For the second time in five years, Christian journalists gathered in Washington, D.C. on May 10th, 1997, for a conference to explore the dimensions of being both a believer and a reporter.
"Consequences of Truth: Injustice, Taboo and Personal Responsibility" was held at the same location as the 1992 conference, the College of Preachers, on the grounds of the National Cathedral, and was again organized by the Washington Arts Group.
Even though the turnout was only about half that of the original gathering, the quality of the fellowship and the presentations matched or exceeded it, prompting calls for more frequent and longer meetings in the future.
The conference began with devotions from the Book of Revelation by Rev. Stuart McAlpine, a local pastor. McAlpine called Revelation a key text for this generation, it's vivid images perfect for our post-literary age. Acknowledging the mysterious, mystical nature of the Bible's concluding volume, McAlpine summarized it as a fireworks display that turns out to be the Light of the World. ``God's chaos is much better than ungodly order,'' he added.
He urged the journalists to be like the Apostle John, who wrote the Revelation: a poet who takes words seriously, a prophet who takes God seriously, and a pastor who takes people seriously.
The presentations offered by Fred Barnes, Dale Hanson Bourke and Terry Mattingly were declared off the record to encourage a free and open exchange, so this report is limited.
Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard, talked about his own experiences as a Christian and a journalist and about forgiveness. He observed that his career did not go as he expected it would, after becoming a Christian, much to his surprise and relief.
Bourke, on the rebound from a sudden illness, talked about her recent foray from Christian publishing into the secular newsroom, as she became the publisher of the Religion News Service. She quoted Presbyterian pastor Craig Barnes several times, including his observation: "Too often we think of calling as something we should do, but God is calling us to be."
Syndicated columnist and Milligan College professor Terry Mattingly recounted his own trials in the secular newsroom and offered survival advice in a talk entitled "Calling vs. Personal Responsibility." He noted a 1981 article in Sojourners that described journalism as the profession aimed at overthrowing the rock to show the dirt underneath and the business of preaching as that which removed the dirt and showed the rock.
One of our challenges, he said, is not whether we can be Christians in journalism but journalists in journalism, a topic he took up again in a subsequent newspaper column.
The problem, he wrote, is that the media marketplace includes at least three clashing versions of what is "good journalism." They are:
Each of the speakers, in their own way, identified the advantages a Christian reporter has in the secular marketplace. A Washington correspondent for a foreign business journal reported that her secular employers actually prefer Christian employees. They see them as less corruptible than other reporters, and feel that if they spend their extra time in Bible studies they will be less inclined towards unionization meetings.
Summarizing the day, journalism dean Cliff Kelly compared Christian journalists with the sons of Issachar, "who understood the times and knew what Israel should do." (I Chronicles 12:32) He noted that a newspaper reporter who attended the previous Christian Journalists conference had since been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice.
After a late afternoon prayer and worship service, led by Rev. John Guernsey, it was time for dinner and the keynote address.
The featured speaker was Bona Malwal, the publisher of Great Britain's Sudan Democratic Gazette and a former government minister of Sudan.
Sudan is one of the few places in the world where human beings can still be sold into slavery. Hundreds of thousands of women and children from Christian southern Sudan are slaves in Islamic northern Sudan.
``And yet there is no outcry about this crime that engulfs the Christians and non-Christians of southern Sudan today,'' Malwal said. Malwal appealed to the journalists to create more of an awareness of the human rights abuses in his country.
``If Islamic Fundamentalism were to overcome us in southern Sudan it will not be stopped by anybody,'' Malwal asserted. ``Islamic Fundamentalism wants the whole of Africa to become Islamic and southern Sudan is just the first step.''
Former TIME diplomatic correspondent David Aikman later observed that if the Sudan regime falls the Islamic Fundamentalist movement could crumble much the same as communism did following the fall of the Berlin Wall. ``I see signs of massive disaffection in the area,'' he said.
That would be welcome news to all of the Christians in Sudan, who now meet Sundays under the largest tree in their village because all of their churches have been destroyed.