EquippingJournalistsIn Religion

In 1999, the think tank vice president Michael Cromartie (1950-2017) took a phone call from a Washington Post journalist who was curious about some of the debates underway that year at the Southern Baptist Convention. “In many ways it,” he said, “it comes back to what’s described in the book of Ephesians.” The reporter responded: “Wait, who’s the publisher? Where can I get a copy?” She didn’t realize the epistle was part of the biblical New Testament—and that same year there were many similar examples. Journalists all-too-easily can have a blind spot when it comes to covering religion.

So Cromartie began a series of twice-annual retreats, where journalists could go deep alongside leading clerics and religion scholars. Over many years, those multi-day forums and the friendships that ensued between clerics, scholars, and journalists helped improve the caliber of American journalism—even at a time when religious life in America was changing.