This was the first week of the Religion and News Media course that I am taking at the Religious Freedom Center as part of my seminary education. We read from Readings on Religion as News, edited by Judith M. Buddenbaum and Debra L. Mason.

We started off reading a brief history of journalism in the United States and then read some of what was written in the press in the 1700s about the Small Pox vaccine from a religious perspective. I was interested to think about the discussions about vaccines back then and contrast it to discussions today about vaccines. I was disappointed to read about the opposition to the vaccine by Colonial Anglican clergy.

We also read two chapters from The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the American News Media edited by Diane Winston. Specifically, we read about the development of the religious news beat and organizations that supported it during the 1930s to 1960s. We also read about more recent religious bloggers and online coverage.

It has caused me to stop and look a little more closely at what is currently written about religion. The Public Religion Research Institute recently published its latest research,
America’s Changing Religious Identity, with key findings like, “White Christians now account for fewer than half of the public” and “White evangelical Protestants are in decline—along with white mainline Protestants and white Catholics”.

It is an idea that Steve Bannon suggested is driving the Catholic Bishops response to the Trump administration’s efforts to end DACA: Catholics “need illegal aliens to fill the churches”.

Others have picked up a different angle. Mark Silk writes in Stop the presses! There’s a next generation for mainline Protestantism:

While mainline Protestantism continues to shed white adherents, it is doing a better job of keeping and/or attracting young white adults than either evangelicalism or Catholicism

This shouldn’t be so reassuring to mainline Protestant churches, but it is an important part of the conversation.

It should also be noted that the struggles of mainline Protestant churches is not just an American phenomenon. The Financial Times has a long piece about the Church of England’s fight to survive. We find similar writing in Canada, such as Religion in Decline – finding the reasons why.

Andrew Sullivan looks at this through a partisan lens in The Religious Right’s Suicidal Gay Obsession.

Perhaps some of this comes down to Matthew 25,

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Perhaps also, some of this comes back to the stories of individuals struggling through their own vulnerabilities as a sign of God’s enduring love for us. I’ve always like the phrase the Episcopalians use, “Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.” I remember hearing a priest talk about how when Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, they recognized Him by His wounds. They knew Jesus by his brokenness, his vulnerability.

That priest has had her share of struggles, and a local New Hampshire paper just wrote about her in Monadnock Profile: Sharing faith is the Rev. Elsa Worth's mission.

As an Episcopalian, I identify as being part of “resurrection people”. There is a future for Christianity. There is a future for religious news writers. There is a future for my own journey and my own writing. I hope to get a clearer sense of that through the Religion and News Media course I am taking as well as the other courses I am and will be taking in seminary and what I am reading online. I hope you will come along with me.