Are we talking too much about Christian nationalism?

Maybe you’re here because you read “Christian Nationalism” in the title.

That is, in part, my point.

Over my last 15 years in religion media, I’ve learned that in the competition for public attention, not all subjects are created equal. Some generate more clicks, more eyeballs, more attention, more praise, and more prize money. I’ve also seen how editorial meetings, grant-making priorities and selection committees all play a role in determining which stories dominate the national conversation.

In the past several years, few topics have benefited more from this convergence of attention than what has been called “Christian nationalism.” And rightly so. Its prominence reflects real concerns and urgent questions. But it also invites a reflection on what stories we are missing with so much attention given to Christian nationalism — and in particular, the white version thereof.

Is Christianity the Heart of the American Story?

In recent years, coverage of Christian nationalism has become ubiquitous.

Journalists, scholars and commentators have rightly sought to define the term, trace its historical roots and document its contemporary manifestations. The phenomenon, loosely understood as the fusion of a particular vision of Christianity with American civic identity and political power, has been linked to exclusionary policies, democratic erosion, and cultural conflict. It has been called a democracy demolisher. Given such stakes, the surge of attention seems understandable and urgently so.

Others, however, have raised concerns that coverage of Christian nationalism is “overhyped” and the concept poorly defined.

I’m not here to discount the careful work being done by my academic and journalistic colleagues, but my sense is that there is a growing case for interrogating not only Christian nationalism itself, but also the scale and framing of the attention it receives. Essentially, from my perspective, when coverage becomes disproportionate, when it begins to dominate institutional resources, editorial priorities and intellectual energy, it risks producing unintended consequences.

Chief among these is that in attempting to critique Christian nationalism, media ecosystems may inadvertently amplify its central claim: that Christianity sits at the heart of the American story.

Proving Christian Nationalists Right

With that said, recent commentary reflects increasing unease with how the term “Christian nationalism” is deployed and circulated. Writers have observed that the phrase has, in some contexts, drifted from analytic category toward polemical shorthand. Its elasticity can obscure more than it clarifies, argues historian Heath Carter, for example, flattening distinctions among religious conservatives or disregarding progressive political actors who have also imagined the U.S. as a “Christian nation.”

This ambiguity presents a challenge for journalists, whose tenacity in reporting the subject must meet the reality of the term’s recent overuse and imprecise application. Failing to do so risks dulling the term’s explanatory power, turning it into what Carter describes as a catch-all epithet rather than a rigorously defined concept.

At the same time, others have raised questions about the political economy of attention surrounding Christian nationalism. As sociologist Musa al-Gharbi wrote on Substack a few years back, elite discourse often gravitates toward topics that resonate within professional and academic circles, sometimes at the expense of broader or more materially consequential issues.

Christian nationalism, with its dramatic narratives and moral clarity, lends itself to compelling storytelling. It attracts readership, funding and institutional recognition for the journalists who cover it. But this very appeal may encourage a concentration of resources on a single frame of analysis while sidelining other dimensions of American religious and political life.

And this leads me to my main concern. With all the coverage of Christian nationalism, and with so much type-space, bandwidth and podcast minutes given to its predominately white practitioners, it is possible the volume and framing of coverage may unintentionally reinforce the movement’s claims.

At its core, Christian nationalism asserts that the U.S. is fundamentally a Christian nation and that its identity, history, and future should be understood through that lens. When media coverage repeatedly centers Christian nationalists, whether in critique or condemnation, it risks reifying that centrality. The story remains anchored around Christianity, particularly white versions thereof, even if the moral valence is inverted.

The Stories We Aren’t Seeing Enough Of

This dynamic is particularly salient as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary.

Anniversaries are moments when societies revisit foundational stories and reconsider whose voices are included — or excluded. If the discourse leading up to this milestone is dominated by debates over Christian nationalism, there is a danger that the broader tapestry of American religious life will be overshadowed.

Such an outcome would be a profound loss. As I often teach in my courses on American religion, the religious history of the U.S. is not reducible to white Christianity and its various internal debates, denominations and divisions (as important as those are!).

It encompasses, instead, Indigenous traditions that predate European colonization, the diverse expressions of Christianity in all its forms, as well as Judaism, Islam, Sikhi, Buddhist and Hindu traditions, other faiths brought by immigrants and the many forms of religious innovation that have emerged over the last two-and-a-half centuries. It also includes the growing population of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, but whose ethical and communal lives nonetheless shape the nation’s moral and spiritual landscape and its futures.

To focus disproportionately on Christian nationalism is to risk narrowing this expansive field into a single story. This not only encourages a binary framing of “Christian nationalism v. its opponents” but may divert attention from other notable issues at the intersection of religion and public life: interfaith cooperation, religious responses to climate change, the role of faith-based organizations in social services or the evolving legal landscape of religious freedom.

Widen The American Story’s Scope

None of this is to suggest that coverage of Christian nationalism should stop.

On the contrary, investigative reporting and scholarly analysis remain essential for understanding its influence and mitigating its harms. But narrative diversity matters and, at this point, I am starting to wonder if we are losing the plot.

So, the question becomes not whether to cover Christian nationalism, but how to situate that coverage within a broader ecosystem of stories.

As the Semiquincentennial approaches, the U.S. faces an opportunity to tell a richer, more inclusive story about itself. This story should acknowledge conflict and the important role played by Christianity in shaping the nation’s past, present and future — including the contemporary challenges posed by Christian nationalism.

But we should also celebrate the diversity of religious traditions that have shaped, and continue to shape, America. To do otherwise is to risk conceding the narrative to those that insist on Christianity’s centrality.

Ironically, in other words, in trying to challenge that framework, we may end up sustaining it.

The task, then, is not simply to report on Christian nationalism, but to resist allowing it to define the scope of our attention. By broadening the breadth of our coverage and diversifying the narrative, we can instead contribute to a public discourse that is not only more accurate, but also more expansive — one that resists reduction and embraces, for good and for ill, the plurality that has always been at the heart of the American story.

War in Iran: The conflict’s religious contours

Reporting on the war in Iran requires not only bringing a keen eye to its geopolitical realities and ramifications but also a nuanced understanding of how religion shapes, and is shaped by, the conflict.

This reporting requires paying attention to both internal dynamics (e.g., how the state uses religion to justify policy and suppress diversity) and external narratives, including how religious rhetoric is mobilized abroad to offer support for, and protest, the war. 

In this guide, we offer background, resources, relevant stories and expert sources to help you better cover the religion angle on the current conflict and what it might mean in the wake of the latest war in the Middle East. 

Background

Iran’s religious contours are shaped by centuries of history but more recently the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when clerical leadership fused religion with state authority. The Islamic Republic of Iran it founded is a theocratic state that constitutionally embeds its interpretation of Twelver Shiʿa Islam into the country’s legal and political systems, shaping governance, laws and public life. This gives the clerical establishment broad influence over the state and country as a whole — including the laws and how they are implemented across the judiciary, educational sector and to govern public morality.

This framework influences everything from public morality codes to social services, and it is integral to understanding how the state responds to dissent and dissenters. At the same time, this official religious order exists alongside a rich tapestry of religious communities — including Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others — whose rights and freedoms are unevenly protected and often actively suppressed. Most notably, Baha’is, who are not legally recognized, face harsh persecution, including arrests and property seizures, while Christians — especially converts — are frequently prosecuted under charges that frame peaceful worship as “propaganda against the state.”

According to the latest monitoring by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), approximately 90–95 % of the country’s nearly 90 million people are identified as Shiʿa Muslims, with Sunni Muslims making up most of the remainder; recognized non‑Muslim minorities such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians make up a small fraction of the population and have limited, conditional protections under law. Non‑recognized communities — most prominently Baha’is — are denied legal safeguards and are subject to systematic discrimination and violence.

Over the past year, and prior to the 2026 U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reports of crackdowns on religious minorities have increased. State security forces have carried out raids on homes, arrested Baha’is on broad charges as threats to national security, and aggressively prosecuted Christian converts for basic acts of worship. Authorities often frame these actions in national security language, but independent monitoring sees this as part of a broader effort to reinforce ideological conformity and suppress alternatives to the state’s religious monopoly.

This religious framework also conditions Iranian society’s response to the war. Inside Iran, state media and officials frequently invoke themes of sacrifice, resistance and divine duty drawn from their interpretation of Shiʿa tradition to buttress public support and frame the conflict within a larger moral narrative. Martyrdom — a central concept in Shiʿa thought given the killing of Imam Husayn ibn Ali at Karbala in 680 — resonates deeply when leaders or soldiers fall, bridging state objectives with religious sentiment.

The status of religious minorities, along with other minoritized populations, has deteriorated even further since the start of the 2026 war. The Iranian government has been treating its minority populations as potential internal threats, with arrests and escalating state-sponsored violence. For instance, the government has used the conflict to justify a surge in arrests among members of the Baha’i, Jewish and Christian communities.

Specifically, it has intensified property confiscations and arbitrary detentions against Baha’is; increased the number of arrests of Christian converts for “promoting Zionist Christianity;” demolished Sunni mosque foundations and arrested clerics who challenge official narratives and pressured Jewish Iranians to publicly denounce Israel, with some facing heightened risk of being charged with espionage. Furthermore, reports suggest the conditions of religious prisoners of conscience have deteriorated given abandoned prison management, severe deprivation and a surge in executions.

Externally, the war has also become entangled with religious narratives in the U.S. and Israel. In both, elements of religious framing have emerged that cast the conflict in civilizational or prophetic terms, complicating perceptions and policy debates, as well as an end to the war.

Some U.S. military personnel have reported that commanders used biblical end‑times rhetoric — drawn from parts of Christian evangelical tradition — to frame the conflict as divinely sanctioned, prompting concerns about the mixing of religious ideology with military policy. Likewise, commentators note that political leaders in both Washington and Jerusalem sometimes employ civilizational language — framing the confrontation as a clash between religious identities — to mobilize support, simplify complex geopolitical causes and appeal to domestic constituencies such as Christian Zionists, who believe “the strengthening of the state of Israel will ultimately lead to the erection of the Temple in Jerusalem and hasten the arrival of the day of judgement.”

All this shapes how the war’s religious dimensions are reported: the theocratic nature of the Iranian state, the vulnerability of minority faith communities and dissenting members of the majority as well as the global politics of faith and war are intertwined in ways that extend far beyond the battlefield.

Rinse, Repeat, Ramadan

Every year for the last several years, sometime between the last gray days of winter and the first real hints of summer, a familiar genre quietly bloomed across Western media.

You’ve probably seen it, even if you didn’t recognize the rhythm.

Ramadan Coverage Is Stuck on Repeat

A headline announces the beginning of Ramadan. A subheading explains that Muslims will fast from dawn until sunset. There’s a quote from a smiling imam or a woman in hijab about self-discipline.

Sprinkle in a paragraph about charity and mix in an explanation of why there seem to be two “Eids.” Add a dash of photos, perhaps of a crowded mosque, maybe a tray of dates catching warm light at sunset. And, if the newsroom is feeling particularly adventurous, spice things up with the perennial debate over the sighting of the crescent moon.

Rinse. Repeat. And next year, why not even reprint the same story with a few calendar dates changed (as is too often the case with major outlets)?

In a media environment where the bulk of stories about Islam and Muslims are “resoundingly negative,” perhaps we should be thankful this isn’t malicious coverage. In fact, it’s usually well-intentioned. Editors want to mark an important religious holiday, and reporters want to be inclusive. Audiences seem to want a gentle cultural explainer rather than anything too dense or argumentative.

But the cumulative effect of this standardized script is that coverage of Islam during Ramadan gets weirdly flattened. It trades in familiarity, explaining the same things, in the same way, every year, as though Muslims themselves were static characters stuck in an annual ritual rather than living, breathing participants in an evolving religious tradition.

Skipping Beer During Ramadan

The most obvious repetition lies in the fixation on the physical aspects of fasting.

Year after year, readers are repeatedly told that Ramadan involves abstaining from food and drink between dawn and sunset. Sometimes there’s a note about refraining from smoking and sex. Occasionally, there’s a mention of spiritual reflection.

But the explanatory frame rarely moves beyond bodily discipline. Fasting becomes the defining fact of the month, something measurable, tangible and easily translated across cultures. It’s the religious equivalent of counting calories – a practice that can be described without needing to venture too deeply into politics, ethics, or economics.

Or, for that matter, exploring the seeming derivations from general rules.

Although Ramadan fasting is often described as a single, shared discipline observed by nearly two billion Muslims worldwide, on the ground, it tends to look more like a patchwork of locally negotiated practices.

For instance, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (or the wider Balkans), where beer is deeply embedded in social life, some Muslims approach the month less as a total moral overhaul than as a socially meaningful pause – skipping alcohol for Ramadan even if other everyday habits continue.

Elsewhere, believers quietly adjust their fasting around shift work, exams, political scrutiny, or secular public norms, finding ways to honor the spirit of the month without stepping outside the demands of their social worlds.

Ramadan in Jakarta is not Ramadan in Johannesburg. Observance among jet-set professionals in Dubai differs from that of recent immigrants in Paris, which differs again from the practices of Sufi communities in Tunis or Salafi congregations in Leicester. There are generational differences, gendered debates, class-based distinctions, political disagreements and theological rivalries as well — all shaping how the month is interpreted and lived.

As anthropologist Samuli Schielke observes, the month often becomes less about perfect consistency than about navigating the tension between aspiration and reality; between the desire to be good and the complicated conditions in which that desire has to be lived out.

Date Plates and Deep Debates

And then there are the visuals. Newsrooms love a recurring image bank, and Ramadan delivers in spades…or, perhaps, dates.

You can practically storyboard the coverage in advance with tightly packed rows of worshippers bowing in unison, lantern-lit streets, lavish iftar spreads glistening with syrup and steaming tea, and children peering skyward in hopes of spotting the crescent moon.

These images do real cultural work. They make Ramadan legible to non-Muslim audiences by translating it into familiar visual cues of festivity and devotion.

But they also become visual shorthand that substitutes deeper exploration. The crowded mosque flattens the diversity of Muslim religious practice. The delicious meal stands in for the complexity of ritual observance.

Ramadan is presented as a time of community, generosity and shared humanity. Stories highlight charity drives, interfaith Iftar dinners, food banks and neighborhood gatherings.

None of this is wrong, per se. Charity is a central pillar of the celebration. Communal meals matter deeply. But the tone of uplift can obscure the more nuanced, or even uncomfortable, dimensions of Ramadan as lived experience.

For some Muslims, the month is spiritually exhilarating. For others, it is socially isolating. Some approach fasting as an act of joyful devotion, others struggle with health concerns, work schedules or family obligations.

Some communities debate intensely over how the month should be observed. Others contest the authority of those who claim to define it for them. And in a time of intensified immigration regimes and re-entrenched identitarian nationalisms, some community members have been adamant about keeping quiet about events or gatherings, rather than drawing any unwanted attention.

These tensions rarely make it into the annual explainer.

The Stories Left to Tell

A recent conversation with a colleague who works in radio encapsulates this dynamic.

As she sought to put together a short news clip on Ramadan for a national program, she found herself getting bored with the stories she saw. Checking with Muslim sources, she discovered they were too. Rather than re-producing another staid report, she opted instead to skip it entirely.

But this begs the question: What might better coverage look like?

For reporters, the first step is to resist the tyranny of the annual calendar peg.

Ramadan need not be covered solely as a seasonal, feel-good lifestyle feature. It can be an entry point into stories about labor rights (how do shift workers manage fasting?), climate change (what happens when Ramadan falls during increasingly extreme summer heat or in northern environments where winter days are particularly short?), migration (how do displaced communities maintain ritual continuity?), adaptations within broader economic registers (why are “Ramadan calendars” popping up across Germany, where chocolate-filled Advent calendars are a fixture of the Christmas calendar?), or digital culture (what role do apps, social media, digital Quran recitation, and online sermons play in shaping contemporary observance?).

In other words, Ramadan can be reported not just as a religious practice but as a social phenomenon deeply embedded in broader political and economic worlds.

Second, journalists should diversify their sources. Instead of returning each year to the same community leaders or spokespeople, they might seek out voices that complicate the narrative: women negotiating expectations around domestic labor, Muslims of differing abilities adapting fasting practices, or young activists linking Ramadan ethics to environmental justice.

The goal is not to manufacture controversy but to reflect the genuine plurality that already exists within and across Islam.

For readers, especially the religion nerds among them, it might mean asking questions when an article emphasizes communal harmony without addressing any conflicts that might be simmering beneath the surface. Or, when it celebrates charitable giving, consider how economic inequality shapes who gives and who receives. When it notes the sighting of the crescent moon, remember that this is not just an astronomical observation but a site of legal and political negotiation.

In short, Ramadan is not merely a time when Muslims fast. It is a practice produced through social, historical and cultural processes – through debates over authority, adaptations to modern life and encounters with state institutions and market forces.

Treating it as such would move coverage beyond the repetitive and into something genuinely illuminating.

And who knows? Next February, we might finally see a Ramadan story that surprises us.

Global Christian Nationalism: A Guide

Religious nationalism knows no borders.

In many countries, the line between faith and political power is no longer just blurred — it’s a defining force in public life.

In a new guide at ReligionLink, we offer practical tools for understanding and covering global Christian nationalism: what it is, how it operates across different contexts and why it matters for democracy, human rights and international affairs.

While the term is often associated with U.S. politics, movements that fuse Christian identity with nationalist agendas are shaping policies, society and public debates from Eastern Europe to Latin America and beyond.

Whether you’re on the religion beat or covering politics, this resource is designed to help you ask sharper questions, spot emerging trends and report with greater clarity.

From Headlines To Trendlines: Religion News In A World Of Chaos

Snap. Pop. Fizzle. Bang.

To me, that’s the sound of the modern news cycle, with headlines blowing up in rapid succession, each demanding our attention before we scroll to the next. We live in the midst of an unrelentless attention economy, where urgency becomes currency, outrage is easy to manufacture and what seems to matters most is whatever is newest, loudest or most emotionally charged.

In this environment, it is perhaps inevitable to get trapped in the present moment, mistaking immediacy for importance and something going viral for significance. But when it comes to understanding religion’s role in society, staying locked on today’s headlines is not enough.

To make sense of religion in public life, we need not only track breaking stories or flip through reels on our social media feed but lift our eyes to the horizon, looking for emerging patterns, global developments, and stories still unfolding.

As 2025 ended and 2026 began, I had the chance to contribute to two recent efforts to chart that horizon: the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s “6 to 7 Trends to Watch in Religion and Society in 2026” and ReligionLink’s 2026 predictions.

Wishing my Muslim friends a Merry Christmas

Every December, around the time I begin searching for the box of Advent candles and untangling the lights we swore we’d store neatly last year, I also make my way through digital holiday greetings. And Tuesday, as I whipped through a fresh batch of e-mails, I came across one from my dear friend Mohammed. 

The subject line? “Merry Christmas.” 

His is not the only Christmas greeting I’ll receive from Muslims this year. In fact, numerous contacts and colleagues from Cairo, London, Dubai, Bridgetown, and Minneapolis will send me seasonal salutations for a holiday they themselves will not celebrate…at least not religiously. 

Some hearing of these exchanges might tilt their head in inquiry: Why would Muslims wish me a Merry Christmas? Isn’t the holiday distinctly Christian, defined by the celebration of Jesus’ birth — a figure Muslims understand differently than Christians? 

Those questions are precisely what makes the greeting worth offering, and worth reflecting on.

A Shared Story, Told in Different Ways

Muslims do not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. But they do honor the birth of Jesus. 

The Quran devotes an entire chapter (or surah) to Mary (Maryam), recounting her labor pains, her fear and isolation, the miraculous birth of her son. Jesus (Isa), son of Mary, is mentioned a total of 25 times in the Quran, revered as a righteous prophet, a messenger, a “sign for humanity” (Q 19:21; 21:91), and as the “Spirit from God.” (Q 4:171)

While the Quran denies Christian beliefs about his crucifixion and resurrection (and surely, this accounts for major differences between the two traditions), Muslims believe that Jesus was conceived miraculously (Q 3:45). So, even if Muslims do not mark December 25 with a liturgical celebration, the story Christians celebrate is not foreign to them. It is part of their sacred narrative. And this means that Jesus — and by extension Christmas — can act, in the words of Jordan Denari Duffner and in the spirit of her book Finding Jesus Among Muslims, as a “bridge rather than a boundary” between Christians and Muslims. 

A Very Muslim Christmas?

That bridge can be particularly visible in December, when the Nativity story is central to Christian worship, and when Muslim reverence for Jesus and Mary quietly parallels that of Christians. 

For example, Christmas in Egypt is a vibrant national event, especially among Coptic Christians who mark the holiday on January 7th. The season is marked, however, by both Muslim and Coptic Christian communities with decorations, festive meals and gifts. Muslims widely participate by exchanging greetings, visiting Christian friends and generally enjoying the festive atmosphere in decorated malls and public spaces, viewing it as a shared cultural holiday. 

In Bethlehem, Muslims walk through Manger Square during the tree-lighting ceremony, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Christians. One friend of mine made a special trip back to Bethlehem to join her Christian neighbors in the celebrations, particularly important this year as the tree-lighting returned for the first time since December 2022 and the start of the War in Gaza 10 months later. Attending these events becomes a shared act of memory and solidarity, she said, with Muslims, Christians, and others in Palestine recalling how the original Nativity narrative mirrors Palestinian realities of occupation, displacement and struggle, featuring refugees (Mary, Joseph, Jesus), an oppressive empire (Rome) and massacres (of innocents), finding resonance in modern experiences in Bethlehem and Gaza, where Jesus would be “born among the oppressed.”

In Barbados, Muslim families will join neighbors for festive meals, decorate their houses with lights and serve together in the community. And thanks to the long history of Muslim professionals and businesspeople from Bengal and Gujarat in the Eastern Caribbean, they also serve as essential suppliers for a festive Bajan tradition: refreshing house decor with buying new curtains from stores like Abed’s on Swan St. In a sermon (khutbah) during the holiday season in 2024, an imam advised Muslims to not get carried away but encouraged them to remember the true wisdom (hikma) of the season: that Isa’s miraculous birth shows the power and might of Allah.  

Recently, on a trip to Dearborn, Michigan, which has a significant Muslim population, I was reminded of how much locals love the holiday. A nativity scene is proudly displayed in its Peace Park and at City Hall, across the street from the Arab American National Museum. Festive displays, from Santa and reindeer to Christmas trees and more, can be found in restaurants, salon and other local businesses across town. 

One can find examples from numerous contexts, from Britain to Uzbekistan, Indonesia to Kenya, where Muslims engage with Christmas in ways that revolve around the season’s jolly vibes, personal relationships, shared ritual meals of lamb, chicken or biryani, the giving of small gifts to friends, neighbors, or coworkers, volunteering, or enjoying the lights, music, and markets. 

From Suspicion to Hospitality

Of course, Muslims themselves navigate Christmas in diverse ways. Some embrace the season fully. Others participate selectively, enjoying the warmth of the holidays while staying clear of religious rituals. Still others avoid the season altogether, with an eye to holding firmly to a distinct, and countercultural, religious identity.

And crucially, as the imam in Barbados reminded his community, participation remains cultural, not theological. Muslims maintain clear boundaries around worship, avoiding practices that conflict with Islamic teachings about Jesus’ divine status.

This diversity is not evidence of confusion but a reminder that Islam, like Christianity and other religions, is not monolithic. It is a global, textured, and differently-lived tradition in Cairo and in London, in Tashkent and in Bridgetown.

But the shared reverence of Jesus can create space, perhaps unexpected for some, for common ground. Seeing it as such, Christmas becomes not a point of contention, but a season in which Christians and Muslims can adopt a “hermeneutic of hospitality” toward one another, assuming goodwill rather than suspicion. Through this lens, Muslims’ participation in Christmas is not a religious endorsement but a sign of belonging, an expression of what Duffner calls the “lived reality of interfaith friendship.”

One of Duffner’s most challenging insights, however, is that fear often shapes Christian attitudes toward Muslims more than any theology of hospitality. Fear creates boundaries where God invites connection. Fear distorts our ability to see Muslims’ goodwill for what it is. Fear makes us suspicious of greetings that might otherwise deepen friendship. Her antidote is simple but demanding. It is to adopt a posture of generosity, to listen before judging, to welcome rather than withdraw.

Why I Wish My Muslim Friends a Merry Christmas

Christmas, from my perspective as a Christian, embodies a message of radical, divine hospitality, with God coming near in vulnerability and offering hope to the marginalized and oppressed. In turn, I believe the holiday invites, and challenges, Christians to embrace the season as a powerful moment to practice those very virtues.

So yes, when my Muslim friends send me Christmas greetings, I send them back. Not because we believe the same things about Jesus. We don’t. But because the season’s themes of charity, generosity, hospitality and a hoped-toward, longed-for peace, resonate across our traditions. And because many Muslims, in their own way, already participate in the festive rhythms December brings.

Perhaps the most surprising gift of Christmas, as Duffner reminds us, is that when my Muslim friends wish me a Merry Christmas, I find Jesus among them — not as a point of division, but as a bridge of goodwill, reverence and shared humanity.

And that, I believe, is worth celebrating.

Top Ten Stories of 2025

This last year was a big one for this little website.

Envisioned as a place where I could bring together content published with various publications to share with those interested, KenChitwood.com has become a hub for news, analysis and commentary on global religion and culture.

This year, it felt particularly global. The site enjoyed over 43,000 page views and 41,000 unique visitors from the United States, Germany, Canada, China, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Russia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Morocco, Brazil, France, South Africa and elsewhere around the world.

Beyond readership, assignments and research this year took me from Tbilisi to London, Birmingham to Berlin, Los Angeles to Houston, Poland to Armenia.

Working as a columnist at Interfaith America and Patheos, Europe Correspondent for Christianity Today, journalist fellow with the Fetzer Institute, Editor for ReligionLink and continuing my postdoctoral research at Universität Bayreuth, I wrote about immigration and interreligious peace projects, politics and marginalization, natural disasters and a garden that just might help heal the world.

I could not do it without you, the reader.

That’s why I crunch the numbers at the end of each year to see what stories resonated with you most.

Along the way, some stories caught your attention more than others. You clicked on and read through reflections on the death of Charlie Kirk, the chaos and confusion of massive cuts to federal foreign aid, the destruction—and rebuilding—of Los Angeles after devastating fires and on whether or not artificial intelligence can “get” religion. We marked the founding of new religious monuments and the passing of major religious figures.

Thank you (once more) for reading along this way year. I am already working on stories for 2026 and I look forward to sharing them with you all.

With no further adieu, here’s your Top Ten of 2025:

Making mortals into martyrs

Charlie Kirk, the 31‑year‑old activist, pundit, and founder of Turning Point USA was one of the most visible. And after his death, he was quickly made into a martyr.

‘Chaos’ and ‘confusion’

When the White House issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans, the aid world was thrown into a panic.

Everything is bigger in Texas

When the Ismaili Center opened in Houston this year, it made a splash —architecturally and spiritually.

L.A. looking to rebuild with equity

As images from the cataclysmic firestorms engulfing Los Angeles County emerged, one word came up consistently in the captions: apocalyptic.

Can AI “get” religion?

What happened when students asked their favorite chatbot to define religion.

Is the Christian right coming for Europe?

Are rumors of the Christian right’s rise in Europe concerning?

Pope Francis’ passing

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.

David Briggs wins Lifetime Achievement

It was an honor to interview and profile David Briggs, veteran religion reporter best known for his years with The Associated Press in the 1990s.  

Can Christians serve God and Trump?

President Donald Trump has quickly signaled a drastic shift in the relationship between Christian charities and the U.S. government.

How much power does the Aga Khan have?

First and foremost a religious leader, the Aga Khan has also been a consistent, and significant, presence in global affairs.

And, as a bonus, here a few of my favorites, which I think deserve a bit of re-upping at the end of the year:

The spiritual is political

Georgia’s Peace Cathedral as a hub for pro-democracy religious resistance

Astronism: The space religion

An interview with the religion’s founder, Cometan.

Connect, care, contribute

The power and potential of Muslim women’s philanthropy.

One garden to heal the world

How a church in East London is tackling climate change, one path at a time.

How war transformed this Polish church

The city of Opole is 275 miles from Poland’s eastern border. But Ukraine never feels that far away.

Japan And The Global Circulation Of Anti-Muslim Fear

I stumbled into the world of Japanese debates about Islam and Muslims almost by accident. 

You see, like many other millennials, my wife and I are planning a trip to Japan. 

The itinerary includes a lot of the standards: karaoke in Tokyo, onsen (natural hot springs) on the west coast and a visit to the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama (naturally). But, and because I never stop being a religion nerd, the trip will also include side quests to visit to the Kobe mosque and Tokyo’s HALAL-Ya store in Asakusa—the biggest halal food, souvenir, and specialty store in Japan. 

Planning the trip, I’ve been watching YouTubers like Chris Broad, who share about their lives, likes and dislikes in Japan. Last month, on his channel “Abroad in Japan,” Broad shared one of his latest dislikes—sensationalist YouTube content highlighting what’s wrong with Japan. The video in question was posted by “Oriental Pearl,” featuring voyeuristic shots of Tokyo’s unhoused population, urban graffiti and sex workers. 

While Broad’s criticisms of the post were on point, it was what waited in the comment sections of the original video that grabbed my attention: claims about “no-go zones,” conspiratorial warnings about demographic replacement and a steady stream of unease about the presence of Muslims in Japan.

One user wrote, “the more migrants Japan brings in the [worse] things will get.” Another posted, “100% The ‘refugee’ effect.” Still others made particular accusations, commenting on how there seem to be more Indians and Muslims than ethnic Japanese in cities like Osaka, lamenting the presence of Islam in the country at all, and another saying: “the graffiti wasn't in Japanese... And a lot of it said ‘Free Gaza’. Do the math.”

Though Oriental Pearl made no explicit reference to Islam or Muslims, her post brought out comments that highlight how anti-refugee sentiment, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim attacks similar to what we see in Europe or North America are prevalent — and increasingly on the rise — in Japan. 

Love is Halal: LGBTQ+ Mosque in Berlin Reopens its Doors

Wearing a black dress, dancing across the interior of an urban mosque and waving an LGBTQ+ flag, Berfin Celebi—formerly known as "Kurdische Kween”—wants to be clear: her mosque is open for business. “Because many believe it is closed,” the caption on her TikTok video reads, Celebi believed it was time to spread the news. 

The mosque in question? The Ibn Rushd Goethe Mosque in Berlin, Germany, which opened in 2017 to promote a “a progressive and inclusive Islam,” allowing women and men to pray together and accepting LGBTQ+ members. 

But in October 2023, the mosque was closed after security authorities arrested several men from Tajikistan associated with the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) who were plotting attacks in Germany—including concrete threats against the Ibn Rushd Goethe Mosque, which they called a “place of devil worship,” and its initiator and co-founder, former German lawyer Seyran Ateş. It remained shut through the end of 2024.

Celebi, a German-Kurdish transgender woman who became known for her sometimes-provocative social media content as a drag queen before her gender reassignment transition, is proud of her now re-opened mosque and is not afraid to show it. 

And to critics who call it a “fake mosque,” Celebi and those who have resurrected the project want everyone to know they are ready to welcome queer people once again. 

Making Mortals into Martyrs

Charlie Kirk, the 31‑year‑old activist, pundit, and founder of Turning Point USA was one of the most visible voices blending evangelical Christian identity politics with right‑wing populism in the United States. When he was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10, more than merely “a divisive figure in right‑wing circles” was killed. Kirk was a polarizing public persona across the U.S., known for his provocative rhetoric on religion, race and gender (among other things). His voice carried both influence and animus, drawing fervent support and fierce criticism. 

And following his death, he became a martyr. 

In the immediate aftermath of his killing, many Kirk supporters—new and old—framed it as spiritual warfare, portraying the shooting as an attack on faith and moral order. His widow, Erika Kirk, declared that his death and legacy would echo “like a battle cry,” and that he “will stand at his savior’s side … wearing the glorious crown of a martyr.” 

Pastors, evangelical leaders and everyday Christiansechoed these themes online, saying “martyr blood has reached the throne” and calling for “Gods army”  to rise and for followers to “carry on his mission,” warning that the forces opposed to Kirk were spiritual adversaries. Some invoked the words of early Christian apologist Tertullian, who wrote that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” by saying the death of “Saint Charline Kirk’s martyrdom” would spark a revival.

Alongside spiritual rhetoric came calls for reprisal and retribution: social media quickly filled with posts from far‑right activists suggesting Kirk’s death demanded vengeance and that the political left bore responsibility, implicitly or explicitly. Some posts framed it in apocalyptic terms, speaking of an impending “civil war” to “restore moral clarity.”

The move to make Kirk into a martyr is not unique. It’s a pattern repeated across time and place: when a public figure with religious and political identity dies violently, their death can be transformed into a symbol, merging grief with grievance, spiritual meaning with political mobilization and martyrdom with Other-ing and calls for retaliation. 

Martyrs are hailed as heroes, canonized in murals and at vigils. And through hashtags and hushed prayers, their deaths serve as focal points for collective identification, belonging and action.

What do we have to learn from how Charlie Kirk was made into the latest Christian martyr?

Envisioning an "Atlantic Crescent" with Historian Alaina Morgan

How do you imagine different worlds?

According to historian Alaina Morgan, for African descended, or Black, people in the twentieth-century Atlantic–the interconnected system of Europe, Africa, and the Americas that emerged following the European colonization–it meant drawing on anti-colonial and anti-imperial discourses from within and beyond the worlds of Islam to “unify oppressed populations, remedy social ills, and achieve racial and political freedom.” 

In her eponymous new book, Morgan envisions the “Atlantic Crescent” as a geography within which to understand the significance of Black Muslim geographies of resistance, occurring “at the intersection of, and influenced by” three overlapping diaspora phenomena: Black American migrant laborers who moved to the United States Northeast and Midwest in the years during and after World War I, Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and immigrants who relocated to the US in the early twentieth century, and newcomers from the Indian subcontinent who arrived in the same period.  

Moving, and balancing, between particularist practices and universalist visions, “visible elites and rank-and-file practitioners,” the US and the Anglophone Caribbean, Morgan argues these diasporas merged continents, inscribed populations miles apart into the same histories, and brought communities divided by distance into intimate contact with one another through shared political visions, religious beliefs, and everyday interactions. 

In a recent Q&A, Morgan talks about how she theorizes this “Atlantic Crescent” and what we might have to learn about Islam, the Black Atlantic and religion in general by thinking in, with and through it. 

Astronism, the Space Religion: An Interview with Founder, Cometan

Humans have long been drawn to space as part of our search for meaning, significance and security.  But what if space could be the source of our salvation?

It is this question that led Brandon Reece Taylorian, widely known by his mononym Cometan, to start a new religion: Astronism.

From astrology to astrotheology, from questions of how to practice religions ensconced in Earth’s realities and rhythms to the context of outer space or life on other planets to the creation of new religious movements, spirituality and space exploration have long been intertwined.

It is Astronism, perhaps, that has taken the relationship between outer space and religion to its logical limit. At the age of 15, Cometan began to craft an astronomical religion that “teaches that outer space should become the central element of our practical, spiritual, and contemplative lives.”

“From my perspective, how religion and outer space intersect is crucial to understanding the future of religion,” Cometan, who is also a Research Associate at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, told me. “Outer space is the next great frontier that will reshape the human condition, including our religions.”

To that end, Cometan has contemplated how space exploration might produce new forms of insight, revelation and spiritual experience.

“The further we dare to venture beyond Earth, the more our beliefs about God and the universe will transform. I think that we need new and bold religious systems that will inspire our species to confront and overcome the challenges of the next frontier,” he said.

“As an Astronist, I define outer space as the supreme medium through which the traditional questions of religion will be answered.”

In this edition of “What You Missed Without Religion Class,” I feature a Q&A with Cometan about Astronism and what we might have to learn about religion – and how we define and study it – through his experience founding a new tradition drawn from the stars. 

Telling good religion stories

Religious, spiritual and faith-inspired actors have long shaped public responses to some of society’s most urgent shared crises—from welcoming the stranger to caring for creation. Yet in much of the media coverage around issues like immigration, the economy, gun violence, and the environment, engaged voices of faith are often oversimplified, sidelined, or portrayed in a critical manner.

But what if we focused on good religion stories instead?

In a forthcoming anthology combining journalistic narrative with social-scientific reflections, titled Engaged Spirituality: Stories of Religious Resilience, Inspiration, and Pursuit of the Common Good, I and 17 other authors explore the power of telling such stories. But with an unexpected twist. Or you might say, a surprise ending: that telling good religion stories helps us to look beyond the present, imagine a new repertoire of the possible, and rise together to advance vital conversations around some of the most critical issues of our time.

The anthology emerged out of the Spiritual Exemplars Project, sponsored by the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, which involved a team of journalists and researchers profiling 104 spiritually-engaged humanitarians across 13 faith traditions and 42 countries.

The exemplars, individuals motivated and sustained by spiritual values, beliefs, and practices to serve humanity, included a nun who performed the first Buddhist same-sex wedding, a Jewish lay leader who served more than 2 million meals to food-insecure college students, a priest who helped rescue 150,000 distressed refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, a Jain who served more than 400,000 people in 400 Sri Lankan villages and a Latina convert who founded the first shelter for Muslim migrants at the U.S./Mexico border.

Their lives, inspired by African Religious traditions, Baha’i precepts, Protestant ethics, Humanist altruism, and Indigenous spirituality, highlighted some of humanity’s highest shared values in pursuit of the common good.

During the project, team members realized they were not only gaining insights about how spiritually engaged humanitarians understand their lives and work, but about how religious values and spiritual practices inspire and sustain social action on a larger scale. This anthology is an outgrowth of that process, taking readers on a journey to meet people doing extraordinary work and to share their life trajectories, traumas, and triumphs.

Is The Christian Right Coming For Europe?

If you’re anything like me, you pay attention when an e-mail is marked “URGENT!!” 

The particular e-mail I have in mind carried a subject line that was direct and equally attention-grabbing: “Christian nationalism is coming for Europe.”

The content was a single link, to an article written by United States journalist Katherine Stewart for The New Republic on the rise of the Christian Right in the United Kingdom. In it, Stewart tells of how she believes a form of hyper-patriarchal, homophobic and nationalistic Christianity often associated with evangelicals in the US is gaining a beachhead in the UK. The developments there, she writes, “are like a window on the American past. 

“This is how things must have looked before the antidemocratic reaction really took hold,” she wrote. 

As a correspondent covering European Christians and as a scholar teaching religion in Germany, I’ve tracked some of the developments, institutions and movements Stewart cites. While rumors of the Christian right’s rise in Europe need to be taken seriously, it is also vitally important that the careful observer of religion take note of some of the complexities that have shaped the Christian right’s contours in ways distinct from, if related to, the forms we see taking hold in the U.S. 

Sikhi: An Updated Guide

There are more than 27 million Sikhs around the world, which makes Sikhi (also known as Sikhism) the fifth-largest major world religion. Yet the Sikh tradition remains largely unknown to the global community – no other religion of its magnitude is as misunderstood as Sikhi.

The Sikh religion has been underrepresented and misrepresented in the popular media, and these problems have contributed to the serious challenges that Sikhs experience today, including negative stereotypes, discriminatory policies, and violent hate crimes.

This guide — a collaboration between the Sikh Coalition and ReligionLink and updated in 2025 — provides information on the Sikh tradition in order to facilitate better understanding of Sikhs and Sikhi.

Can AI Understand Religion? Students Put It To The Test

Ask E.B. Tylor what religion is and he would say it is, “belief in Spiritual Beings.”

Ask William James and he will tell you it is the “feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude.”

Ask Catherine L. Albanese, and she would say it is “a system of symbols (creed, code, cultus) by means of which people (a community) orient themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and values.”

Ask Émile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz or others, and you’d get a different answer from the perspectives of sociology, anthropology, theology, philosophy and more.

But what if you ask ChatGPT?

Well, you get a mix of the above, it turns out.

When I asked my friendly, neighborhood artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, it defined religion as, “a system of beliefs, practices, symbols, and moral codes that connects individuals or communities to the sacred, the divine, or some ultimate reality or truth.”

In the wake of ChatGPT’s viral launch in 2021, the question of how to integrate AI into the classroom — and the religious studies classroom at that — has been at the forefront of educators’ minds. With the global expansion of machine learning, big data, and large language models (LLMs), AI has the potential to radically impact teaching and learning, revolutionizing the way students interact with knowledge and how educators engage course participants.

There are, however, significant concerns about its ethical use, technology infrastructures, and fair access.

In this post, I share how I recently used AI as part of my pedagogy to help prompt deeper understanding of religion in the United States – and what we might have to learn from chatbots about how we define and discuss religion.

The AI Unessay

AI is a technology that enables machines and computers to emulate human intelligence and mimic its problem-solving powers.

The umbrella term “AI” encompasses various forms of machine-based systems that produce predictions, recommendations or content based on direct or indirect human-defined objectives. Based on

LLMs, AI generators like ChatGPT, Jasper or Google Gemini are tools that have been trained on vast amounts of data and text to provide predictive responses to requests, questions and prompts inputted by users like you, me or our students.

As with other advances in technology — from mobile phones and social media to enhanced graphics calculators and Wikipedia — educators have responded to AI in various ways. Some have moved quickly to ban its use and bemoan the submission of essays and other coursework clearly created with the help of AI.

Others have moved to integrate AI into their religious studies pedagogy, inviting students to create videos or infographics with the assist of AI to explain the elements, and role, of rituals to stimulate class discussion or to treat “AI as a tool for lessons that go beyond academics and also focus on the whole person.”

When I recently taught a course on American religion, I decided to assign what I called an “AI Unessay.”

The usual unessay invites students of varying learning modalities and expressions to create final projects that demonstrate their grasp of course material and discussions beyond the traditional essay. These can be hands-on demonstrations, mini-documentaries, artistic visualizations, performative projects or social media campaigns.

The AI Unessay invited course participants to design a set of prompts for an AI generator (e.g., ChatGPT) to write a 2,000-word essay on a topic in American religion, broadly defined. Then, participants were asked to write their own critical response to this AI essay, analyzing its strengths, weaknesses, sources and the process itself.

AI’s Religious Illiteracy

Students chose a variety of topics to cover, from religious themes in metal music and superhero comics to the “trad wife” trend among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and digital seances.

Throughout the semester, I worked with participants to refine their topic selections, come up with AI prompts and conduct secondary-source research and firsthand “digital fieldwork.”

Meanwhile, course lectures and readings were provided to supply helpful context on how each of these themes might be better placed within the wider currents of American religion and its

In a recent classroom experiment, students found, like many others, that AI responses were often biased, inaccurate, or even harmfully ignorant. | Image created in Meta AI for Patheos.

intersections with U.S. politics, economics and society.

Not all course participants opted for the AI Unessay. Others wrote traditional papers or put together a different kind of creative final project. But the majority of students opted for the AI-based project, saying they not only wanted to learn more about how to productively, and critically, work with AI, but wondered whether the technology was up for the challenge of understanding, parsing out and pontificating on America’s religious diversity.

Though participants did learn some new information from the AI essays and discovered some data they hitherto were unaware of, they were — on the whole — disappointed with the results. They found, like many others, that AI responses were often biased, inaccurate or even harmfully ignorant.

They also found that citations and sources were a decidedly mixed bag, with the chatbots often manufacturing fake data and made-up books or articles.

And finally, numerous students reflected that it was a challenge to get the AI chatbot to write at the appropriate length (2,000 words). The technology was often too efficient, churning out well-structured, but far too brief, answers to questions about metal music’s spiritual intimations or the nuances of the “trad wife” trend on TikTok. When asked to elaborate, participants found AI was overly repetitive or even fabricated false information or created concrete details and data that were inaccurate or exaggerated. It also regurgitated implicit and explicit biases against marginalized religious communities or intra-faith minorities.

As one participant summed it up, “I found AI to be more religiously illiterate than me, which is saying something!”

Where to from here?

Asked to consider why AI was found wanting in its accuracy in depicting American religious diversity, participants surmised that because AI is trained on what internet publics “know” and share about religion, it is just as religiously illiterate as the rest of us. They suggested it takes students of religion who are paying careful attention to help it along, correct its mistakes and continue to critically question the just-so narratives about religion, religions and the religious that can be found online.

In other words, participants discovered how AI amplifies and compounds some of the worst in religious illiteracy.

Writing for the Religion, Agency and AI forum, digital religion scholar Giulia Evolvi reminds us that in an age of hypermediation, “religious communication, like all modern communication, is no longer mediated linearly. Instead, digital media amplifies and reshapes it, creating intensified networks and narratives.”

Thus, in an age when more people will turn to AI to answer their questions about religion and spirituality, it is important that we engage with the technology, critique its biases and weaknesses and continue to pay attention to the ways humans employ the concept of “religion” to make sense of the world around them and their place in it.

Even with the advent of AI technologies — and religious studies students’ use of it — the why of studying religion doesn’t change. Religion remains interesting, intricate and important.

We might just need to shift some of the ways we go about making sense of it and adapt our classrooms and conversations accordingly.

When religious leaders die

For me, Jimmy Carter’s death came too soon.

Not necessarily because of his age. He lived to the ripe old age of 100 and, in many respects, lived those years to the fullest.

No, and if I may be crass for a moment, Carter passed before I had a reporting guide ready for reporters looking to cover the faith angles of his life and legacy.

You see, as Editor for ReligionLink, I put together resources and reporting guides for journalists covering topics in religion. Each month, we publish a guide covering topics such as education and church-state-separation under Trump, faith and immigration or crime and houses of worship.

Early in 2024, I started to put together a guide to cover the passing of Jimmy Carter. Serving as Editor is only a part-time gig, and it usually takes all the time I have dedicated to the role to produce a single, monthly guide. But on the side, I started to make notes, identify sources and build a timeline for Carter’s life and legacy.

When he passed on December 29, 2024, the guide was not ready. Nor would it be in the matter of days necessary for it to be useful. So, the opportunity came and went. The draft of the guide to covering Jimmy Carter’s passing tossed on the editing floor.

The missed occasion, however, inspired me to work ahead more intentionally on guides for other famous faith leaders. The process of putting such guides together led me to reflect on what it means to remember, and report on, the passing of prominent figures in religion. 

Covering, and Questioning, Anti-Christian Persecution

If you report on religion long enough, you’re bound to be called an anti-Christian bigot at some point in time.

In my 14 years of reporting, I’ve been labeled an atheist agent for my coverage of a book on how Jesus may have been a vegetarian, denounced as a prejudiced partisan as I covered instances of clergy abuse in Houston, Texas, and much worse for my writing on neo-Nazi ideology and racism among Lutherans in Germany and the U.S.

In each case, the critique of my writing was less about the coverage or claims therein, but much more to do with a feeling that anti-Christian bias — and even persecution — in the media is not only real but rampant.

When it comes to the issue of anti-Christian persecution itself, coverage in the media can sometimes swing between two magnetic poles. On one end are those who are convinced that such persecution is the most pressing contemporary human rights issue. On the other are those who equate such statements as melodrama, with little grounding in the lived reality of most communities worldwide.

Journalists covering the issue might be swayed depending upon their sources, who often have a stake in arguing one way or the other.

To best cover the matter of anti-Christian persecution, or to address it when it comes up in critiques of our coverage, reporters have to make two things clear: 1) many individuals and communities across the globe are vulnerable because of their identification as Christians and 2) that the extent of anti-Christian persecution is not as widespread or as grievous as some make it out to be.

To help navigate how to cover particular cases and claims, I recommend journalists consider issues related to power, the shift from “privilege to plurality,” and how Christians use the idea of persecution as a way to make sense of their faith in the 21st century. 

If Piety Is Always Political, Who Then Is A Saint?

On the outskirts of Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, lies the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco in Sant’Anastasia.

The walls of the shrine are covered in painted, votive tavolette — little, painted boards given as an offering in fulfillment of a vow (ex voto) and featuring devotional scenes and images of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ.

One of my favorites features a man in bed, with a heavily bandaged leg, his small children and wife praying to the Virgin and Child as they appear amidst a veil of clouds from their throne in heaven.

It is, in many ways, a visual embodiment of traditional notions of piety, defined as dutiful devotion to the divine.

But as I teach in my religious studies courses, piety can take a variety of forms.

It can be visual and sartorial, both highly personal and politically charged. More than an individual’s particular practice of religious reverence, piety is a socially defined and structured response to one’s emotional, social and material context. And in a time of political upheaval, social uncertainty and ecological anxiety, it might do well to revisit piety and its varieties.

Reporting on faith in polarized times

In a slight departure from my usual column at Patheos (“What you missed without religion class”), I was asked by my editors to respond to the following prompt, as part of their new initiative on Faith & Media:

“Faith Amid the Fray: Representing Belief Fairly During Polarized Political Times - Explore the role of media in shaping perceptions of faith during politically charged times. As we have a government in transition and the world becomes less stable, how should the media work to accurately reflect faith’s place in all this? ”

As outgoing president of the Religion News Association and Editor of ReligionLink — a premier resource for journalists writing on religion — I’ve spent time thinking about what religion reporters write about and how it’s best done.

Looking back on my 14 years on the beat, and looking ahead to the role of news media in shaping perceptions of faith in the politically charged times we have ahead of us, I believe religion reporters have the opportunity to approach the next year with “curiosity” — as The New Yorker’s Emma Green put it — and recommit to the balance, accuracy and insight that best characterizes our beat.

I encourage all those who care about faith and media in polarized times to take a deeper look at the link below…