Way back when, 20 or more years ago, when I decided religion was a subject journalists should take seriously if they wanted to understand the world around them and what animates many people, I happened to read a book called Faith, Hope, No Charity: An Inside Look At the Born Again Movement in Canada and the United States, published 30 years ago in 1984 by Judith Haiven, now an associate professor in the Department of Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
At about the same time, a body of scholarly work was starting to emerge from academics at various think tanks and universities, arguing that while Protestant and increasingly evangelical Protestant Americans made up about the most Christian nation on Earth (at least in terms of self-identification) aside from tiny Catholic Malta, journalists were not only an ornery lot, but they were also decidedly secular and out-of-step with many of the ordinary people and even end-time politicians with real political power they were covering. Journalists were more liberal than their readers for the most part. Journalists didn’t go to church, unless it was for a wedding or funeral. The religion beat was largely a ghetto, relegated to the back pages of the Saturday daily newspaper, the least read day of the week. A similar situation prevailed in Canada. When Lois Sweet applied for the position of religion and ethics reporter at The Toronto Star, a number of her colleagues took her aside and asked, “Are you really prepared to throw your career away?”
Secular journalists and the clergy they cover are still often talking a different language – or at best – talking past each other. Or they simply don’t even know who each other are.
Journalist Marci McDonald’s 2010 book, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, put faces on the often largely invisible evangelicals supporting Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper behind the scenes. Who in the secular world of journalism knows whom Faytene Grasseschi Kryskow of The Cry is? McDonald, a former bureau chief for Maclean’s magazine in Paris and Washington, is a notable exception, as is Lloyd Mackey, in the religious press, an Ottawa correspondent for CanadianChristianity.com.
Sixteen years ago, 270 participants on both sides of the great divide, interested in the intersection of religion and politics and religion in the public square, attended the first-ever Faith in the Media conference at the Carleton University School of Journalism in Ottawa for three days from June 7-9, 1998.
Toronto’s Roman Catholic archbishop at the time, Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, noted that the Church makes truth claims and demands, which are absolute, while the media tends to be liberal, and, as such, opposed to absolutes. “(The) media are adept at showing the ills of society, but not the remedies … Most of our media are not interested in Christ’s self-emptying death, only in sweating and weeping Madonnas. The media love religious kitsch.” But Ambrozic quickly added, “We, the religious professionals, are not very forthcoming sometimes, perhaps out of a fear of sensationalism. Nor do we always explain ourselves well. At other times we kowtow to the media when we should question its mindset.”
Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archbishop Murray Chatlain, writing on March 31, 2013 in the St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church bulletin – less than two weeks after he himself was installed as archbishop in this archdiocese and 2½ weeks after the conclave from the College of Cardinals chose Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, who became Pope Francis – wrote on Page 2 of the Easter Sunday bulletin for his Easter message: “Many changes in a hurry. Let us pray for Pope Francis. The media will try to paint Pope Francis in a certain way. It is not too important what he has done before. What is important is how he responds to our Lord today….”
soundingsjohnbarker 