An article dealing with religious and professional identity by Mark Coddington from Washington and Lee University and Gregory Perreault from University of South Florida was based on interviews with American evangelical journalists (n=29) on how they negotiate their dual identities.
The authors use the example of Jon Ward to illustrate the divide – he is both a senior political correspondent for Yahoo News who has also published in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Vanity Fair and Politico Magazine. He was also swept up by the US “Jesus Movement” in the 1970.
He was always questioned about reconciling the two, but he himself has stated that “Being a journalist has actually made me a better Christian”. Nevertheless – despite the fact the United States is a highly religious country and how one might assume there are many religious journalists, there is still a contrast between the supposed scepticism required by journalism and the fact that Christians are supposed to be driven by faith.
Statistically, evangelical Christians were also the least likely group to trust news, and the most likely group to spread the claim that the 2020 election was stolen. This study found out that despite the objectivity norm, evangelical journalists perceived their identities as working in concert.
The research questions for this study were the following three:
RQ1: How do evangelical journalists’ religious identity influence their professional identity?
RQ2a: How do evangelical journalists’ professional identity influence their religious identity?
RQ2b: How do evangelical journalists’ professional identity interact with their relationship with their religious community?
For the evangelical journalists, their religious identity and faith was universally more important than other forms of identity and their core values were mostly based on their beliefs. Sometimes this led them to reevaluate their professional work – such as working freelance rather than full-time in journalism. Many were reluctant to even describe other facets of their identity, so powerful was the primacy of faith.
Despite this strong religious identity, many also articulated professional identity strongly. However, they stressed that their religious values nevertheless influenced their work – but the values often mirrored core professional journalistic ones. Thus, they saw no tension between rationalistic, empirical notion of truth or the spiritual, unverifiable truth.
Another prominent theme was a sense of empathy and care for all people, and thus a desire to listen and compassionately tell stories. This was tied strongly with Christian values, as in human beings made in the image of God.
A sense of “identity convergence” was evident – where the journalists found rationales for their group identity values through the values they had been socialized to through their professional identity. Indeed, an extreme sense of unity between religious and professional identities was a prominent theme.
The authors also stress that this convergence was not a post-hoc justification to make professional values religious – instead, it was true convergence in identities. This convergence also was what motivated evangelical journalists to stay in the profession despite the decreasing status and precarity.
Occasionally, there were experiences that had a destabilizing effect on their religious identities, such as when covering scandals and misconduct within Christian institutions, but while increasing scepticism toward religious leaders, it had no effect on their faith in God. This was even true when they felt ostracized by their community.
A minority also reported tensions within their religious community due to their work as journalists, particularly in more conservative areas in the South or Midwest, where media skepticism is rampant. One was, for example, called “a false prophet”, and another was given the cold shoulder due to reporting on vaccines, masks, and Trump’s allegations of voter fraud.
In conclusion, the most notable feature was identity convergence, where religious values and professional values became a single set of guiding values, which was practically indistinguishable from the values of non-religious journalists defined by the objectivity norm. However, they did not bring aspects of their professional identity to their religious identity nearly as often. The authors wish for more research on marginalized groups, as evangelicals do not qualify as one in the US context.
The article “Converged identities? How US evangelical journalists negotiate religious identity and journalistic professional identity” by Mark Coddington and Gregory Perreault is in Journalism. (Free abstract).
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