I am sorry, but I cannot resist another trip to Waco with a blue zip code travel writer.

Once again, I confess that my interest is, in part, rooted in my amazement that Waco has become a major player in Texas tourism. That’s still stunning news for me, as someone who called Waco home for my history/journalism undergraduate and church-state master’s work at Baylor University.

GetReligion readers — especially those in Texas or anyone with shiplap inside their homes — may recall that religion played a major role in the edgy coverage that I dissected here: “BuzzFeed moves in to fix up all those happy tales about Magnolia folks and their 'new' Waco.”

Now, the powers that be at The Washington Post have dispatched travel writer Andrew Sachs to the Heart of Texas to see what all of the fuss is about. The headline: “Waco, Tex., needed fixing. Luckily, Chip and Joanna Gaines had the tools.”

So, what could be worse that somewhat snarky sociological analysis that assumed fans of Donald Trump were hiding behind every oak tree in Waco and, certainly, at Antioch Community Church, the evangelical base for many of the people active in the Magnolia success story?

Apparently, someone at the Post decided that religion had absolutely nothing to do with the events unfolding in Waco and nothing to do with why millions of people are flocking there as tourists. The Gaines family has all the “tools,” but faith is not part of this big picture.

Let’s walk through this first-person travel piece looking for faith-based content. First, there is this:

After five seasons of “Fixer Upper,” Waco and the Gaineses seem as inextricably linked as New York City and “Queer Eye” (the original quintet, not the Atlanta remake).