Back in the mid-1980s, I worked at The Charlotte Observer, in one of the most complex and fascinating religion-news cities in America.

Yes, that’s Billy Graham’s hometown. But during the years I was there, Charlotte was one of two or three cities south of the Mason-Dixon line in which there were more church people in another Protestant flock — Presbyterians — than there were Southern Baptists. Of course, lots of those Presbyterians were in churches that were as evangelical as any of the Baptists.

The Catholic diocese was, at that time, the smallest in USA — but ready to boom (which it has).

It only took a few months for me to realize that the city’s powerful African-American churches were not receiving the coverage that they deserved. This was especially true of the powerful, yet very private, Pentecostal congregations in the Church of God in Christ.

I signed up to receive stacks of church bulletins — looking for news — but I always seemed to hear about important events AFTER they had taken place, when it was too late to attend. When I missed a conference about the modern crisis in black family life, I immediately met with a few pastors requesting their help. I noted that they send me press releases about some events (like a program to honor a veteran church usher) but not about conferences of this kind.

Over and over I heard: We really don’t want coverage of negative issues that divide our people.

I thought of this when I saw the must-read Washington Post story that ran with this headline: “Covid-19 has killed multiple bishops and pastors within the nation’s largest black Pentecostal denomination.”

Much of the coverage of pastors who have insisted on holding face-to-face worship services has focused on independent white evangelical and charismatic congregations. Behind the scenes, there was a larger story taking place. Here is the overture, which is long — but essential.

The Church of God in Christ, the country’s biggest African American Pentecostal denomination, has taken a deep and painful leadership hit with reports of at least a dozen to up to 30 bishops and prominent clergy dying of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Last month, the Pew Research Center issued an innovative analysis of 49,719 sermons delivered between last April 7 and June 1 in 6,431 U.S. congregations that were posted online. This report made a bit of news and is worth perusing if you missed it (click here).

This Guy Memo recommends to fellow writers that a useful appendix to that document (click here for .pdf) deserves more than a glance. It details Pew’s standard system for “classifying congregations by religious tradition,” with 244 specific identities cited in interviewing, grouped into 19 categories.

Pew makes a major contribution to analysis of American religion with its frequent polling practice of pushing to get respondents' specific identities and affiliations beyond the usually unhelpful “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” approach of old-fashioned polling.

What kind of Protestant?

For that matter, what kind of, say, Presbyterian (tmatt shows a blitz of options here)?

Are you an active or nominal churchgoer?

With the media frenzy over religion and politics, polls nowadays at least usually ask Protestants whether they self-identify as “evangelical” or not, whatever that word means.

When Pew asks poll respondents about the specific congregation they affiliate with, it then helpfully lumps the Protestants into the three main categories of “Evangelical,” “Mainline” and “Historically Black.” These three groups are distinct not only on religion but in social and political terms. Writers are likely to be less perplexed by Pew’s other categories of Catholic, Orthodox Christian, “other Christian,” “Mormon” (there’s that controversial word again!), Jehovah’s Witness, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, “other faiths,” "miscellaneous" and “unclassifiable.”

The following examples from Pew’s Protestant taxonomy will indicate some of the difficulties with America’s astonishing religious variety, particularly for those new to religion writing.

Washington Post gets inside the painful COVID-19 crisis in Church of God in Christ

Tips for mainstream journalists as they grapple with America's growing religious complexity