Four Decades as a Worldwide Religion Reporter: Observations and Lessons Learned

Kenneth L. Woodward is a scholar as well as one of the nation’s most respected journalists. He served as Newsweek’s religion editor for nearly forty nears, reporting from five continents and contributing more than seven hundred articles, including nearly one hundred cover stories, on a wide range of social issues and ideas. His work has also appeared in other magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals. He is the author of Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (1990), The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam (2000), and Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama (2016).

Dr. Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions and American Protestant thought. Winner of two distinguished teaching awards, Dr. Wacker has authored more than thirty journal articles and book chapters, more than one hundred book reviews, op-eds and essays in magazines and newspapers.  He is also the author of seven books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001) and America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (2014). From 1997 to 2004, Dr. Wacker served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. He is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History, and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary.