don’t change what they believe overnight.”

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According to the Yellow Pages, there were 400 churches in and around Lansing, Mich. That meant there were 400-plus ministers and many thousands of lay people who either read the newspaper or decided not to. Surely, he thought, these readers must have some kind of reaction to what they saw in the news.

Yet Russell kept looking — usually without success — for letters to the editor offering sharp, winsome Christian commentary on news events. Sometimes weeks would pass without the appearance of such a letter, or a similar point of view in the guest editorial columns.

After a few years of this ritual, Russell decided that enough was enough.

“The problem does not exist in the editorial policies of the newspaper, which has a fair, open and reasonable position toward local participation in all of its departments,” wrote Russell, in one 1995 essay. “No, the problem exists in the lack of Christian understanding of biblical vision, mission and strategy required to disciple our nation.”

Thinking like an entrepreneur, Russell projected his local analysis out to the national level and reached a logical conclusion. He decided that it would be good if more Christians learned how to write, rather than spending so much of their time complaining about the news media.

So Russell opened his checkbook and, in his own quiet way, tried to do something positive. Starting in the early 1990s, he began looking for writers with a knack for expressing their faith in mainstream publications and he kept at it until his death on Aug. 31 at the age of 80.

Russell started the annual Amy Awards — with a top prize of $10,000 — to honor writers who published newspaper commentaries that quoted scripture while wrestling with issues in public life. He started a national “Church Writing Group” network to encourage writers to learn from each other’s successes and failures. I met him because of his dedication to helping college students explore their talents, through scholarships and donations to Christian campuses that emphasized mainstream media writing.

As a businessman, Russell was known as the founder of Russell Business Forms, which grew into the Lansing-based RBF Inc. In 1976, Jim and Phyllis Russell started the Amy Foundation to support efforts to spread the Christian faith and help the poor. They named it after their fifth and youngest child, who was born with Down syndrome. A spokesperson for the foundation (amyfound.org) said the family would take some time before making decisions about the future of the Amy Awards and the writing projects.

“When you stop and think about it, he had no credentials of any kind when it came to working with the mainstream media,” said William R. Mattox, Jr., an Amy Award winner who is a member of USA Today’s op-ed page board of contributors. “He just came up with this idea and, when it seemed like it was doing some good, he stuck with it. He never quit.”

Russell knew what he was after. An early set of guidelines sent to the church-based writing circles stressed that their writers should strive to reach people who retained some interest in religious faith, but were rarely seen in pews. It wasn’t enough to preach to the choir, because 60 to 80 percent of all newspaper subscribers say they read letters to the editor.

“The writing language should be contemporary secular English, not fluent evangelical or fellowship Christianese,” said the brochure. A few lines later, Russell advised, “The writing will never be strident of harsh, making simple points with sledge hammers, embarrassing the body of Christ.”

Russell sincerely believed that most newspaper editors are interested in reaching as wide an audience as possible. Thus, editors have a powerful incentive to allow fair, constructive debates in their editorial pages about moral issues. The question was whether religious believers had the skills to compete in the marketplace.

“Jim Russell was not the kind of man who played the heavy and came on strong,” said Mattox. “He really believed that it made more sense to take a gentle approach and then stick to it. That’s what he was all about, as a businessman and as a believer.”

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Then again, these products do not include pronouncements on sin, sex, money, marriage, heaven, hell and a host of spiritual issues — including the belief that salvation comes through faith in a messiah named Jesus.

So International Bible Society leaders were not surprised that some people were upset by their decision to distribute 91,000 New Testaments in a pre-Christmas edition of the Colorado Springs Gazette. They were surprised when the project made national headlines, inspiring debate about free speech, religious tolerance and the role of newspapers in the marketplace of ideas.

“Whenever we try to put the word of God into people’s hands there are going to be negative reactions. We have to accept that as a given,” said Bob Jackson, head of this national project. “You’re going to hear from atheists and agnostics. You’re going to hear from people in other faiths and Christians who disagree with what you’re doing. … We know that this stirs up emotions that you just don’t see when you are giving away packets of oatmeal.”

Right now, the Colorado Springs-based Bible society is evaluating the results of this New Testament project, which was funded by 125 nearby churches, businesses and evangelical ministries, such as Focus on the Family and Youth for Christ. Jackson said it cost $125,000 to print and distribute the 200-page volume, with its cover photo of Pikes Peak and testimonies by local believers.

Some Jewish and Muslim readers protested, arguing that the “Our City” title implied that Colorado Springs was an all-Christian community. Other critics said it was wrong for a mainstream newspaper — which was paid its standard fee for such an insert — to distribute material that was unapologetically evangelistic.

After all, the back cover said: “The heart and soul of the Bible is its account of God’s intention to bring all things back to Himself. That includes this great place. And that includes you. This New Testament is being given to you to help you find your place in this drama of restoration.”

The New York Times reported that the Gazette received 195 positive reactions and 69 negative, with five readers canceling their subscriptions.

While declining to discuss the future, Jackson said he has received calls from supporters for possible efforts to distribute customized New Testaments in the mainstream newspapers in at least 20 U.S. cities. He would not confirm or deny press reports about Denver, Nashville, Seattle and Santa Rosa, Calif.

Meanwhile, the International Bible Society has been involved in another tussle in the mass-media marketplace — Rolling Stone’s refusal to advertise its new youth-oriented Today’s New International Version of the Bible. While Modern Bride, The Onion, MTV and some other outlets cooperated, Rolling Stone cited an unwritten policy against religious messages in ads.

While avoiding obvious God-talk, the Zondervan ad did carry this blunt slogan: “Timeless truth; Today’s language.”

Rolling Stone balked and then, this week, quietly relented.

The bottom line, said Jackson, is that it’s hard for religious organizations to take their messages into the public square without stepping on some toes.

The Bible society freely admits that its goal is to get New Testaments into the hands of people who are not already Christian believers. The goal is to reach “seekers” or even active opponents of the faith, said Jackson. Some may decide to read some of it, simply to “see what all of the fuss is about.” Others may throw it in a drawer and then, weeks or months later, pull it out in the midst of some personal trial.

This is the hard truth. From the “Our City” team’s evangelical perspective, the people who need to be reached are almost certainly the same people who are most likely to be offended.

“We really believe that we are trying to share the powerful word of God. We believe it can change lives,” he said. “So we believe that we’re doing what God has commanded us to do. We can’t stop trying, because we sincerely believe that lives will be changed — even among those who oppose us. You just can’t reach the searchers without offending people.”

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She was a journalist in Greece, but I couldn’t catch the name of her newspaper. She told me her name, but I didn’t get that, either. Lest readers judge me too harshly, it helps to know that I attend an Eastern Orthodox parish with Lebanese priest who speaks Arabic, Greek, French and English. I am used to interesting accents.

The reporter’s first question told me why she was calling — Google. Before long, I learned that she was interested in American politics as well as religion.

“You are an expert on Christians who worship with snakes, yes?”

Not really, I said. I have read books on the subject and I used to teach in the mountains of East Tennessee, but I never met snake handlers. In modern times, even some of the Baptists there drive Volvos, wear Birkenstocks and listen to National Public Radio like everybody else. OK, I didn’t say exactly that, but I tried to explain to her my limited contact with this edgy flock on the far fringe of American Protestantism.

“Can we interview you about this?”, she asked. “You have written about it?”

This told me that she had found — via Google — my 1996 column on “Snakes, Miracles and Biblical Authority.” It was based on lectures by Baptist historian Bill Leonard of Wake Forest University and described the theological lessons he learned from his friendship with the late Arnold Saylor, an illiterate country preacher who took rattlesnakes with him into the pulpit.

In that column, I noted: “Millions of Americans say the Bible contains no errors of any kind. ‘Amen,’ say the snake handlers. Others complain that too many people view the Bible through the lens of safe, middle-class conformity and miss its radical message. Snake handlers agree.

“Millions of Americans say that miracles happen, especially when believers have been ‘anointed’ by God’s Holy Spirit. ‘Preach on,’ say snake handlers. Polls show that millions of spiritual seekers yearn for ecstatic, world-spinning experiences of divine revelation. ‘Been there, done that,’ say snake handlers.”

Snake handlers, in other words, believe they have biblical reasons for engaging in their risky rites. They quote the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

The Greek reporter, it turned out, was interested in more than snake handlers. The newspaper wanted to probe American religion, in general. To be specific, it planned to visit Ohio, a crucial state in the White House race. She wanted to know: Did I know any snake handlers in Ohio?

Say what? I tried to figure out the logic behind this question, which seemed to be linked to European stereotypes of this country. The thinking might go something like this: Snake handlers are evangelical Protestants. President Bush is an evangelical Protestant. Therefore, Bush is the candidate of snake handlers. Then again, Bush is a United Methodist. I doubt there are many evangelical United Methodist snake handlers in Ohio. Was this an overlooked voting block?

I urged her to get in touch with Leonard, the actual expert on the subject. That was the least the newspaper could do.

“Can we go ahead and interview you? We do not have a lot of time,” she said.

A few days later, Leonard had not received any calls from Greece. He was still fascinated by the beliefs and customs of snake handlers and, come to think of it, he received a recent call from a Chinese newspaper asking questions about this topic. He declined to speculate on the logic of the Greek reporter’s Ohio questions.

Truth is, snake handlers “are the bain of liberals and conservatives,” he said.

“I can’t say why there is this interest,” said Leonard. “I don’t think it’s about Bush, but about strange religion in America — Pentecostals, healing, evangelicals, snake handlers. … They are always used as caricatures for something.”

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Still, a good journalist often senses when something is missing. So Colon went back, probing to learn why this man was so anxious to heal the rift between Koreans and their black customers. Yes, the bloody Los Angeles riots had left him shaken. Was there anything else?

“I want you to know that I’ve been telling you the truth,” the man said, back in 1996. “But there is one thing I haven’t told you.”

He hadn’t talked about his faith. He hadn’t confessed his own racial prejudices. And after the riots he was haunted by St. Paul’s words to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male for female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This Korean businessman prayed to see that truth at his shopping mall.

After opening up, he said the dreaded words: “Don’t print that.” If he failed, it would just inspire more news about hypocritical Christians.

Colon argued that the faith element was essential to this story. Ever since, he has been mulling over the lessons he learned doing that Seattle Times feature. The results are shaping new seminars on faith and the news at the Poynter Institute (www.poynter.org), where he leads programs on diversity and ethics in journalism.

The key, he wrote recently, is that “matters of faith manifest themselves in all kinds of places, among all kinds of people.” This is true in news stories both large and small. Reporters who ignore this reality will find that they can “tell the story, just not the whole story,” he said.

After 20 years on the God beat, I can only say, “Amen.” That’s why I was thrilled to speak at a Poynter seminar on this topic. Here are some of the questions I raised.

* If the goal is to improve coverage, does this mean covering more religion stories that intrigue people in newsrooms, or more stories that intrigue people in sanctuaries?

* Is religion news best covered by trained, committed specialists or by newcomers with a fresh, blank-slate approach? This is not a new question. In 1994, Washington Post editors tacked up a notice for a religion reporter. The “ideal candidate,” it said, is “not necessarily religious nor an expert in religion.”

Would editors take this approach with the Supreme Court? Or sports? Or the arts? Try to imagine a notice for an opera critic stating that the “ideal candidate does not necessarily like opera or know anything about opera.” Maybe we should treat religion like opera or, better yet, a fusion of opera and politics.

* Should newsrooms be more diverse when it comes to religious faith and practice? I am constantly asked if, in particular, it would help if there were more traditional, “devout,” practicing members of major faith groups.

By all means, yes. But this is not because only “believers” can cover religion. What we need in newsrooms are more people who bring knowledge, experience and sensitivity into the news process. The goal is to miss fewer obvious stories and mess up fewer obvious facts.

* Focus groups and polling drive the hyper-competitive world of television news. If this is true, then where are the religion specialists in broadcast news or the 24/7 niches of cable news?

“Even the agnostic cannot fail to notice that the headlines and airwaves are full of religion,” commentator Bill Moyers once said at Harvard Divinity School. Yet newscasts are so full of the “confused and condescending commentary of the religiously tone-deaf that there is little room for the authentic voices of religiously engaged people to be heard. So our ears are not trained to hear.”

* While teaching at Denver Seminary, I used three simple questions to help pastors study the power of mass media over their flocks. I urged them to ask: How do my people spend their time? How do they spend their money? How do they make their decisions?

What would happen if newspaper editors and television producers asked these questions about their readers and viewers? If they did, I believe it would quickly affect the time and resources dedicated to religion news.

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Actually, the city editor on this classic TV comedy had two problems.

First of all, the Los Angeles Tribune had lost its religion editor and nobody wanted the job. Second, Grant needed to ditch the lazy, tipsy, no-good reporter Mal Cavanaugh.

Then Grant saw the light. He summoned Cavanaugh and told him he was the new religion editor. He could look forward to years of talking theology with clergy over lunch.

“That stinks! Before you stick me with a lousy job like that, I’d quit,” roared the reporter.

Grant played it straight: “Quit? You haven’t even given it a chance. You can’t quit.”

“The hell I can’t,” said Cavanaugh. “Just watch me.”

Grant’s staff beamed. The religion beat was still vacant, but who cared?

That TV plot rang true to editors and religion reporters I interviewed during my graduate work at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, researching a project that reached The Quill magazine’s cover in January, 1983. Religion-beat veterans were proud of their work, but felt like Rodney Dangerfield. Editors kept saying that they knew religion was news, but that most religion-beat stories seemed too boring, or too controversial.

That’s the ticket - too boring and too controversial.

“The role religion plays in America and the world has been a well-kept secret in most of the nation’s newsrooms,” I wrote. “While reporters chase the latest stories in politics, sports, business, education and other subjects, the billions of dollars and hours Americans invest in religious activities receive minimal attention. … When news events escape the church page they are often covered by reporters with little interest in religion and little education in the style and language of religious leaders and organizations. Religion has almost been ignored by radio and television.”

Much has changed in 20 years. Editors have been bombarded by research showing that religion ranks high in the interests of readers. Year after year, numerous events rooted in religion have appeared in the Associated Press list of top news stories.

Meanwhile, the Religion Newswriters Association says the number of reporters covering religion in the mainstream press has risen sharply in the past 10 to 15 years.

“We have more than 400 members and subscribers, about 250 of those who write about religion full-time,” said Debra Mason, the RNA’s executive director. “More than a dozen newspapers have two or more religion reporters. Nearly every newspaper with a circulation of over 100,000 has at least one person who specializes in religion, and the vast majority of these folks do it full-time or nearly full-time.”

Yet troubling questions remain. I remain convinced that issues related to religion, faith and morals remain at the heart of many clashes between the press and its public. Many journalists still get sweaty palms when dealing with religion.

But anyone paying attention in recent years would have to concede that coverage has improved, especially on sweeping stories such as Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath, said University of Colorado researcher Stewart Hoover, author of “Religion in the News: Faith and Journalism in American Public Discourse.” Only a generation ago, even this staggeringly complex story might have been covered as yet another example of “power and politics dressed up in the clothes of religion,” he said.

But events have forced journalists to face their ignorance of history, doctrine and tradition. Now, some are beginning to wonder if those other believers they have ignored or offended for years might be just as complex and fascinating as world religions — such as Islam — that are now growing in America. If it’s wrong to stereotype Muslims, maybe it’s wrong to stereotype conservative and liberal Protestants, Catholics, Jews and everybody else.

Maybe picky facts and nuances do matter. Maybe there really are pro-life atheists, Wiccan homeschoolers, left-wing Baptists, Muslim comics and Pentecostal philosophers.

“For many journalists,” said Hoover, “Sept. 11 has become the object lesson, the ultimate wake-up call, that demonstrates just how complex, and powerful, and multifaceted the whole world of religion really is. … Once only a few journalists knew that, but now everybody does. People can’t close their eyes now and pretend religion is fading away.”

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