Obama proceeded to recite the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic, with what Nicholas D. Kristof called a “first-rate accent.” Obama described this chant as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

This text, in one English translation, proclaims: “Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! … I testify that there is no god but Allah! … I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” These lines are known as the Shahada — from the Arabic verb, “to testify” — and reciting them, in public, with the intent of becoming a Muslim, is a crucial act in entering and then practicing the faith.

This is the kind of biographical detail that keeps complicating matters for journalists who try to make sense of the poll from the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life indicating that 18 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, as opposed to 11 percent in March 2009.

Only 34 percent of those polled said Obama is a Christian and a stunning 43 percent did not know his current religion. Among his strongest supporters, 43 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Democrats said he is a Christian.

These numbers are strange in light of Obama’s public testimonies about his conversion to Christianity, after years of spiritual struggle.

In his memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama confessed that as a young social activist he realized, “Rich, poor, sinner, saved, you needed to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away — because you were human. … I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. … Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”

This was an open confession of faith, even if many conservative Christians choose to reject the liberal beliefs he has articulated through the years. During the campaign, the Rev. Franklin Graham asked Obama if Jesus was the only way to heaven. “Jesus is the only way for me,” he responded.

Meanwhile, the Obama team has had difficulty communicating a clear message about his faith history. Campaign aides, at first, said he had never been a Muslim, but later stressed that he had never been “a practicing Muslim.”

Obama’s family history is hard to describe. His father was a Muslim from Kenya who became an atheist. His stepfather was a Muslim who, in Obama’s words, was raised in an era in which Indonesia offered a tolerant approach to Islam that blended with “remnants of Hinduism, Buddhism, and ancient animist traditions.” His mother was raised as a Christian, but adopted her own mix of secularism and spirituality.

While in Indonesia, Obama attended what he has called a “Muslim” public school and also a Catholic school. At both schools, according to educators interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, his faith was listed as “Muslim.” School friends recalled that they often went to the mosque together.

Nevertheless, there is no single, definitive Islamic approach to questions about the role of birth and upbringing in establishing a person’s religious identity.

Franklin Graham was only partially right when he told CNN: “The president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father. … His father gave him an Islamic name.” Graham added that Obama has “renounced Islam and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That’s what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn’t.”

This view of Islamic tradition is much too simplistic, said Stephen Prothero of Boston University, author of “God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World.” There is more to this debate about faith and identity than DNA, he stressed.

“As a matter of jurisprudence, however, there is a presumption that a child born to a Muslim father is Muslim,” said Prothero, in an email exchange. “This needs to be followed up with ACTION, however. …

“Like Christianity, Islam is a matter of choice, not inheritance.”

   Send article as PDF to

***

Two weeks ago, the Sunday Boston Globe magazine ran an essay — not a news story, I admit — that I have been thinking about ever since. It was called “What I Believe” and it was written by Charles Pierce, a staff writer at the publication.

This long essay covers a lot of territory and it’s possible to criticize it — either positive criticism or negative criticism — in several different ways. Most of all, it is a stunningly American look at the earthquakes that have rocked the Catholic Church in the decades after Vatican II and Woodstock.

The key is that Pierce believes that the Catholic hierarchy’s claims to unique religious authority are gone. Period. Thus, consider these two important passages in the piece, as he explains that the Catholic Church in which he worships is his alone. He has a personal church and, he states clearly, he does not need a personal Savior:

In the church of my youth, with the priests reciting incomprehensible Latin, their backs to the people, walled off by an altar rail and two millenniums’ worth of imperial design, the purple always came out at Advent and at Lent. It was the color of penance, we were told. And so it is, and penitence begins within, in one mind and one soul and in what the nuns used to call an informed conscience. That’s where my Catholicism is now. It is a penitential faith. That’s where you can look for it. It is possible, I have come to realize, that I’ve grown up to become an anti-Catholic Catholic.

And then the passage that is being quoted most often:

The Vatican can beg. It can plead. But it can no longer demand.

Which brings me to the most fundamental rule of my Catholicism — nobody gets to tell me that I’m not a Catholic.

Those of my fellow Catholics who remain loyal to the institutional structure of the Church don’t get to do so. People who talk glibly of “cafeteria Catholicism” don’t get to do so. People who seek to coin Catholic doctrine into political advantage — be they left or right — don’t get to do so. No priest gets to do so, and no bishop, either, and that especially means the bishop of Rome himself. No pope can tell me I’m not a Catholic.

Now, it is possible to see this article only through the lens of Catholic faith, practice and doctrine. If you want to see critiques of that kind, they are easy to find. You can start by clicking here and heading over to the conservative site CatholicCulture.org, where you can find this quick and easy linkage between Pierce’s faith and, surprise, his employer:

… (For) decades the Globe has operated on the assumption that the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic. At the opening of his article, Pierce cheerfully identifies himself as an “anti-Catholic Catholic.” Thus he qualifies perfectly as the man who will tell Globe readers what they should believe. …

Nobody can tell Charles Pierce that he’s not a Catholic. Nor can anyone tell him what the Catholic Church teaches. The Church teaches what Pierce wants it to teach. And he believes it all.

Or you can read a blunt post on this topic by Rod Dreher, who, it must be noted, made the difficult and painful choice to leave the Catholic Church in a crisis of conscience. If one does not believe all the claims of the Catholic Church, Dreher would say, one should have the integrity not take its vows and not to receive its Sacraments.

One should, in other words, make a serious, informed decision and then hit the exit door. Thus, Dreher writes:

Hey Charles — you’re not a Catholic! Man up and admit it. You are a Catholic by birth and cultural identification, but you have ceased to believe as Catholicism teaches. Why do you lack the courage to be what you are: a non-Catholic Christian? … A Catholicism in which you have no obligation at all to believe what the Church authoritatively teaches, or to act as it prescribes, is not Catholicism at all. At all. It’s one thing to say that you struggle to accept this teaching of the church intellectually, or have trouble living that teaching out. Everyone does, even the saints. But it’s entirely another thing to say you don’t have to try, and that that’s okay, because you are your own pope. If you don’t believe this stuff, but like to come by the church for the music, or the camaraderie, okay, fine — that’s between you and your priest, and God. But to reject the Church’s authority entirely, as Pierce does, but to still call yourself a Catholic in good standing, is either hypocrisy, or insanity — the insanity of the solipsist.

In other words, Pierce is a congregationalist in a one-man congregation, which is a very American thing to be.

There are plenty of Baptists like that and, obviously, scores of Unitarians. This was the stance of a devout Episcopalian I once interviewed — head of the vestry at the church right behind the U.S. Supreme Court — who was also an atheist. He took his confirmation vows with his intellectual fingers crossed and, Sunday after Sunday, said the creed while redefining the words inside his head. People do things like that and, in his parish, that was what being an Episcopalian was all about.

But the Globe essay would not have stuck in my head like a bad disco tune (and I would not be writing this post) if I didn’t think there was a religion-news angle to this, something linked to what GetReligion is all about.

You see, elsewhere in his essay, Piece writes about some of the details of the current crisis in Catholic sanctuaries in this land and elsewhere and then he says:

Church attendance in the United States is down.

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, released in April 2009, found that one in 10 US adults has left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic — with Catholicism having had the largest net loss in members of all the major religious groups in the United States. About half of those who departed and now identify themselves as “unaffiliated” left the church because of its views on abortion, homosexuality, and birth control. (In 2009, the American Religious Identification Survey by Hartford’s Trinity College found that, between 1990 and 2008, the percentage of people in Massachusetts who identified themselves as Catholic dropped to 39 percent from 54 percent.) The sexual-abuse scandal, then, erupted within a church that already was struggling with serious demographic pressures.

The implication is that if the Catholic Church would only modernize on these kinds of social issues, these people would not leave and, thus, the church would enter a new era growth and prosperity. New, progressive Christians and young people would flock into the pews.

Right. Right. I hear the voices of the traditional Catholics out there who have a quick response to that argument: “Yeah, just like the Episcopal Church is growing (surf in this file) and all of the other liberal Protestant churches.”

Many traditional Catholics are just as sure that their pews would be full, once again, if only the Pierces of this world would pack up and leave. They note the vitality and growth of a few conservative Catholic orders and the number of men seeking the priesthood in zip codes served by more traditional seminaries and bishops.

But, you see, that’s only half the story, too. Neither side of that debate seems to want to talk about all of the facts. There are ghosts and skeletons in Catholic closets on the left and the right. This era of sweeping changes — think birthrates, the rise of the Sunbelt, suburbanization, immigration and a host of other factual changes — is more complex than that.

At the same time, however, I worry that many journalists think that Pierce’s view is accurate in terms of history, that many journalists truly believe that Catholics — to name one example — truly do not need to go to confession and struggle to live out the teachings of their faith in order to remain practicing Catholics in the sacramental meaning of that word. In other words, the Catholic Church gets to define the borders of the Catholic Church (ditto for the Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians and others).

Thus, it would help if the Globe ran another piece by another Catholic in the newsroom — the same placement, the same length — entitled, “What My Church Teaches and Why I Believe It.”

Surely there are Catholics in that newsroom who would welcome the chance to write that essay?

Surely the Globe newsroom is diverse enough for that to happen? Or was Pierce actually speaking for his newspaper, as well as for himself?

   Send article as PDF to

Officers will be elected.

Political issues will be discussed. Lofty resolutions will be passed. At least one long business session will include a proposal about clergy benefits and salaries.

In recent decades, gatherings in the “seven sisters” of mainline Protestantism have also — to varying degrees — featured battles over sex. These flocks are, in descending order of size, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Episcopal Church, the American Baptist Churches USA, the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

But as the hours pass, veterans know that they can take breaks whenever the word “greeting” appears in the agenda, marking a polite mini-speech by a visiting civic leader or religious dignitary.

But something unusual happened recently during the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). An official “ecumenical advisory delegate” — Father Siarhei Hardun of the Orthodox Church of Belarus — used his moment at the podium to deliver a message that was courteous and stunning at the same time, if not genuinely offensive to many in the audience.

“Frankly, he was pretty sly about what he said and how he said it,” noted the Rev. Carmen S. Fowler, president of the conservative Presbyterian Lay Committee. “People are used to dozing off during these greetings, so this caught them off guard. … Most of the General Assembly yawned its way through the most provocative moment of the whole event.”

Speaking in clear, but careful, English, Hardun thanked the Presbyterians for the economic aid that helped Orthodox churches in his land rebuild social ministries after decades of bloody Communist persecution. Only 20 years ago, he noted, there were 370 parishes left and, today, there are more than 1500. He thanked the assembly for its kindness and hospitality.

However, the Orthodox priest ended by offering his take on the assembly’s debates as it prepared for another attempt to modernize Christian doctrines on sexuality. Shortly before his “greeting” the commissioners voted 373-323 to approve, for the fifth time in two decades, the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians. Regional presbyteries must now approve the measure, which is the stage at which previous efforts were defeated — by increasingly smaller margins.

“Christian morality is as old as Christianity itself. It doesn’t need to be invented now. Those attempts to invent new morality look for me like attempts to invent a new religion — a sort of modern paganism,” said Hardun, drawing scattered applause.

“When people say that they are led and guided by the Holy Spirit to do it, I wonder if it is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible, if it is the same Holy Spirit that inspires the Holy Orthodox Church not to change anything in Christian doctrine and moral standards. But if it is the same Spirit, I wonder … if there are different spirits acting in different denominations and inspiring them to develop in different directions and to create different theologies and different morals?”

The priest closed with a quote from St. Paul, urging the Presbyterians: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Later in that business day, a slim 51 percent of the assembly voted to defeat a proposal to redefine marriage as a holy covenant between “two people,” rather than one between “a man and a woman.”

General Assembly moderator Cindy Bolbach — an outspoken advocate of the gay-rights measures — offered no comment whatsoever about Hardun’s remarks when he left the podium, but quickly moved on to other business. However, before her election she urged her church not to fear the repercussions of an era of change. The denomination has lost half of its members since the 1960s.

“We have to learn how to proclaim the Gospel in a multicultural age where Christianity is no longer at the center,” she said, in a survey of the candidates for the moderator post. “We have to learn how to tell people who have grown suspicious of institutions why an institution like the P.C. (U.S.A.) can be of value to them. … And we have to accept the loss of the church we have always known — as the church transforms itself into something new.”

   Send article as PDF to

But something different happened during this summer’s convention. In a jolting statement on the divorce crisis, leaders from America’s largest non-Catholic flock looked in the mirror and decided that their own sins were just as bad as everyone else’s sins.

“Studies have indicated that conservative Protestants … are divorcing at the same rate, if not at higher rates, than the general population,” stated the resolution, which passed unanimously. Other studies indicate that areas in which “Southern Baptist churches predominate in number often have higher divorce rates than areas we would define as ‘unchurched.’ “

In other words, Southern Baptists have “been prophetic in confronting assaults in the outside culture on God’s design for marriage while rarely speaking with the same alarm and force to a scandal that has become all too commonplace in our own churches.”

The convention urged its churches to walk their conservative talk by offering improved premarital counseling, by uniting in marriage “only those who are biblically qualified to be married” and by intensifying efforts to heal broken unions.

Press coverage of this text was next to nonexistent. Media coverage was light of a strong SBC statement on corporate sin and the environment, in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The convention also approved, after some emotional debates, a sweeping program to change key elements of its national structure and finances.

This is the stuff of national news, noted religion-beat veteran Jeffrey Weiss, writing for Politics Daily. The question is why this SBC gathering received so little attention, while gatherings in the 1980s and ’90s created waves of ink.

Back then, he noted, the “pressroom would be packed by wire service reporters, writers from large and not-so-large newspapers from across the South, and from most of the top 10 largest papers not in the South. This time, I can find evidence of exactly five representatives of the secular media in attendance. …

“Which leads to this question: Did the SBC get too much attention back in the day, or is it getting too little attention now? My answer to both: Probably so.”

Of course, the troubled state of the news business played a role. There are fewer journalists on the religion beat and there are fewer travel dollars to invest in covering subjects other than those most editors consider holy, such as politics and sports.

At the same time, the era of intense coverage of Southern Baptist life coincided with what journalists perceived as a major change in American politics — the growth of the religious right. Journalists took note when the nation’s largest Protestant body spoke out on abortion, gay rights, the ordination of women, Hollywood’s influence on families and the need for evangelism around the world, including among Jewish believers.

Hot buttons were being pushed, year after year.

“Atop those reader-friendly news hooks, we had the 25-year internal battle between what we always called ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates.’ That fight ended with the conservatives in firm control of the denominational leadership and the moderates purged at about the same time the Republican Party was becoming increasingly defined by a publicly political conservative Christian base,” noted Weiss.

In other words, more politics.

These days, the SBC is primarily wrestling with issues of theology and polity, especially the culture’s slide into a post-denominational age in which people are increasingly moving into congregations that strive to avoid putting a brand name — think “Southern Baptist” — on their signs. People are drifting back and forth across hazy doctrinal lines that used to be clearly defined.

This is a giant story and, in part, is what that reorganization plan is about — granting more independence to churches, clergy and donors in an attempt to pull the old Southern Baptist tent a bit closer to contemporary megachurch realities.

Consider, noted Weiss, the news value of this dramatic plan to restructure “its organization and the way it funds missionaries — which was the main reason the SBC was formed in the first place. How dramatic? Imagine if your city decided it would let people send some of their tax money to those programs they particularly liked.”

Imagine that. That’s would be news, wouldn’t it?

   Send article as PDF to

Weeks after that signal in 2005, the cardinal became pope. Then at World Youth Day 2008, he said, “I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. … These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation.”

The pope’s recent letter to Irish Catholics also made headlines, of course. After new cries for repentance, Benedict XVI told the victims: “I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen. … It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church.”

All of these words were spoken in public and, thus, led to debates and discussions around the world. However, in recent months tuned-in Catholics have been reading about a private, strategic statement — by a Catholic layman — that may have had the greatest practical impact in American sanctuaries. The St. Louis Beacon, an independent online newspaper, recently published the document.

The 10-page memo (.pdf here) was written by David Spotanski, vice chancellor of the Diocese of Belleville in Southern Illinois, and given to his bishop on Feb. 22, 2002.

It’s crucial that Bishop Wilton D. Gregory had recently become president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — just as another wave of abuse reports hit the news. When the bishop began scanning the document, Spotanski took it back and read it aloud, behind closed doors.

“The truth is that our bishops are not doing all they CAN to stop sexual abuse of minors by their brother priests; they’re doing all they CARE TO,” wrote Spotanski. “Like most Catholics I’m stunned and horrified that there’s a distinction. … For a Church that can be so outspoken and uncompromising about the splinters in the eyes of our culture, She has apparently for decades hypocritically concealed a plank in Her own eye from which one could hew an ark.”

In addition to handing the bishop the memo, Spotanski provided a photo of his daughter and two sons, who were 14, 11 and 9 when it was taken. He then placed a copy of the photo in Gregory’s briefcase before every major meeting the bishop attended that year — including a face-to-face meeting between Pope John Paul II and the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Gregory also met with Cardinal Ratzinger and other top Vatican officials.

This led to a crucial Vatican summit on the abuse crisis and, eventually, much tougher policies to protect children in American churches.

While that charter didn’t take every action advised by Spotanski, noted commentator Ross Douthat, it’s safe to say that “while the princes of the American church were immobilized by denial … the rough draft of the policy that righted the ship was being written by a middle-aged layman in the Midwest, in consultation with the Catholic dads on his local softball team.”

The New York Times columnist, who is an active Catholic, called Spotanski, the “man who saved American Catholicism.”

If so, the key to the memo was its blunt, personal tone and its emphasis on the damage done to the lives and faith of ordinary Catholic children and their parents. For example, Spotanski asked, what Jesus would say to a cardinal who has “shown himself to be dishonest about his knowledge of the forcible anal rape of children?” He then quoted a bishop as observing, “I don’t think I’d like hell very much.”

Most of all, he argued, Catholic bishops needed to start thinking about their own vows and the church’s future and, thus, stop treating victims like “lepers, sinners, nuisances or threats.” At some point, faithful Catholics would close their hearts and their checkbooks.

When that happened, warned Spotanski, bishops in “tainted dioceses” would have to “choose between their missions and their mansions, their food buses and their limousines, the ‘least of their brothers’ and Brooks Brothers. … The depleted bottom line is that you simply can’t run a major American archdiocese for very long on 30 silver coins.”

   Send article as PDF to

Some religion-beat jobs have been killed, while others have been downsized, out-sourced, frozen or chopped up and given to reluctant general-assignment reporters.

Gentle readers, please rise for a moment of silence.

The Orlando Sentinel. The Dallas Morning News. Time. The Chicago Sun-Times. The Rocky Mountain News. U.S. News & World Report. The list goes on, especially if you include smaller newsrooms that have always struggled to support Godbeat jobs.

At least 16 major news outlets abandoned or reduced commitment to religion news as a specialty beat in recent years, according to the Religion Newswriters Association. Two of those empty desks — at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe — were recently filled.

“In the 1990s and early 2000s, the largest papers often had multiple religion reporters. That has disappeared, for sure. That is where the biggest cut for religion has occurred,” said RNA director Debra Mason, who teaches at the University of Missouri.

“We suffer in the meantime, and one possible casualty is all our experienced, better writers. I do worry that the next generation of religion writers don’t have any mentors or internships, etc., to gain experience.”

Mason stressed that the religion beat is not being singled out. Sweeping changes in the industry, coupled with hard economic times, have been especially destructive in big-city newspapers that once had the resources to fund a variety of specialty beats — from the arts to fashion, from science to religion. Also, high profits in the 1980s and into the ’90s had inflated some newsroom staffs.

At the same time, Mason said she sees another trend. New forms of religion news and opinion can be found in a variety of settings online, including sites such as Politics Daily, The Huffington Post, Creedible.com, Read the Spirit, Immanent Frame, Religion Dispatches and the powerful Catholic weblog, Whispers in the Loggia. CNN leaders recently announced the creation of several specialty news sites, including a religion weblog. Beliefnet.com continues to evolve.

Dedicated readers have never had greater access to the work of journalists and public-relations professionals employed by major denominations and religious groups of all kind — from Baptist Press to the Episcopal News Service and everyone in between. Alternative news sources have sprung up in cyberspace, such as the Stand Firm network for Anglican conservatives, The Wild Hunt for modern pagans, Orthodox Christians for Accountability and flocks of Baptist blogs — from BaptistLife.com to SBCvoices.com — representing establishment and independent writers.

The harsh reality today, according to Rocco Palmo, the man behind Whispers in the Loggia, is that all too often readers who care about religion face tough choices. Will they place their trust in traditional news reports that are, these days, often written by journalists who have little training to prepare them for the rigors of the religion beat or the opinion-based work of experienced insiders and scholars who may have ideological axes to grind?

“There are fabulous religion reporters who are still out there grinding away in the mainstream media, but they are an endangered species for sure,” said Palmo. “I still think that basic, hard-news reporting is the gold standard and we need more of it. … But most of what you see when you go online is commentary and criticism. You don’t see that much original reporting being done. …

“If anything, people like me are just trying to step in and fill the void.”

Someone will have to do that because, year after year, religion keeps playing a vital role in shaping many of the world’s biggest stories, from the streets of Iran to voting booths in America, from scandals shaking Catholic sanctuaries to mysteries unfolding in genetics research laboratories.

It’s impossible to tell these complex stories accurately without grasping the role that faith plays in the lives of millions and millions of people around the world.

“Religion stories are the most exquisite stories to tell,” stressed Mason. “I believe that we’ll figure out how to effectively and efficiently tell stories about faith and values once this media transition is sorted out. The question is not whether or not we’ll have religion news, but whether or not there will be anyone left who knows how to cover it.”

   Send article as PDF to

The news report itself offered a flashback into an earlier age, back to the days before Vatican II or even to the tumultuous times of Martin Luther. On one level, this was simply a trend story about the Vatican trying to revive some old traditions. However, there were complicated details behind the blunt headline.

“In recent months,” the Times reported, “dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.”

For most Times readers, this was an isolated, mysterious story. But in cyberspace, this one report inspired waves of debate. Among the big questions: How could this door have been reopened, when it had never been closed? Were enough conservative Catholics quoted? Why didn’t the Times cover a bigger story, the collapse in confession statistics?

Researchers later discovered that plenary indulgences remained a red-hot news topic for many days — online.

“Religion is one of those topics that has a unique ability to gather in one place large groups of people who care passionately about it. That’s the kind of thing that happens quite naturally online,” said Jesse Holcomb, a research analyst with the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. “The irony is that these online debates almost always start with a story from a big, traditional news source. Someone has to report the news before the bloggers can take over.”

This is precisely the kind of issue that causes sweaty palms for folks — like me — who care about religion news. I’ve been reporting and doing research in this field for 30-plus years and, 22 years ago this week, I began writing this column for Scripps Howard. I also run a website called GetReligion.org, which is six years old.

At the moment, the state of religion coverage is somewhere between “evolving” and “on life support.” Cutbacks in top 40 newsrooms — organizations that once had the resources to support a variety of specialty reporters — have sent many veteran scribes into early retirement. More than a dozen print newsrooms have reduced or eliminated their religion-news jobs in the past three years.

However, the amount of religion news remained surprisingly steady in 2009, at 0.8 percent, compared with 1.0 percent in 2008, according to a study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

As always, it was a good year to read about papal tours, especially when they cause controversy, and stories about religion and politics, especially about the beliefs, rhetoric and policies of President Barack Obama. As always, it was not a good year to read about how religious beliefs helped shape events in some of the world’s most tense and bloody settings, such as Iraq and Iran. Holcomb noted that journalists even failed to probe the intense religious language and imagery in Obama’s historic speech at Cairo University, which focused on improving relations with the Islamic world.

Meanwhile, additional Pew research into news and trends online found that 41 percent of Americans believe the news media should devote more attention to “religion and spirituality.” Only news about science — with a 44 percent score — drew a higher response.

Who claims to want more “spiritual” news coverage? Women (44 percent) are more likely to say so than men (37 percent), which is significant since editors are worried about the rapidly declining number of female readers. Young adults, ages 18-29, are more interested in religion than readers over 50 — 49 percent to 35 percent. African-Americans (57 percent) and Hispanics (43 percent) are more interested in religion coverage than whites (38 percent).

If readers want to find detailed coverage of religion issues, they are now more likely to find it online, said Holcomb.

“When it comes to breaking down the differences between various types of beliefs and rituals and practices and then trying to show how these things end up affecting people’s daily lives, mainstream journalists are rarely able to get into all of that,” he said. “But that is precisely the kind of thing that more people are writing about on websites and on blogs.”

NEXT WEEK: The online buffet of religion news and opinion.

   Send article as PDF to

As news spread about her untimely death, former colleagues sought ways to describe her linguistic style using words that could be printed in family newspapers.

A Washington Post Tribute noted: “Some journalists swear like sailors; she swore like the fleet.”

“She had a unique persona. She could be very intimidating. She knew how to browbeat people,” said Mark O’Keefe, who worked for Howell on the Newhouse staff and as editor of Religion News Service. “It’s easy to talk about her colorful language, but I also think it’s important to understand why she used to get so upset. …

“She was a fierce advocate for important stories that she really cared about and that was especially true when it came to covering religion.”

Howell died on Jan. 2 during a trip to New Zealand with her husband, Peter. She was crossing a road to take a photograph and was hit by a car traveling on the left side of the roadway, the opposite of the custom in the United States. She was 68.

A symbolic figure for many journalists, Howell was a spitfire from Texas who pushed, argued and wrestled her way to the top of the executive ladder in an era when men ran the newsrooms that mattered. During her years at the St. Paul Pioneer Press — finally reaching the top editor’s chair — she guided two projects that won Pulitzer Prizes, one on the plight of Midwestern farms and another on AIDS in the heartland.

While leading the Newhouse bureau in Washington, she played down business-as-usual political coverage and focused on culture, technology, sexuality, race and, yes, religion. In the mid-1990s, Howell urged Newhouse to purchase Religion News Service, the only mainstream wire service dedicating to covering religion news.

In the years that followed, “She protected us, advocated for us, cajoled us, yelled at us, pushed us, swore at us and loved us,” noted Kevin Eckstrom, the current RNS editor, in an online tribute. “She, more than any other person, is responsible for us weathering the media meltdown that has devastated daily journalism.”

A cartoon in that newsroom says it all. In it, Howell is depicted as an angel hovering over the U.S. Capitol, while a second Howell — a devil with a pitchfork — gazes up in disgust, saying, “Give me a @?X!*$# break.” An adult convert to the Episcopal Church, the editor cherished her two nicknames bestowed by friends — Mother Mary Deborah and the Dragon Lady.

After her retirement in 2005, Howell repeatedly articulated her views on religion news while serving as ombudsman, or readers’ representative, at the Washington Post.

“Religion is a subject that many Post readers care deeply about, and they often don’t think journalists care as deeply about it as they do,” argued Howell, in one column. “Journalists are just like readers. Some are religious; some not. I don’t think that matters as long as religion and spiritual issues are reported thoroughly and sensitively. … I think that readers would not be so offended by an occasional story or reference they see as insensitive if they believed that The Post made religion coverage a priority.”

Howell was just as blunt in her farewell column, which urged the newspaper’s editors to, “Devote more coverage to religion. When you see how many reporters cover sports and politics, it seems natural to add more coverage of a subject dear to many readers’ hearts.”

It might even help to pursue more in-depth, accurate coverage of the lives and beliefs of conservatives. “I’d like those who have canceled their subscriptions to be readers again. Too many Post staff members think alike; more diversity of opinion should be welcomed,” wrote Howell.

Year after year, stressed O’Keefe, Howell used her national network of contacts in newsrooms, and her credibility as journalism pioneer, to pound away on the importance of religion in the news.

“She was so passionate,” he said. “What she believed was that journalists can’t understand this country and what makes it tick — as well as lots of events around the world — without understanding religion. … She was like an invisible guardian angel out there behind the scenes, fighting in her own unique way for serious religion coverage in the mainstream press.”

   Send article as PDF to

Even Obama’s fiercest admirers admitted that his best work for peace occurred at lecture podiums, where the new president offered more of the soaring, idealistic words that helped him rise to power. Nobel judges, in particular, had to be thinking about his June 4 address at Cairo University, in which he promised an era of improved relations between America and the Muslim world.

It’s crucial, he said, for Americans and Muslims to realize that their cultures “overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” Muslims and Americans must, for example, find ways to work together to defend religious liberty.

“People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, heart and soul,” he said. “This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive. … The richness of religious diversity must be upheld — whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. …

“Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together.”

The Cairo speech — which included quotes from the Koran, the Bible and the Talmud — was the year’s most important religion story, according to a poll of mainstream reporters who cover religion news. The role of Obama’s liberal Christian faith in the White House race topped the 2008 Religion Newswriters Association poll.

Religious-liberty issues will continue to test the Obama team, as illustrated by the sobering numbers in a new “Global Restrictions on Religion” study released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. It found that citizens in a third of all nations — representing 70 percent of the world’s population — are not able to practice their religion freely, due to government policies or hostile actions taken by individuals or groups.

Among the world’s most populous nations, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and India had the most intense restrictions on religion, especially limits on the rights of religious minorities.

The nations offering the greatest freedoms on religious practice were the United States, Brazil, Japan, Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Here’s the rest of the RNA top 10.

(2) Faith groups were at the center of debates over health-care reform, which was the hottest topic in Congress for most of the year. The U.S. Catholic bishops consistently opposed the use of tax dollars to fund abortions, thus clashing with other religious groups that supporting an expanded government role.

(3) The role of radical forms of Islam in terrorism hit the news once again, due to the disturbing history of statements and actions of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused gunman in the massacre of 13 people, including a pregnant woman, at Fort Hood.

(4) George Tiller, an outspoken specialist in performing late-term abortions, was shot while ushering at his Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Wichita. The antigovernment radical charged with the murder, Scott Roeder, had in the past supported the views of writers who argue — see ArmyofGod.com — that violence against abortionists is morally justified.

(5) Mormons in California were attacked by some gay-rights supporters due to their lobbying efforts on behalf of Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage. Anti-Mormon protests led to vandalism at some Mormon buildings.

(6) President Obama was granted an honorary degree in law from the University of Notre Dame, despite protests that this violated a U.S. bishops policy urging Catholic institutions not to honor those who openly oppose church teachings on the sanctity of human life.

(7) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to ordain gay and lesbian pastors who live in faithful, committed, monogamous relationships, leading some congregations to start preparations to form a new denomination.

(8) The national recession forced budget cuts at a wide variety of faith-related groups — houses of worship, publishing houses, relief agencies, colleges and seminaries.

(9) Leaders of the Episcopal Church voted to end a moratorium on installing gay bishops, ignoring a request from the archbishop of Canterbury and many other leaders in the global Anglican Communion. The Diocese of Los Angeles then elected a lesbian as a new assistant bishop.

(10) President Obama’s inauguration rites included a controversial invocation by the Rev. Rick Warren, a controversial benediction by the Rev. Joseph Lowery and, at a celebration beforehand, a prayer by New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay, noncelibate bishop.

   Send article as PDF to

A journalist was chasing Wasilla Bible Church members in the aisles, trying to convince somebody, anybody, to dish about his flock’s most famous church lady. The craziness had started as soon as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the GOP’s nominee for vice president.

Suddenly, there were satellite dishes out front and worshippers were trapped inside, trying to escape to the safety of their cars in the parking lot.

Kroon tried to control the chaos, telling journalists they were free to participate in worship services, but not to film or interrupt them. The pastor also asked them not to “fish for interviews” as members arrived or departed. He thought these rules were enough. He was wrong.

“We can look back and say, ‘Whoa. We really should have done this or that differently,’ ” said Kroon. “I was naive enough to think this wasn’t going to affect us — but it did. We ended up scrambling to get from day to day. We had that deer in the headlights look for quite a while.”

Wasilla Bible Church leaders encountered professionals from the New York Times, CNN, Time, Fox, the major television networks and just about everyone else — from America and around the world. Flocks of alleged journalists arrived from every corner of the World Wide Web, as well.

After hurricane Palin, Kroon met with management consultant James Stamoolis and prepared some tips for clergy who struggle with media attention — wanted or unwanted. Some of those tips are relevant again in Wasilla, since Palin’s faith plays a big role in her new “Going Rogue” memoir. Here’s a sample, drawn from a talk with Kroon.

* Never accept an interview without confirming a reporter’s identity and his or her current employer. Just because someone has written for the Associated Press doesn’t mean that he isn’t currently a blogger for PalinIsADummy.org or something like that.

* Help reporters understand that private communications between clergy and the faithful are, in fact, privileged and guarded by the same kinds of laws that shield reporters and their sources.

* Keep contact information for community leaders — such as telephone numbers and email addresses for church elders — in a firewall-protected section of your congregation’s website. Post contact information for staffers who are prepared to handle media requests in a timely manner.

* Ask if reporters or producers have experience covering religion news. Some journalists sincerely want factual information that will help them cover a story fairly and accurately, while others “are in a hurry and they simply want what they want. You may think you’re helping them understand who you are and what you believe, but they just want a good quote and then they’re moving on,” said Kroon.

* It may help to post information about your denomination or tradition, including frequently asked questions about worship, media relations, how the congregation is governed and the meaning of unique terms (such as “born again” or “charismatic”) that newcomers will encounter.

* Understand that a two-hour interview may be reduced to 20 seconds and that the journalist decides what goes in that soundbite. So avoid lectures and focus on the key points that you must make to explain your congregation’s point of view. It’s also important to remember that silence is the reporter’s problem, not your problem.

* In the Internet age, there is no reason that a pastor cannot — as a condition for talking to a reporter — insist on the right to record and transcribe an interview. That way, the professionals on both sides of the transaction know that they are on the record and the results, if needed to clarify a point, can be posted online or emailed to a publisher.

Kroon stressed that he was truly impressed by many of the journalists, especially with their commitment to accuracy and fairness. They wanted to get the story right. But others arrived in Wasilla with their minds clamped shut. They came to get the story that they already knew that they wanted to write.

“Pastors need to understand that there are really good reporters and there are some really bad ones, too,” he said. “You also have to understand that even the really good ones are going to push you to your boundary lines. That’s what they do.”

   Send article as PDF to