Religion News Service reports on religion and its intersections with political and cultural issues. Their mission is “to inform, illuminate and inspire public discourse on matters relating to belief and convictions.” RNS distributes stories to the nation’s leading newspapers, news magazines, online media outlets, broadcasting firms and religious publications.
RNS reporter Adelle Banks and Sacred Writes media partnership fellow Dr. Matthew Cressler won a 2021 Wilbur award for their collaboration on “Beyond the Most Segregated Hour,” a series focused on “the future of segregation and integration in American religion” and written for our 2020 media partnership with Religion News Service. Congrats to all involved!
2021 partnership
don’t demonize african spirituality
African Elements Give Life to Many Churches
5 January 2021
written by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Darnise Martin
DECOLONIZING CHRISTIANITY
What African Spirituality Can Offer Black Believers
5 January 2021
research contributed by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Darnise Martin
Current media partnership fellow
Dr. Darnise C. Martin
New Religious Movements (co-reporting with Liz Kineke)
Darnise C. Martin holds a doctorate in Cultural and Historical Studies in Religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is Clinical Associate Professor at Loyola Marymount University where she teaches courses in Theological Studies and African American Studies. Dr. Martin is the author of Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (New York University Press, 2005), and coeditor of Women and New and Africana Religions, a volume within the Women in Religions Series for Praeger press (Praeger, 2009). She continues to conduct research on African Diaspora religions and Africans Americans in metaphysical religions. Dr. Martin has also been featured on Tavis Smiley’s radio program on National Public Radio (NPR), and has appeared on KJLH radio in Los Angeles. She has consulted on feature length documentaries such as Dark Girls and Light Girls for the Oprah Winfrey Network.
2020 PartneRSHIP
solidarity over segregation
Faith-based coalitions organize across races, religions
24 February 2020
co-written by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Matthew J. Cressler
the fight for racial justice
Charleston beyond the segregated hour
24 February 2020
written by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Matthew J. Cressler
MULTIRACIAL CHURCHES CHALLENGE CLERGY OF COLOR
20 January 2020
research contributed by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Matthew J. Cressler
multiracial church gets political
16 January 2020
reporting sponsored by media partnership with Sacred Writes
religious groups revisit reparations
50 Years after James Forman’s “Black Manifesto”
30 December 2019
co-written by Sacred Writes’ media partner
Dr. Matthew J. Cressler
2020 media partnership fellow
Dr. Matthew J. Cressler (Co-Reporting with Adelle Banks)
Segregation and Integration in American Religious CommunitieS
Matthew Cressler is assistant professor of religious studies and affiliate faculty in African American studies at the College of Charleston. His teaching and writing revolves around the intersection of religion, race, and racism. He is the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations (NYU Press, 2017). The book begins with the lives of Black converts who remade Chicago’s Catholic landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. It then tells the story of how the Black Power movement transformed what it meant to be Black and Catholic across the country. Cressler’s current research focuses on white Catholic support for segregation and the ways the history of Black Catholics reveals the racism at the heart of the U.S. Church. You can connect with him on Twitter @mjcressler.
2019 Partnership
remembering
Jesse Miranda
The complicated history of Latinx Pentecostals
Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh
2019 media partnership fellow
Dr. Arlene SÁNCHEZ-WALSH
Hispanic Religions
Arlene M. Sánchez-Walsh is professor of religious studies at Azusa Pacific University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society . She has authored over a dozen articles and book chapters on the subject of Latino/a religion and has served as a media expert for outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and On Being with Krista Tippett. Sánchez-Walsh's current projects include a biography of Daniel Berrigan. Her latest book is Pentecostals in America, published by Columbia University Press in 2018.