For almost 30 years my day job has included the challenge of introducing the work of the Christian community to media of all stripes. For many years, I could count on one hand (with fingers left over) the number of front page stories each year in major American newspapers on the good work and the impact of evangelicals. Dull days for evangelical public relations.

It became impossible to ignore the evangelicals in the 1980’s, and the amount of coverage of Christian leaders and activities has increased steadily since then. The role of evangelicals in the 2004 presidential election made us players, or so it seemed to media, and there is no shortage of attention.

The quality of coverage has improved, as well, although there is plenty to complain about, and most national reporters still have an adversarial relationship with people of potent Christian faith.

I’ve had a lot of interesting interaction with mainstream media over the last two years through my work with the Evangelical Climate Initiative. ECI has been espousing a position of concern for climate change, a position with which the MSM is almost entirely in sympathy–so the problem isn’t negative coverage. But there are concerns.

I wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about my concern that media and others are assuming that because many evangelicals are becoming more green that means they are becoming more liberal–which is not a direct correlation. Then a couple of weeks ago I was interviewed at length by Curtis Brainard, a reporter with Columbia Journalism Review. I’m quoted extensively in the article, titled Evangelicalese 101.

Here’s a sample:

Clearly, many disapprove of Bush’s war in Iraq and his reluctance to address climate change; their apprehension about the current selection of GOP presidential candidates is even more emphatic. It is far less certain, however, that the fissures in evangelical society are deep enough to cause a major political realignment.
It’s not that the press has misunderstood this situation, but journalists tend to use language that describes today’s “average” evangelical as more liberal or moving toward the left. Consider, for example, a headline that appeared in The Washington Post last August: “Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmentalist Fold.” This probably seems accurate to most Post readers, but many evangelicals do not like it, according to Jewell. Evangelicals don’t want to be part of the “environmentalist fold.” Instead, they want the press to describe the changes happening within their society as something organic and complex, rather than something passive and simple, like the adoption of liberal values.

Related posts:

  1. Media Cage Match: Earth Day vs Easter
  2. How the Media Fared in the Campaign
  3. A Media Experiment
  4. Ten Ways Media Leaders Can Keep Media Ethics from Becoming an Oxymoron
  5. 50 leaders of the evangelical generation: #44 Philip Anschutz. Media mogul

Filed under: Christianity • Environment • Jim • Media • Religion

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