About Terry Mattingly

Friar Mattingly Wards Off the Demon by Andrew Lucas

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

Mattingly's father was a pastor and his mother is a language arts teacher. Thus, it's no surprise that Mattingly is a journalist and teacher who focuses on religion and that he continues to study both writing and religion. He double-majored in journalism and history at Baylor University and then earned an M.A. at Baylor in Church-State Studies and an M.S. in communications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. His resume can be found online.

He has worked as a reporter and religion columnist at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Charlotte Observer and the Charlotte News. In 1991, Mattingly began teaching at Denver Seminary and, later, was a founding member of the Association for Communications and Theological Education.

While teaching, he has continued to write the weekly "On Religion'' column for the features department of the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., which is sent to about 350 newspapers in North America. His writing also appears in The Lookout, Beliefnet.com, Again Magazine and numerous other publications. He also leads the GetReligion.org website that critiques the mainstream media's coverage of religion news.

In addition to his classroom duties, Mattingly has lectured at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., the Torreys Honors Program at Biola University, the School of Journalism at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and in other settings across the nation. Mattingly is the director of the new Washington Journalism Center and its journalism education programs at the CCCU headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Mattingly is a prodigal Texan who has never met a mountain he didn't love. He is a music fanatic whose interests range from Celtic acoustic guitar to Russian chant. His wife, Debra Bridges Mattingly, is a librarian in Anne Arundel County, Md. They have two children, 18-year-old Sarah Jeanne, and 13-year-old Frye Lewis. The Mattinglys are members of Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum, Md.

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