The Christian Chronicle

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Grab a hot drink, sit down, and enjoy some fine religion-beat reporting from 2023

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Grab a hot drink, sit down, and enjoy some fine religion-beat reporting from 2023

For today’s yearend edition, I asked some of the nation’s top religion-beat journalists to share their favorite or most important story they produced during 2023.

It’s a holiday week, so I didn’t catch up with everybody. But once again this year, I sure appreciate my Godbeat colleagues who responded — more than 60 in all.

Feel free to jump straight to the list, but I can’t resist a few quick notes:

• I’m wrapping up four years since launching this version of Plug-in. This column/newsletter goes to more than 10,000 subscribers via email before it’s published at ReligionUnplugged and then here at GetReligion. I’m so grateful for everyone who reads and shares Plug-in. Our goal is to provide the best roundup of religion news anywhere.

• I follow religion-news coverage and save interesting links throughout the week, but I typically write Plug-in early Friday morning. In other words, it’s a deadline labor of love with the typos to prove it. This part-time gig helps me stay on top of news and trends in the world of faith, but my full-time job is serving as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. In 2023, I was blessed to report from a dozen states and four countries (Australia, Cuba, Mexico and Vanuatu). My story from Down Under will publish early next year.

• I’ve spent 33 years in full-time journalism, including nearly a quarter-century focused on religion news (starting with Pope John Paul II’s visit to St. Louis in 1999). I’m inspired by longtime Godbeat pros — such as Adelle M. Banks, Michelle Boorstein, Greg Garrison, Carla Hinton, Frank Lockwood, Terry Mattingly, Bob Smietana, Peter Smith and Peggy Fletcher Stack — who keep producing amazing journalism year after year. And those are just the ones I managed to reach this week. Besides the old-timers, I’m excited about the newcomers — including Joy Ashford and Eric Killelea — covering religion.

• Many of the journalists who shared links found it difficult to pick just one. Several submitted multiple possibilities and asked me to choose, which I was happy to do. Menachem Wecker wins the award for most stories shared with 10. I included two links from only one writer, Clemente Lisi. He is ReligionUnplugged’s executive editor and the boss, after all, and a longtime colleague here at GetReligion.

One Godbeat pro who had no difficulty with her pick was Sarah Pulliam Bailey. The former award-winning religion writer for the Washington Post is “taking a pause to hang out with my girls.” Thus, she quipped, “I wrote exactly one story so I guess this would be it!”

• A confession before we get to the list: I started this year-end approach years ago as a way to do a quick, easy post during the holidays.


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Trouble in nondenominational land: ‘Supply chain crisis' is creating empty pulpits

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Trouble in nondenominational land: ‘Supply chain crisis' is creating empty pulpits

Long ago, the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison was a bishop in good standing in the Episcopal Church.

A year ago, however, he resigned — at the age of 95 — to serve in the Anglican Church in North America, which is an ecclesiastical body that is recognized as valid by many Anglican bishops in Africa, Asia and the Global South, but not by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Needless to say, he has witnessed more than his share of Anglican debates about the future of the Anglican Communion, a communion in which national churches are in rapid decline in rich, powerful lands like the United States, Canada and England, but exploding with growth in the Global South.

During one global meeting, Allison watched a symbolic collision between these two worlds. Bishops from North America and their allies were talking about moving forward, making doctrinal changes in order to embrace the cultural revolutions in their lands. They were sure that Anglicans needed to evolve, or die.

Finally, a frustrated African bishop asked three questions: “Where are your children? Where are your converts? Where are your priests?” These questions are highly relevant, amid stark demographic changes in First World churches.

I thought of this Anglican parable when reading a Frank Lockwood feature in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that ran with this double-decker headline: “Churches of Christ grappling with preacher shortage.” I don’t want to critique this story for two obvious reasons: (1) Lockwood has been a friend of mine for several decades and (2) one of the major voices in the story is veteran GetReligionista Bobby Ross, Jr.

But the trends noted in this report are serious and proof that it’s simplistic to say that these kinds of problems exist in doctrinally “progressive” denominations, and that’s that. Thus, I think this is a story that many journalists and religion-beat readers need to see. Here’s the overture:

Churches of Christ have a supply and demand problem — thousands of houses of worship and not enough preachers to fill the pulpits.

During Harding University's 100th annual Lectureship in Searcy …, roughly 100 people gathered for a session titled "Minister Shortages in Today's Church."


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Loretta Lynn's reality: Gospel truth mixed with rhinestone feminism in the real world

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Loretta Lynn's reality: Gospel truth mixed with rhinestone feminism in the real world

On many Sundays, Loretta Lynn sent her social-media followers a thought for the day from Scripture.

Two days before her death at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., the 90-year-old country-music legend posted two verses, repeating the second verse to stress her point.

Lynn's final Instagram post said: "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. John 3:20-21"

The feisty superstar experienced plenty of darkness and light and shared the gritty details in a career that changed the role of women in Nashville. Lynn was raised poor in the Kentucky hills and spent years in church pews before she started singing in honky-tonks. Her husband Oliver "Dolittle" Lynn struggled with alcoholism, but they stuck together in a union that inspired songs about love and loyalty, as well as break-ups and fist fights, such as "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)."

Lynn vowed to tell the truth about both sides of her life. She loved to sing hymns and gospel music, while critics hailed the rhinestone feminism of her hits such as "You Ain't Woman Enough," "The Pill," "Rated X" and "You're Looking at Country."

In her "Coal Miner's Daughter" memoir, Lynn described her faith journey: "I believed it all, but for some reason, I was never baptized. After I started in music, I got away from going to church and reading the Bible. I believe I was living the way God meant me to, but I wasn't giving God the right attention."

In that same 1976 memoir, she added: "I'm trying to lead a good Christian life, especially since I got baptized two years ago. So there ain't too much spicy to tell about me -- just the truth." Christian Chronicle editor Bobby Ross, Jr., noted that she later added a strong kicker to that: "Nobody's perfect. The only one that ever was, was crucified.”

Anyone who explored the details of Lynn's life and music knew that she wasn't a good fit in the "elite feminist establishment" or among advocates of a "status-quo idea of domesticity," noted Russell Moore, Christianity Today's editor in chief.


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Loretta Lynn: A tough, trailblazing woman whose edgy art included doses of grit and faith

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Loretta Lynn: A tough, trailblazing woman whose edgy art included doses of grit and faith

If you know Nashville, then you probably know that there is nothing new about major country music stars also being Christian believers. In fact, it’s probably worthy of a headline or two if and when superstars send signals that they’re NOT at home in the Bible Belt.

That being said, I am still amazed when journalists produce stories about country artists and edit out the details in their lives and music that point toward faith. It happens all the time.

I’m not just talking about musicians putting a gospel song or two in their set lists when touring, as a kind of music-history exercise. I’m talking about reporters missing revelations in autobiographies, social-media statements to fans or mini-sermons on stage. I’m talking about passing up chances to talk with pastors who have known performers for years.

This brings me to the death of honky-tonk angel herself, Loretta Lynn — the matriarch for a generation or more of female artists in guitar town. As you would expect, the obits following her death stressed — with good cause, let me stress — her daring hit songs about blue-collar American life, with strong doses of reality about hard times, troubled homes, cracked marriages and lots of other sobering subjects.

Which is why, to cut to the chase, it’s even more important that this legend turned to Christian faith as an adult, in the midst of all that gritty stuff. Hold that thought. Here is a chunk of the Associated Press report that will appear in most American newspapers:

The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

Her biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “Rated X” and “You’re Looking at Country.” ...

Lynn knew that her songs were trailblazing, especially for country music, but she was just writing the truth that so many rural women like her experienced.

“I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ‘cause I worked the clubs. I wasn’t the only one that was livin’ that life and I’m not the only one that’s gonna be livin’ today what I’m writin’,” she told The AP in 1995.

All true.


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Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

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Political reporter says journalism has made him a better Christian. He's not alone

Say what?

Jon Ward, chief national correspondent for Yahoo! News, writes in an essay for Christianity Today that his profession has made him a better Christian.

Ward knows many of his fellow Christians may find that hard to believe:

Conservative Christians are far more hostile toward the media now than they were when I was growing up. Some of my own family members have told me I should be ashamed of myself for doing my job. In fact, most people don’t like the media — and that’s bad for society. The media shares some of the blame for that, as I’ve written recently for Yahoo! News.

But he explains the profession’s role in his own life:

Journalism has empowered many of the most noble, the most Christian elements of my character. I have been discipled for two decades in how to discern what is true and false, and — probably more importantly — how to discern when there are no easy answers or solutions. I have been trained in pursuing truth without regard to whom it offends.

I have also been given a sense of humility about what we can know for sure and how often we need to acknowledge that our point of view is limited and incomplete. This is sometimes called “epistemological modesty,” and it is a quality that we badly need more of in our discourse.

Hey dude, you’re preaching to the choir.

Seriously, I authored a recent Christian Chronicle editorial that focused on the faith of one of my journalistic heroes: Jerry Mitchell, a Mississippi investigative reporter whose stories helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars.

From that editorial:

Mitchell recalled that a radio show host asked him once, “How can you be a Christian and a journalist?”


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Plug-In: Ida, abortion and Afghanistan: The best religion reads in stunning news week

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Plug-In: Ida, abortion and Afghanistan: The best religion reads in stunning news week

I was in Waverly, Tenn., reporting on the aftermath of historic flooding that claimed 20 lives as Hurricane Ida — “one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S.” — made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday.

On Monday afternoon, as I was boarding a flight in Atlanta to return home to Oklahoma City, The Associated Press sent a “flash” — its designation for “a breaking story of transcendent importance” — about the chaotic end of America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

Guess what?

The big news week was just getting started.

By midnight Wednesday, a divided U.S. Supreme Court had provided “a momentous development in the decades-long judicial battle over abortion rights.” The court declined, at least for now, to overrule a new Texas law that bans most abortions in the state, raising hope among abortion opponents and concern among abortion-rights supporters that Roe v. Wade could be jeopardy.

Also, Ida’s “weakened remnants tore into the Northeast and claimed at least 43 lives across New York, New Jersey and two other states in an onslaught that ended Thursday and served as an ominous sign of climate change’s capacity to wreak new kinds of havoc.”

The news just keeps coming, and I haven’t even mentioned COVID-19 — which continues to rage with cases and hospitalizations “at their highest level since last winter.”

Mercy.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Afghanistan’s arc from 9/11 to today: once hopeful, now sad: This is a powerful read by Kathy Gannon, Afghanistan and Pakistan news director for The Associated Press.

“A country of 36 million, Afghanistan is filled with conservative people, many of whom live in the countryside,” Gannon explains. “But even they do not adhere to the strict interpretation of Islam that the Taliban imposed when last they ruled.”


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New podcast: Among waves of Tulsa Massacre ink, a fine AP religion story pointed forward

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New podcast: Among waves of Tulsa Massacre ink, a fine AP religion story pointed forward

The 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre is one of those stories that punches every button that can be pushed in news coverage today, especially after months of news about the complex Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on American life.

Obviously, this is a story about history and the voices of the few survivors who are alive to talk about the impact of this event on their lives and their community. In many parts of America, this is a story that can be linked to similar horrors from the past. For starters, there were the Red Summer riots of 1919 here in Knoxville, Tenn., and elsewhere.

Obviously, this is a legal and political story right now as efforts continue to pull the details of the Tulsa Massacre into the light of day. Consider the top of this remarkable multi-media report from The New York Times: “What the Tulsa Race Massacre Destroyed.”

Imagine a community of great possibilities and prosperity built by Black people for Black people. Places to work. Places to live. Places to learn and shop and play. Places to worship.

Now imagine it being ravaged by flames.

In May 1921, the Tulsa, Okla., neighborhood of Greenwood was a fully realized antidote to the racial oppression of the time. … Brick and wood-frame homes dotted the landscape, along with blocks lined with grocery stores, hotels, nightclubs, billiard halls, theaters, doctor’s offices and churches.

Yes, many of the 13 churches in Greenwood were destroyed or damaged, as 35 square blocks were burned down. No one truly knows how many people died, but the estimate of 300 is almost certainly low, with reports of mass graves and bodies tossed in the Arkansas River. As many news reports noted, no one has ever been prosecuted the crimes linked to the massacre in and around what was known as America’s Black Wall Street.

Did the major news coverage of the anniversary — some of it staggering in its complexity and depth — cover the many religion angles of this story? Yes and no. As always, political voices and news hooks received the most attention.

But there was one Associated Press story in particular — “Tulsa pastors honor ‘holy ground’ 100 years after massacre” — that we discussed, and praised, during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).


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Plug-In flashbacks: Several religion-news questions and answers with Bobby Ross, Jr.

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Plug-In flashbacks: Several religion-news questions and answers with Bobby Ross, Jr.

GetReligion readers really don’t need an introduction to religion-beat veteran Bobby Ross, Jr.

After all, he has been a contributor here since 2010 — which is longer than anyone other than the founders of the blog. There’s about 15 million words in our files, at this point, and Ross has to have written about 25% of them. And don’t forget that his wife, religion-beat veteran Tamie Ross, was a contributor here for several years, as well.

Bobby, of course, covered religion and all kinds of other topics for The Oklahoman and also spent several years with the Associated Press, working with religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, which is as good a credential as you can get. These days, readers around the world know him as editor-in-chief at The Christian Chronicle. He continues to write his weekly Plug-In feature for Religion Unplugged, which still runs here at GetReligion.

As a re-introduction to Ross, Religion Unplugged recently ran this short Q&A with him (and offered a short list of some of his top recent Plug-in pieces). I thought GetReligion readers who have followed him for a decade or more would like to see them.

You've covered religion since 1999. How did you first get onto the beat, and what's a favorite story you reported in your early days?

I had covered a religion story or two in my career up to then, including writing a 1994 piece about the Christian conversion of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. But in 1999, the editors at The Oklahoman assigned me to cover Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis. That was an important and challenging assignment, and my favorite story probably was the one I wrote about a big youth rally where dc Talk sang "Jesus Freak" to an "arm-waving, hip-shaking, foot-stomping" crowd before John Paul appeared on stage, and the decibel level got even louder.

As the news industry has changed since you began your career, the religion beat has certainly changed too. What's been the biggest challenge you've faced as a religion reporter because of these changes?


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Now for something completely different: RNS scribe doxxed after investigating Ramsey Solutions

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Now for something completely different: RNS scribe doxxed after investigating Ramsey Solutions

Religion reporters don’t usually have to fear for their lives, nor wonder if someone’s going to show up at their homes to exact some kind of revenge for an unfavorable story.

But there’s always a first time.

Several weeks ago, Bob Smietana, the veteran national reporter for Religion News Service, got to experience some very weird doxxing — not at the hands of some anti-religious conspiracy, but from devout Christians.

On Jan. 15, RNS published Smietana’s 4,150-word investigative piece on the workplace at evangelical financial guru Dave Ramsey’s $42 million headquarters in Franklin, Tenn., just south of Nashville. (The Tennessean, Nashville’s hometown newspaper, finally got around to running the piece on Jan. 28.)

That piece followed a Dec. 11 story by Smietana on Ramsey’s for-profit enterprise defying COVID-19 precautions such as wearing masks.

Put all that together and you had a non-flattering description of a workplace shaped by strict controls and perhaps even a personality cult. Here is what ran Jan. 15

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Dave Ramsey has spent the past three decades trying to build what he calls the best place to work in America.

From his headquarters south of Nashville, the evangelical Christian personal finance guru runs a media and live events empire that includes a popular national talk radio show. Tickets to workshops on topics such as “EntreLeadership” run from $3,000 to $10,000.

Thousands of churches around the country, meanwhile, host Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University,” a 9-week program built around his principles for handling money “God’s way.”

Several churches I’ve attended have indeed offered this program. Finances is something most pastors know nothing about, so they kick the task over to Ramsey, who’s making millions off these referrals.

But inside Ramsey Solution’s $42 million headquarters, there appear to be some problems, according to the kind of source one normally encounters in pieces of these kinds — former employees..

Ramsey’s intolerance for dissent has created what former employees call a cult-like environment, where leaders proclaim their love for staff and then fire people at a moment’s notice.


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