Religious Literacy in News

Abstract This article seeks to bring analysis and insight into the conundrum of covering religion and spirituality for mass audiences in ways that enlighten and help build bridges among people. The article brings clarity to how we define religious literacy for professional journalists, in order to allow for the creation of measurable standards and impacts. A historical review of religious literacy and news—including the origins of distrust between people of faith and secularist news companies—gives important context to problems today. The article explains why religious literacy is important for the news media and more broadly, democracy, by relying on the professional journalistic values such as accuracy, truth-telling, and diversity. Also included is a review of religious literacy from within journalism education standards and examples of several successful religious literacy initiatives.