The Religion News Association will present its 2022 Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence in a ceremony next week at Columbia Journalism School in New York.

Finalists, for work produced in 2021, were announced in August. See the full list.

Wednesday night’s hybrid in-person and online event will feature a panel discussion by finalists for Religion Story of the Year, including:

• GetReligion’s own Julia Duin, for “The Christian prophets who say Trump is coming again,” for Politico. And click here for a post noting Duin’s work on this topic over the years.

• Deepti Hajela (representing a team that included Luis Andres Henao and Mariam Fam), for “Two decades after 9/11, Muslim Americans still fighting bias,” for The Associated Press.

• Emily Kaplan, for “The rise of the liberal Latter-day Saints,” for The Washington Post.

• Marie-Rose Sheinerman, “‘Second class citizens’: LGBTQ students allege culture of alienation and fear at Yeshiva University,” for The Forward.

I plan to watch the ceremony and report on the winners in next week’s Plug-in. In case you missed it, ReligionUnplugged.com’s own Paul Glader and Michael Ray Smith earned third place for Religion Story of the Year last year for “God and guns: Why American churchgoers are packing heat.”

In other contest news, the American Academy of Religion has announced the recipients of its 2022 journalism awards: Peter Manseau, Dawn Araujo-Hawkins and Ken Chitwood for best in-depth newswriting and Mike Cosper, Monique Parsons and Kylie McGivern for best in-depth multimedia journalism. Read about all the winners.

This is cool: Chitwood’s honored stories include two he wrote for ReligionUnplugged.com: “Yiddish music is resurging in the Weimar square Hitler frequented” and “In Europe's 'secular capital,’ some Berliners are finding solace in religion” (co-authored with Giulia Brabetz). See what the judges said.

Congrats to Ken and all the winners!

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber on Trump, abortion, sex abuse in the church and more: Millions watched Anderson Cooper’s “60 Minutes” interview of Barber on Sunday night.

Many Baptists gave Barber’s responses positive reviews, as noted in a Twitter thread by The Tennessean’s Liam Adams. But abuse survivor Christa Brown said his condemnation of misconduct by pastors and others in the SBC fell short, according to The Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner.

In you missed it, check out my recent Associated Press profile of Barber.

CONTINUE READING: “Story Of The Year Finalists To Speak At Religion News Association Awards” by Bobby Ross, Jr.