Spencer Tracy, courtesy of TCM Photo Gallery. (Everything I ever needed to know about reporting I learned from the movies. Sort of.)

There have been reductions in the number of reporters who write about religion full-time at all of the nation’s biggest newspapers [...]. The surviving newspaper religion sections are getting smaller. And at many small and mid-sized newspapers, reporters now juggle coverage of religion with other, often unrelated, subjects, and religion often gets short shrift.

So wrote Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe last month, in an article about the annual meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association entitled “Religion reporting: An endangered beat?”  He went on to note that on-line writing about the subject, especially blogging, has increased, but that

Much of the on-line work is focused on a particular faith group, and is written from a particular ideological or theological perspective, which differentiates it from traditional religion journalism. At the most recent denominational…

I know there are big, exciting, controversial topics out there that I ought to be writing about.  The voices insisting that the end of the world is nigh are loud and nettlesome.  My own beloved denomination, the Episcopal Church, is groaning with labor pains, although some believe they are death rattles.  (I borrowed that metaphor from someone, I don’t remember whom.)  Maybe they’re right.  I don’t know. But I do know that most of the stories about church that make the news are probably not the ones that best reflect what faith is about for the majority of people who show up in places of worship week after week.

I have had the incredible privilege of spending three weeks this summer in Sewanee, Tennessee, beginning work on a Doctor of Ministry degree.  I can explain what all that means another time, but for now the point is that I’ve been away…

Isidore of Seville is the Patron Saint of the Internet. Photo courtesy of www.bc.edu

Online conversations are great, but sometimes they’re no substitute for the real thing.

So, in the spirit of real (as opposed to virtual) interaction and engagement, you might want to stop by Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves this Sunday for our Adult Forum. The topic? “Faith Online: The Pleasures and Perils of a Religion Blog.” Yup, that’s right, a few of the contributors from Civil Religion will be showing up “live and in person” to talk about the intersection of faith and technology, and more specifically the pros and cons of being a part of what goes on in these pages.

Confirmed panelists include Tim Townsend, religion reporter for the Post-Dispatch and founder of this blog; Travis Scholl, an editor at Concordia Seminary and an ordained Lutheran minister; Khalid Shah, a small business owner and teacher who…

“We’re at a moment when there are no guarantees as to the Earth’s future. It’s a question of our own critical choices. And I think what we’re deeply in need of is a transforming vision…A vision that opens the future up to hope.”–Miriam MacGillis, OP, co-founder of Genesis Farm, from “Fate of the Earth”

Trinity Conference, Jan. 21-23

Environmental sustainability. Liberation theology. Ecology and spirituality. Where do these ideas coincide and how do they create and sustain an ongoing conversation among different disciplines and individuals? These topics will be front and center at the Trinity Institute 39th National Theological Conference, “Radical Abundance: A Theology of Sustainability.” While the conference itself will take place at Trinity Wall Street, an Episcopal parish in New York City, from January 21st through 23rd, there will also be a live webcast happening right here in our area. Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves (yes, my home parish) is…

Photo of the nave's ceiling, clean and restored after a 2001 fire, courtesy of the New York Times

Early this month, the New York Times ran a lovely article about the rededication of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. It sounded like a magnificent affair, worthy of that truly awesome house of worship. The Cathedral was damaged in a terrible fire in 2001, and the rebuilding and restoration have taken all these years. One detail in the article particularly struck me–it was a quote by a member of the Cathedral who kept right on attending services even during the difficult days when “the worship services had been shoehorned behind partitions in different sections and corners of the church to accommodate the work in progress” and the “prayer books smelled of smoke.”

“If you belong to a church, that is your church,” said Marsha Ra, a retired librarian who was an usher…

“Do the good that you can do today.”

Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org)

My priest gives this advice on a regular basis. It sounds so simple, but I think in reality we tend to disregard it in one of two major ways: either by thinking that The Problem is so large that there is no good that we can do, or by thinking we’re already doing enough when in fact with a little effort we could do so much more. Maybe we have great ideas for ways we’re going to pitch in or help out or lend a hand, but we confidently plan to do them “tomorrow” and then somehow tomorrow never comes. Either way, thinking gets in the way of action and the good remains undone.

I’d like to occasionally throw out a good idea in this blog that maybe one or two of you will actually find useful. Sometimes…