🏆 Hello, Adelle: Longtime RNS Journalist To Receive Lifetime Achievement Award 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.
(ANALYSIS) Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers!
Jerusalem is holding its breath as a Hamas rallying cry to Palestinians marking Ramadan threatens the delicate balance at Al Aqsa Mosque, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jared Malsin and Fatima AbdulKarim.
A $60 million museum that showcased the Bible’s role in American history will shut down less than three years after it opened, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and Christanity Today’s Emily Belz report.
This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with news of a major award for a longtime Godbeat pro.
Adelle M. Banks interviews actor Robert Duvall in July 2010. She visited him on his Northern Virginia farm ahead of the release of the movie “Get Low,” in which he played a Tennessee recluse who seeks the help of ministers to speak at a “funeral party” before he dies. )Photo by Nancy Lovell).
What To Know: The Big Story
Best of the best: “Surely there’s someone out there who doesn’t like Adelle M. Banks.
“I just haven’t found that person yet.”
Noting the respect afforded Banks by colleagues and competitors alike, that was the lede I wrote four years ago on her 25th anniversary with Religion News Service.
My statement remains true today.
Award winner: The Religion News Association announced Thursday that Banks, production editor and a national reporter at RNS, will receive its 2024 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award.
Read all the details about the plans to honor Banks at RNA’s 75th anniversary conference in Pittsburgh, set for April 18-20.
Richard Ostling, retired longtime religion writer for Time magazine and The Associated Press, heard the news before I did and emailed me.
“Assume u will mention colleague Adelle Banks,” he said in his quick message.
Indeed!
When I asked him to describe Banks, Ostling replied, “One of the greats on our challenging beat, who upheld the highest standards of fairness and accuracy.”
Ostling, by the way, was the 2006 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. See the full list of past winners.
Congrats roll in: RNA President Ken Chitwood praised Banks as “a top-notch example of religion news professionalism” and said he was honored to profile her for the announcement.
Some of the terrific details from that announcement:
Across four decades, Banks covered a swath of stories, from alternative worship services and programs for people with dementia to (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s) ongoing legacy among sanitation workers on the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Along the way, Banks interviewed Desmond Tutu, Jerry Falwell and Jesse Jackson, and covered events featuring Billy Graham, Jeremiah Wright, and Bono. She also enjoyed covering the intersection of faith and baseball, including when Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass with 46,000 at the newly built Nationals Park in Washington in 2008. “It was stunning to see the baseball park transformed, with everything bathed in white,” she said, “to see a place known for secular gatherings turned ‘holy.’”
Reflecting on her twenty-nine years with RNS — almost one-third of the outlet’s existence — she also noted how so many gatherings on the National Mall in Washington, from the March for Life to the Promise Keepers and from the Million Man March led by Louis Farrakhan to the Reason Rally led by prominent American atheists, reminded her that almost every place in the nation, and every story, has a religion angle to it.
Banks also noted that in her time on the beat, she watched it go from “Protestant-Catholic-Jew to Zoroastrians-atheists-and-beyond.”
Despite the honor of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the RNA and one from the Washington Association of Black Journalists in 2022, Banks said she has no plans to call it quits anytime soon. “There are too many stories to write,” she said, “and so many facets to religion to explore!”
I look forward to highlighting many more of Banks’ stories in the years ahead. Congrats on the RNA recognition, Adelle!
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. Terrorists in California?: “To hear the Hindu-dominated media and government tell it, militants funded by the Sikh diaspora will stop at nothing to take over Punjab — the only Indian state where Sikhs are a majority — and turn it into a country of their own called Khalistan,” the Los Angeles Times’ Jaweed Kaleem writes.
“At the center of the separatist movement is the oldest Sikh house of worship in America: the Gurdwara Sahib, a collection of modest brick buildings located near a rail yard just south of downtown Stockton.”
2. ‘Ortho Bros’ on the rise: “A Houston-area priest is part of a group of religious leaders and media figures who draw followers interested in conspiracy theories and authoritarian government.”
Meagan Saliashvili reports for Texas Monthly on the “trend of young men touting Orthodox Christianity as a far-right ideology, attracting converts, and approval by some priests.”
3. Virgin of Charity: “The Vatican-recognized Virgin, venerated by Catholics and followers of Afro-Cuban Santeria traditions, is more than a religious icon. She is at the heart of Cuban identity, uniting compatriots from the Communist-run Caribbean island to those who were exiled or emigrated to the U.S.”
The Associated Press’ Luis Andres Henao and Giovanna Dell’Orto explain. Henao reports from El Cobre, Cuba, and Dell’Orto from Miami.
More Top Reads
Victims of Catholic nuns rely on each other after being overlooked in the clergy sex abuse crisis, The Associated Press’ Tiffany Stanley finds. … Spring for Amish people in Pennsylvania means “mud sales,” from pitchforks to pies, AP’s Mark Scolforo shares. … Anti-Zionist Jews are countering mainstream support for Israel, Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron explains. … Evangelical Christians are fierce Israel supporters. Now they are visiting as war-time volunteers, AP’s Melanie Lidman reports. … The split at an Arkansas Baptist church embroiled in a sex abuse scandal highlights the need for sound governing documents, Church Law & Tax’s Matthew Branaugh writes. … “Ordinary Angels” has scored with critics and filmgoers alike, showing the power of faith-focused cinema, according to the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner. … Churches are starting to see cryptocurrency in the collection plate, according to Christianity Today’s Tobin Perry. … And finally, the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein reviews Pope Francis’ new memoir, in which he’s “out to prove he’s just a regular guy.”
Inside The Godbeat
Marvin Olasky, former longtime editor-in-chief of World magazine, has a new memoir, “Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment.”
Sophie Carson, who covers religion for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is a Milwaukee Press Club award finalist for best personal profile. She wrote about a Jewish educator working to make sure the Holocaust is remembered. Congrats, Sophie!
Charging Station: ICYMI
Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from ReligionUnplugged.com.
Remember that time Ireland had a pope?
You probably don't.
Because it never happened.
In other headlines, a new report details what evangelicals think about social and political issues, Clemente Lisi reports.
The Final Plug
At a time of declining membership numbers, post-pandemic challenges and political polarization, a conference this week touted hope for small churches.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for ReligionUnplugged.com and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.