In an increasingly pluralistic society, religious literacy is essential to civic cohesion, mutual understanding, and the reduction of polarization along lines of faith. Recognizing this imperative, AVDF’s Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy Program Area supports initiatives that deepen public understanding of religion’s role in American life.
The urgency of this work has intensified in the wake of the recent Israel-Gaza conflict, which has triggered marked surges in both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment across the United States. Research consistently shows that improved religious literacy fosters empathy and cross-cultural understanding, yet the supply of accurate, nuanced religion reporting has declined significantly.
As newsroom budgets shrink, dedicated religion beats have been eliminated, leaving coverage to general assignment reporters with limited background in the complexities of religious traditions, institutions, and identities. This gap in reporting often results in distorted portrayals, emphasizing conflict and controversy rather than illuminating religion’s role in civic life and social cohesion.
To address this critical deficit, AVDF awarded a $300,000 grant to the Religion News Foundation in 2024 to launch the National Religion Journalism Partnership in collaboration with National Public Radio (NPR). This initiative, also supported by a $900,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment to NPR, seeks to restore comprehensive, informed religion journalism to the public media landscape. The partnership unites the editorial strengths and distribution networks of Religion News Service (RNS)—a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization with over 90 years of experience covering American religion—and NPR, whose digital and broadcast platforms reach over 40 million listeners.
Through this collaboration, RNS and NPR aim to co-produce 60 original audio stories over two years, complemented by on-air interviews, expert commentary, and a shared commitment to high editorial standards. A senior editor at RNS is working in tandem with editors and reporters at NPR’s national newsroom and eleven member stations, shaping a sustained expansion of religion coverage that reflects the complexity, diversity, and civic relevance of religious experience in America.
This partnership represents a strategic intervention in the media ecosystem. Drawing on NPR’s longstanding success with editorial collaborations, the initiative also includes journalist training and editorial mentoring to ensure alignment with NPR’s audio-first standards. Participating reporters meet weekly to workshop story ideas, share sources, and refine journalistic practices.
The collaboration has already yielded substantive content, including an in-depth October 2024 story on shifting financial support from Catholic bishops to anti-abortion campaigns, co-reported by RNS national correspondent Jack Jenkins and NPR-affiliate journalist Rosemary Westwood.
The project is grounded in a national network of public radio stations—including outlets in Detroit, Chicago, Tulsa, Nashville, and New England—which ensures that religion reporting includes localized perspectives and captures the lived realities of diverse communities across the country.
“The collaboration between Religion News Service and National Public Radio represents a timely and transformative step toward ensuring that stories about religion—told with accuracy, nuance, and depth—reach national and local audiences alike. The joint initiative not only intends to enhance journalism, but also to strengthen the pluralistic fabric of American life,” said AVDF Senior Program Officer Nate Schult.
This commitment to cultivating journalistic expertise reflects the initiative’s deeper mission: not only to expand coverage, but to transform how religion is understood and represented across platforms.
The RNS and NPR collaborative was profiled in Current, a nonprofit news organization that covers public media in the U.S. According to NPR’s Managing Editor for Collaborative Journalism, Bruce Auster, the initiative aims to create a new cohort of people who know how to cover religion—not merely to increase volume, but to elevate journalistic quality. Deborah Caldwell, publisher of RNS, similarly emphasized that the collaboration fosters more regional and local storytelling and allows audiences to recognize religion as a dynamic part of American civic life. These stories, often nuanced and unexpected, counteract stereotypes and provide richer context for understanding religion’s role in current events, politics, and everyday life.
The National Religion Journalism Partnership exemplifies a promising model for revitalizing religion reporting in ways that are both institutionally sustainable and socially constructive. Restoring religious literacy through media is not simply a matter of journalistic enrichment—it is an essential strategy for strengthening democracy, civil society, and interfaith understanding in an era of growing polarization.
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