Sorry for disappearing. In mid-September, the Globe asked if I would help out on the metro desk for a few months, editing stories about local politics, and I agreed; I'm now starting my sixth week as interim associate political editor (OK, I made that title up, but that's more or less what I'm doing), helping to oversee our coverage of the race for mayor of Boston, and after the Nov. 3 municipal election I expect to assist with the editing of our coverage of a special election for the Senate seat that became vacant upon the death of Ted Kennedy. The current plan is for me to return to the religion beat sometime after the Dec. 8 Senate primary. I'm not writing stories during this period (although there may be an exception or two to that). At first, I continued blogging while editing, but it proved too much to juggle over the last few weeks; I'm hoping to resume blogging shortly if at all possible (I expect to post something Tuesday morning, so, as the saying goes, watch this space). I very much appreciate the notes and calls from folks who have wondered, or worried, about what I'm up to, and I apologize for not clarifying earlier. I've also heard from those of you who are unhappy with the way blogs are treated on the redesigned Boston.com home page, and I've tried to pass along those concerns. Also, you should know that we've introduced a new method for commenting on the blog that should make it easier for you to jump in, because your comments will appear instantly; the tradeoff is that they will no longer be moderated by me, and it will be up to you to flag problematic comments for possible deletion. This is the way comments are handled on Globe stories and many other Boston.com blogs, and I hope it will be a positive development here as well.

(Photo, by David L. Ryan of the Globe staff, shows a Boston voting machine.)

Gatherings of journalists these days are almost inevitably depressing – it’s hard even to keep track of all the negative trends afflicting the news business, and, on a human level, the drumbeat of layoffs and buyouts and cutbacks is both painful and scary.

But, as I wrap up my blogging from the 60th annual convention of the Religion Newswriters Association, I do want to remark on a couple of bright spots from this year’s gathering.

First, for the second year in a row we were joined by a Nigerian journalist, Aramide Oikelome, who, after attending last year’s convention, went home to found an organization of religion reporters in Nigeria. It’s a reminder that, even as newspapers struggle in the U.S., they are thriving, and playing an important role, in many developing countries. I can barely imagine what it would be like to cover religion in Nigeria, but I know one thing: it matters.

Secondly, these conferences always conclude with the bestowing of various awards, and this year the top honors went to a remarkable project by Moni Basu, who wrote an eight-part serial narrative for the Atlanta Journal Constitution about a military chaplain serving in Iraq. Basu has been to Iraq multiple times – she estimates that she spent a total of 2.5 years there – and over dinner one night last week she described the incredible amount of work it took to win the chaplain’s confidence, to get embedded with his unit, and to persuade soldiers to let her listen in as they sought spiritual comfort (she frequently positioned herself under a table, hoping that the chaplain and his soldiers would forget she was there). The result, "Chaplain Turner's War," is inspiring, and a reminder of the possibilities of journalism. Unfortunately, the narrative was the last such project for the AJC, which is going through serious cutbacks and change; Basu took a buyout in May, and is now working the overnight shift at CNN.com.

Monday is a big day here at the Globe: the paper’s largest union, the Newspaper Guild, is scheduled to vote on proposed wage and benefits cuts that the company says are neeeded to keep the struggling paper afloat. As the prospect of labor unrest at the paper looms, a friend who works for the Episcopal Church called my attention to the memoir of Bishop William Lawrence (right), the so-called banker-bishop, who claims to have brokered peace between Boston’s newspaper publishers and their employees a century ago.

Lawrence, who served as the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts from 1893 to 1927, was cut from a different cloth than most of today’s prelates. He was the scion of an immensely wealthy, influential and philanthropic Boston family that made a fortune in textiles, founded the cities of Lawrence, Mass. and Lawrence, Kansas, and had a long association with Harvard University and the Episcopal Church. Bishop Lawrence travelled in elite circles – he was a familiar of Theodore Roosevelt and a visitor to Buckingham Palace. So when he was called in to arbitrate the pay dispute in the newspaper industry, he immersed himself in the unfamiliar workplace before working out a deal.

Here’s how Lawrence, who died in 1941, described his role in his 1926 memoir, called “Memories of a Happy Life’’:

“In November, 1902, a disagreement had arisen between the National Newspaper Association and the International Typographical Union on a new scale of wages between the publishers of Boston and the Mailers’ Union No. 1. The number of men immediately concerned was not large, but the issue was a national one, as this was the first instance in which the agreement which admitted conciliation, local arbitration, and national arbitration had been tested out, and the result would be a precedent for all others.

I was asked to be an arbitrator, together with a representative of each party; which, of course, meant that the two official representatives, one from Chicago, the other from New York, would each press his case in the strongest way, and that my decision would be final. Although it was a strange business for me, I took the risk of blundering, for it was an interesting problem. For a week, therefore, I haunted the newspaper offices at every hour of the day and night, studying their mailing system and the conditions of work. I learned also how the department stores handled their mail, compared the relative cost of living in different cities, listened to testimony, and finally considered the arguments of the two representatives. My decision met with approval on both sides. As a matter of fact, I judge that if in such a case both parties have confidence in the good sense, fairness, and intelligence of the arbiter, they are content, even if things do not go altogether as they wish.”

(Portrait of Bishop William Lawrence by the Frizell Studio of Dorchester; date unknown.)

On Thursday night "Nightline" is taking a look at what it says is a growing phenomenon in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: exorcisms of children accused of witchcraft by evangelical pastors. The special edition report, airing at 11:35 p.m., is by ABC News anchor (and Newton native) Dan Harris. Harris says he witnessed "under the banner of Jesus, an epidemic of child abuse." He says that children denounced as witches are sometimes beaten, starved, or killed.

Here's a disturbing preview:

First, a confession: I am a Twitter skeptic. The whole phenomenon strikes me as more than a bit ridiculous. Plus, frankly, between the story writing and the blogging and the Facebooking and the e-mailing and the phone-calling and the occasional actual in-person conversation, I'm not sure how much more communicating I need. And there are some indications of trouble in Twitterdom.

But when I got the news release from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announcing that their media relations folks have launched three Twitter feeds, I knew it was time. Turns out that I had already been auto-tweeting -- the good folks at Boston.com had set up a username, GlobeReligion, that was sending out my blog posts. And last week I finally sat down with Joel Abrams, the Globe's leading Twitter evangelist (we're not dead yet!) and de facto Twitter tutor, for a crash course in micro-blogging, short-messaging, or whatever it is that twittering means. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with Twitter, but I don't think I'll be sharing what I had for breakfast today (OK, it was a bowl of Cranberry Almond Crunch) or how well I slept last night (just fine, thanks) but rather flagging interesting items in the Globe and beyond about religion, and maybe offering a backstage view of the glamorous world of religion reporting. (Inevitably, Editor & Publisher took a look at the ethical implications of newspaper twittering this week.) You'll notice that in the right rail of the blog there is now a widget with my most recent Twitter updates and instructions for following along, and for finding my fellow Boston.com twitterers.

Meantime, I'm trying to understand how others are using Twitter. Obviously I'm now following the bishops. And happily, as it turns out, JTA had just published a list of the world's 100 most influential Jewish twitterers, so I plan to take a look at those. And if you know of other interesting religion news twitterers, please let me know, either by adding a comment below or sending me an e-mail.

Loyal readers of this blog may also notice that we've made a slight design change -- we've reworked the Articles of Faith banner to add a little more pizzazz in the form of an initial letter in the style of an illustrated manuscript -- we were aiming for something that was evocative of religion but nonsectarian, so all kinds of icons were rejected (even the color purple was nixed as overly liturgical). The new drop cap "A" was designed by Dan Zedek, so many thanks go to him.

This blog is now ten months old, and as of this writing the first 390 posts have drawn nearly 1.5 million page views and 12,500 comments. By far the most popular characters in this unfolding saga have been three women -- Sarah Palin, Mary Ann Glendon, and Susan Boyle -- so my thanks to each of them for existing. And my thanks to all of you for reading; as always, if you have suggestions or concerns, fire away.

For the last several weeks, as my friends in the media have circled the Globe in a sometimes sympathetic and sometimes eager death watch, I have found myself wondering whether I was the only one curious about what Cardinal Bernard F. Law must be thinking.

It's now been 17 years since that spring day when Law, frustrated by the news media's intensive coverage of a former priest, James R. Porter, who was a serial pedophile, called for divine intervention. In one of the most famous lines Law ever uttered, he said, while speaking at a Roxbury church, "By all means we call down God's power on the media, particularly the Globe."

In the years since, that quote has been twisted (I often hear people say that Law called down the "wrath of God" on the Globe) and, Law argued, misinterpreted (he later claimed that "power" was a relatively benign word). Here's an exchange Law had with attorney Eric MacLeish about the 1992 remark in a 2002 deposition:

Q: Do you remember saying those words, words like that?

A. I don't remember saying words like that, but, you know, calling down God's power is not calling down God's wrath.

Q. I'm not suggesting it is.

A. Yes. And I don't think that would be a bad thing to do, even today, to call down God's power on the news media, including even the Globe, yes. I think that would be good.

I think what Law meant at the time was that he wanted God to influence the Globe, but it's been widely interpreted as Law seeking to punish the paper, and now, with our cash-strapped corporate parent, The New York Times Company, threatening to shut us down if we don't slash spending, apparently I'm not the only one recalling that quotation.

The inestimable Rocco Palmo, blogging over at Whispers in the Loggia, revels in the irony for all it's worth (including the fact that the supposedly make-or-break negotiations are taking place at a Catholic parish in Weymouth (one that, by the way, is rich with metaphoric potential -- it burned to the ground a few years back (act of God?) but had good insurance (miracle?) and has now been rebuilt (reborn?)). Here's Rocco:

"In 1992, Cardinal Bernard Law famously called down "the power of God" on the Boston media, "particularly the Globe," over its dogged coverage of the region's first public case of a predator priest.

Nine years later, the paper's "courageous, comprehensive" reporting on abuse in the Beantown church itself opened the floodgates of the most devastating scandal American Catholicism had ever known, paving the way to Law's resignation in disgrace and earning the broadsheet the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

These days, however, in the direst sign of the state of newspapers everywhere, it's the 137 year-old Globe that faces the ax, with its owner demanding $20 million in union concessions and negotiations continuing past a midnight deadline at -- of all places -- a suburban parish.''

I have to say I've had lots of kind e-mail from Catholics and other religious folks saying they're praying that the Globe will survive, or just thinking caringly about those of us who work here. But of course my blog, like others around Boston.com, has had its share of comments from people who claim they just can't wait for us to die (but first they want to post one more observation....). And although all the archdiocesan leaders I've spoken with, including Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, have been sympathetic, at least one church employee is not so sure -- Domenico Bettinelli, who works in fundraising for the archdiocese, blogged:

"Perhaps the Globe outpaced the populace and went further left faster than the people could be brought along. Oh sure, the glitterati and the politicians that the Globe is supposed to cover have all come out of the woodwork to lament the possible loss of the newspaper. But the people have been voting with their pocketbooks for years, dropping their subscriptions to the newspaper with every bizarre anti-Bush screed or anti-Catholic editorial cartoon. Herald columnist Howie Carr has gleefully filled up not one but two recent columns full of the Globe's follies, including some shoddy reporting in which the desire to advance a liberal cause resulted in retractions because they just didn't get the story right. After a while, the people began to notice.

Will it be the end of the world if the Globe shutters its doors? Competition is always better for the consumer, so I'd prefer two healthy competitors in this market to one, even if the one I prefer was the winner. On the other hand, if the business can't offer a product that the consumer wants, then let another take his place."

And even my former colleague, David Warsh, gets into the act, delivering what strikes me as an outrageous kick-when-down to the Globe:

"The pedophile priest story reflected a familiar tactic in building newspaper circulation. Newspapers are often described as an essentially two-sided market, meaning that both readers and advertisers each pay a share, but there is a significant third side to newspaper markets as well, a non-pecuniary one that influences readers' and advertisers' willingness to pay for the product. This is the realm of peer opinion in the newspaper industry, reflected in prizes, medals and general reputation. There is always some risk when seeking the good opinion of the profession of seeming to appeal over the heads of readers...It is hard to evaluate what the vigor of the Globe's pursuit of the story of the church's tolerance of sexual abuse by priests cost the paper in good will."

I don't actually believe the Globe is going to close, and, if it does, I don't believe our coverage of clergy sexual abuse will have had anything to do with it -- our problems are financial, and they are shared by all kinds of papers with all kinds of journalistic histories -- and I find it slightly shocking that a blog about economics would even suggest otherwise. I also think it's kind of insane, and insulting, to imply that the abuse story was aimed "over the heads of readers" -- I've never been involved with any story that provoked more engagement and reaction from readers, or one that readers said was more significant to their own lives. But whatever one thinks, the story has clearly become a defining part of the paper's history -- I noticed in an NECN story about the Globe's past yesterday that sex abuse and busing were the only two stories mentioned -- and, whatever our future holds, it will be part of our legacy.

(Photo by Stephan Savoia/AP.)

Cartoonists often live on the edge, using sharp visual caricature to express an opinion about a controversy, and not infrequently one group or another complains that a cartoonist has crossed a line. This week, several Jewish organizations are denouncing the image above, by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant, as anti-Semitic.

Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, sent along the following statement:

"Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant's clearly anti-Semitic cartoon uses Nazi-like imagery to depict the state of Israel as a headless, dark militaristic force set upon a path of destruction. His portrayal of a fanged Star of David chasing down a Gazan woman is both offensive and outlandish, employing a symbol of faith and peace to unfairly depict Israel as both thoughtless and heartless. This deplorable characterization hearkens back to the vicious anti-Semitic propaganda of World Wars I and II. Published during a tenuous cease-fire in Gaza, this cartoon will only add fuel to the proverbial political fire and stroke the flames of anti-Semitism.

Mr. Oliphant clearly has the right to his views, however noxious. But newspapers, and others, are under no obligation to become publishers of such trash. We call upon newspapers worldwide to remove Oliphant’s offensive cartoon from their websites, making a clear statement that anti-Semitism, even in cartoon form, is intolerable."

And the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, also denounced the cartoon, saying:

"Pat Oliphant's outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic. It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition. The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart.

Israel's defensive military operation to protect the lives of its men, women and children who are being continuously bombarded by Hamas rocket attacks has been turned on its head to show the victims as heartless, headless aggressors."

I called the Globe's cartoonist, Dan Wasserman, to ask him what he thought. Here's what he said:

"My take is that this is not an anti-Semitic cartoon. It's a tough, blistering attack on Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza. You can argue about whether what they did was justified, but their equipment, their planes, their tanks, are all covered with the Star of David, so the use of the Star of David doesn't seem to me to warrant the accusation of anti-Semitism. And the week we got revelations in the New York Times about the cavalier attitude of IDF soldiers toward Gazans, this seems to me perfectly legitimate.

Cartoons are supposed to offend people. There is a distinction between offending people gratuitously or mindlessly, and offending them because a cartoon challenges the way people think, and I think this cartoon is in the latter category. It's provocative. The goose-stepping soldier you can't not associate with the Nazis. But is that over the line? It's hyperbolic, but cartoons traffic in hyperbole. Oliphant has a history of pushing the envelope, and some of his cartoons are beyond acceptable comment, but I don't think this is one of those cartoons.''

Ezra Klein, at the American Prospect, agrees, writing:

"Implying that Israeli policy lacks head and heart is not anti-Semitic. It's not an assertion of an intrinsically Jewish trait. Jack boots and goose steps are not traditional anti-Semitic tropes. Foxman appears to be confusing anti-Semitism with criticism -- even extreme and offensive criticism -- of the Israeli government. And it's really not a good thing to be forcing critics of Israel to decide whether they are also anti-Semites. In some cases, you'll intimidate the critic into silence. And in others, you'll normalize anti-Semitism."

But over at GetReligion.org, Mollie Ziegler notes that Oliphant recently was criticized for a cartoon about Pentecostals, and suggests that maybe he should give religion a rest:

"I’m wondering if syndicated cartoonist Pat Oliphant shouldn’t resist the urge to use his acid brush to depict religious angles. Last time we discussed his work, he was demonstrating his ignorance and hatred of Pentecostalism on the pixelated pages of the Washington Post.

That sparked quite the reader response and a couple of reflective columns by ombudsman Deborah Howell.

He’s back in the news for a cartoon about Jews that I found sickening."

Feel free to express your thoughts, but try to be civil in doing so, and remember, we're discussing the cartoon, not every thought you've ever had about what's wrong with Israel or the Palestinians.

Today's a bit of a milestone for this Articles of Faith blog -- after 228 days, 408 posts, 8,518 comments, and just over a million page views -- we've started reverse publishing, by publishing highlights from the blog in the print edition of The Boston Globe (the excerpts will run each week on page B3 of the Sunday paper). So, if you're discovering this blog for the first time thanks to this morning's paper (and if you read the paper on newsprint, we love you more than you will ever know), welcome! Feel free to take a look around -- you can find the most recent 25 posts on this page, but you can also explore all posts by category or by date from links in the right rail. Please come back often -- I try to post at least two items a day -- and join the conversation by adding your own comments. You can get automatic updates by subscribing to the blog through our RSS feed. And if you have suggestions or ideas for improving the blog, or for stories about religion, please feel free to e-mail me.

(Photo, by Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff, shows the mother ship on Morrissey Boulevard.)

It’s that time of year again – list time. Actually, it’s way past list time. The Religion Newswriters Association issued their list of the top ten religion stories of the year weeks ago – of course, as a result, they missed the Madoff scandal, the Rick Warren/invocation controversy, and the Gaza assault. Revealer issued lists of the year's best religion writing and the year's best religion books and movies. Altmuslim offered a list of the top ten good news stories of the year. And Religion Dispatches has a list of the top ten year-end religion news lists, including those from Time, Christianity Today, and the Onion.

For this first new year of this new blog, I’m going to offer ten reflections about religion news and the year gone by, with a few anticipatory remarks thrown in as well. This is just a sampling; feel free to suggest other topics in the comments field.

1. The year that is ending was marked, in particular, by the multiple battles for the hearts and minds of religious Americans in the presidential campaign. There was often less there than met the eye – evangelicals continued to vote in large numbers for the Republican Party, despite vigorous efforts to lure them away by Democrats, and Jews continued to vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, despite an unending whispering campaign on the Internet attempting to associate Obama with Islam and critics of Israel. Mitt Romney’s much-anticipated speech on faith and public life was probably not a turning point in American political thinking. Social issues played only a minor role in a campaign dominated first by Iraq and then by the economy. And, to the extent that religion was part of the political story, it was almost always as something to criticize or mock – the preaching of Wright, Hagee and Pfleger, the beliefs and practices of Palin and Romney, the middle name of Obama, the politics of Warren.

2. As the new year begins, it appears that the biggest story for all religions is likely to be the economy, which will increase demand on religious organizations for solace and assistance at the same time that it depletes their endowments and threatens their fundraising.

3. In the Catholic Church, the biggest news of 2008 was the successful visit to the United States of Pope Benedict XVI, who benefitted enormously from low expectations and won high marks for his decision to meet in Washington with five Bostonians who had been sexually abused by priests. That meeting was put together by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who passed (without celebration) five eventful years as archbishop of Boston, seemingly settling into his role after surviving multiple controversies, moving the church’s longtime headquarters from Brighton to Braintree, completing a reshaping of his administrative team, improving the archdiocese’s grim financial picture and rescuing St. John’s Seminary from the brink of death. But O’Malley still faces enormous challenges; the diocese still spends more each year than it raises; five closed parishes remain occupied (for more than four years now!) by protesters; and the diocese’s accounts for clergy pensions and benefits are seriously underfunded. And the church remains, particularly in Massachusetts, at odds with the political culture, particularly over abortion and gay rights. So in 2009, I'll be watching how O’Malley handles the vigils and the pension funds; what he does to address the increasing priest shortage, most likely by asking more priests to oversee multiple parishes like the circuit riders of old; and how he manages critiquing a presidential administration supported by the vast majority of his parishioners. For the pope, a highlight of 2009 is expected to be a May visit to Israel, but that trip could be postponed or cancelled if the violence there continues.

4. Mainline Protestant denominations continued to be roiled by debates over homosexuality, and continued to grapple with declining participation and aging congregations. The split in the global Anglican Communion since the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire began to formalize in 2008, as conservatives announced that they were establishing a separate North American province that would compete with the existing Episcopal Church in the U.S. and Canada. African American Protestant churches reflected on the state of black liberation theology after the incendiary preaching by Jeremiah Wright (a pastor in the mainline United Church of Christ) called attention to the risks of rhetoric in the age of Youtube.

5. The evangelical Protestant world was in the spotlight throughout the election, as the Democratic Party attempted, with little measurable success, to break the strong relationship between evangelicalism and Republicanism. But evangelical politics are clearly in flux – polls show younger evangelicals interested in a broader array of issues than their elders. And the tension was on display in awkward ways; the National Association of Evangelicals ousted a longtime long official, Rich Cizik, whose open attitude toward global warming and gay relationships caused some on the right to question his orthodoxy. And the flap over Obama's choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation reminded both evangelicals and Democrats that engagement between the two will be fraught with complexity.

6. For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2008 brought an end to the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose candidacy went further than that of any of the Mormons who have previously sought the nation’s highest office, but also called attention to a deep streak of anti-Mormonism in American culture, particularly among evangelical Protestants. The year also saw Mormons in the midst of a controversy over Proposition 8, the measure that would overturn same-sex marriage in California. Mormons, acting at their church’s urging, gave millions to the campaign, and the church was targeted by protesters after the measure passed. Locally, Mormons continued their institutional growth in eastern Massachusetts; eight years after building a huge temple on Belmont Hill, the LDS church this year broke ground for a new stake center in East Cambridge and announced plans to build a new chapel (being contested by neighbors) in Brookline.

7. For Jews, much of the year’s biggest news was concentrated at the end of the year, as multiple Jewish foundations and individuals lost millions of dollars in the alleged Ponzi scheme overseen by one of the community’s own; an investor named Bernard L. Madoff. And the Israeli assault on Gaza, in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, brought renewed attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to significant concern about Israel’s conduct by a variety of governments and groups. There was also the immigration raid on the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, which has intensified a growing discussion about what relationship, if any, there should be between ethics and kashrut. Locally, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies offered a new plan for the Jewish community, which, as it turns out, called for intensified defense of Israel; the Jewish community locally also decided to close its community center on the South Shore. In 2009, watch for a potential consolidation of Jewish nonprofits as the economy and the Madoff scandal take their toll, and also keep an eye on how the Jewish community manages interfaith relations given the increasing criticism of Israel from other faith groups.

8. For Muslims, the year brought ongoing tension over the place of Islam in the West, as American Muslims continued to make incremental political gains, but were largely ignored by an Obama campaign wary of associating with an unpopular group. The use of terror by some Muslims – most recently the attacks in Mumbai – continues to pose a challenge to those who proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace. The Middle East crisis also looms large for American Muslims, who are attempting to persuade American policymakers to criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza. Many Muslims seized as a sign of hope Colin Powell’s denunciation, on Meet the Press, of the idea that there is something wrong with being a Muslim. And in Boston, 2008 brought the soft opening of the much-debated and long-delayed new Islamic Cultural Center in Roxbury, which is expected to fully open in 2009.

9. There were several notable deaths in the world of religion in 2008. Cardinal Avery Dulles, the scion of a famous, and Protestant, American family, who came to Catholicism by the banks of the Charles River, and who became the only American theologian ever named a cardinal by Rome, died in December at 90. Gordon Hinckley, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, revered by Mormons as prophet, seer and revelator, and a descendant of the last governor of Plymouth Colony, died in January at 97. Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexy II died in December at 79; Warith Deen Mohammed, the African-American Muslim leader, died in September at 74.

10. The business of religion journalism, like the rest of the journalism business, is, to put it mildly, in flux. The amount of space and resources committed to religion journalism by the mainstream media continued to dwindle in 2008, and several veteran religion writers around the country were laid off or bought out.

At the Globe, the powers-that-be retired the paper’s longtime religion column, Spiritual Life, as part of a budget-cutting effort, and launched this blog, Articles of Faith, in an effort to better engage with that segment of our growing on-line audience that is interested in religion. The blog has grown rapidly – thanks to Sarah Palin, the abortion issue, and a variety of other controversies, we had nearly 200,000 page views in November. I am grateful to all of you (well, most of you) who visited, bookmarked the site, subscribed to the RSS feed, and took the time to post comments or send notes as I experiment with this forum, trying to figure out what features and what types of posts are most useful, how best to balance the kinds of hot-button items that generate clicks with posts about news and culture that can be traffic-deadening, and also how best to balance blogging with reporting and writing stories.

This will almost certainly be my last blog post of the year; I’ve just arrived in California for a vacation, and, if the news and my own temperament allow me to tear myself away from the keyboard, Articles of Faith will be on hiatus for a bit. But please feel free to post your own thoughts about trends in the world of religion as comments on this blog, or shoot me an e-mail with suggestions for religion stories you think the Globe should pursue in 2009.

And, to one and all, Happy New Year.

(Photo, by Lai Seng Sin/AP, shows a New Year's celebration today in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.)

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life offer a critical look at how the news media covered the role of religion in this year's presidential campaign in a report released today. (The Pew graphic at right shows the percentage of the overall religion-related campaign coverage that focused on each candidate.) An excerpt:

"Religion played a much more significant role in the media coverage of President-elect Barack Obama than it did in the press treatment of Republican nominee John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, but much of the coverage related to false yet persistent rumors that Obama is a Muslim.

Meanwhile, there was little attempt by the news media during the campaign to comprehensively examine the role of faith in the political values and policies of the candidates, save for those of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

And when religion-focused campaign stories were covered by the mainstream press, often the context was negative, controversial or focused on a perceived political problem."

Some reactions from around the blogosphere:

Steven Waldman at Beliefnet writes:

"For those of you feel that Obama would have lost if only the press had paid more attention to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, consider this finding from a fascinating new Pew study of press coverage of religion in the campaign: 'Looking at the entire primary season and general election period together - from January through mid-October - the Wright controversy was the single largest press narrative in the campaign, religious or otherwise'.''

And Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics says:

"In its just released overview of news coverage of religion in the campaign, Pew ranks "Palin Family/Personal Issues" as the biggest religion story of the campaign after Obama's alleged Muslim identity, consuming fully 25 percent of religion-related campaign coverage. In late September, a Pew report noted 'the relative lack of attention to Palin's religious biography within the mainstream media,' and nothing happened afterward to require altering that assessment. For those disposed to assail the MSM for inattention to religion, this is a pretty good case in point. Not that it was an easy story to get. I'm convinced that Palin, aided and abetted by her handlers, engaged in a conscious occultation of her religious beliefs and commitments. But journalists often dig out things public figures try to hide. The most charitable view I can summon is that in this case they began to feel that the truth might be sufficiently disturbing as to suggest that Palin ought not occupy the second highest office in the land. But doesn't the Constitution forbid religious tests for office? So let's not go there, and hope we never have to deal with the possibility. In the end, they didn't."

The Xenia Institute, in Oklahoma, is taking a look at the history and state of religion reporting in American newspapers. The first dispatch, by Barbara Schwartz, was posted yesterday. An excerpt:

"What religion reporters face today is the challenge of presenting informative, responsible, multifaceted stories about an ever-widening variety of religious groups and beliefs within a medium that is shrinking in both space and in diversity of viewpoints. This reduction in the journalistic landscape, along with newspaper management practices that have grown in the industry over the past several decades, have made it difficult for religion reporters to write stories that are responsible and informative rather than sensational and attention-grabbing, or plain and routine. In this environment, as newspapers struggle to find ways to revitalize their dying industry, the future of religion reporting may no longer lie with newspapers at all, and perhaps not within the traditional schemata of journalism itself."

(Photo by Jessica Hill/AP)

Today's announcement by the Christian Science Monitor that it plans to cease printing a daily paper in favor of an on-line publication is occasion for recollection of the paper's unusual status in American journalism: it was founded a century ago by a religious visionary, Mary Baker Eddy, and under church bylaws every Christian Scientist is supposed to be a subscriber.

The paper has long since established an extraordinary reputation for high-quality journalism, and the only regular reminder of its religious roots is a daily religious article in The Home Forum section. The paper has continued to receive a subsidy from the church.

Eddy (left), who "discovered" Christian Science, founded the paper in 1908 in response to critical coverage of her in the New York World. She declared in the first edition that the role of the paper would be to "injure no man, but bless all mankind." This is what she said in 1883, as she began to think about the prospect of publishing a paper:

"Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought."

As for how the church views the ongoing relationship between faith and the newspaper, here's the Monitor's answer:

"The Christian Science church doesn't publish news to propagate denominational doctrine; it provides news purely as a public service. Here's why: If the basic theology of that church says that what reaches and affects thought shapes experience, it follows that a newspaper would have significant impact on the lives of those who read it. A newspaper whose motive is “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as its founder charged, would have a "leavening" effect on society, as well as on individual lives — to use a metaphor Eddy herself appreciated and used. The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society."

I called Phil Davis, a church spokesman, to ask about how this new step relates to Eddy's original vision, and this is what he said:

"There was one thing that was on the surface with her, and that was the yellow journalism of the time, and her desire that the church would be in a position to lift up mankind with a source of information that was as unbiased as possible, so the members could be praying far more effectively for the world. This was a church that was founded on the primacy of prayer, and she wanted a newspaper that would be a source of information, a means by which to effect change through prayer. What she asked for was a daily newspaper, but it's interesting that it was never really daily -- it was five or six days a week -- and yes, this step is cost-effective, but it's also where newspapers are going, to a 24/7 on-line format."

The church's subsidy to the paper is expected to decrease. From the Monitor's own story:

"The Monitor has required a subsidy from the Christian Science church for most of its history. In the current budget year ending April 30, the Monitor in all forms is forecast to lose $18.9 million. The church will provide a subsidy of $12.1 million from its general fund, with earnings from the Monitor Endowment Fund and donor contributions to the Monitor's operating fund covering the balance. The changes in strategy are projected gradually to decrease the Monitor's net operating loss to $10.5 million in 2013, so the church general fund subsidy will be $3.7 million, said managing publisher Jonathan Wells."

And as for the daily religious article, Davis said that will continue to be printed, but now on-line.

As expected, a big subject today at the Religion Newswriters Association convention is how print journalists can adapt to a world in which an increasing fraction of our audience (including, obviously, anyone who is reading this post) is reading us on the web. A panel of journalists -- Cathy Grossman of USA Today, Sam Hodges of the Dallas Morning News, and David Waters of WashingtonPost.com, spoke about their different approaches to this problem -- Grossman has successfully persuaded her paper to publish a religion page on its web site, Hodges participates in that paper's group blog about religion, and Waters, the former religion writer for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, is the editor and producer of On Faith, which is a web collaboration between the Washington Post and Newsweek.

For me, one of the most interesting subjects that came up was that of comments. Grossman was a strong advocate of enabling comments on stories and blogs, because, she said, it keeps readers present longer, and thereby persuades editors, and advertisers, that your beat is worthy of support.

But Waters noted that comments about religion are often ugly -- something I've observed here in my short time blogging. Here's what he said:

"Even Jerry Springer would be ashamed of the comments that we have on our site. They're that bad. Our philosophy is that the web is a platform that we are part of -- it's not ours....We have to abide by the rules of the Web, and the Web rules have always been very democratic, very open, and anonymity is fine...We will remove comments that go over the line, but some really awful comments go on line. I think eventually somebody’s going to get sued for a comment on some site, and we’re going to find out how the courts feel about this.''

Waters observed that at On Faith, they now talk about the three Ms -- Muslims, Mormons, and Moosekillers -- that are most likely to generate discussion, and vitriol. And, he made this observation about the impact of so-called metrics -- the endless measuring of web site traffic -- on journalism.

"When you are measuring and judging your content by clicks, it changes the way you think about what you’re offering. In some ways, that’s good, but it’s also bad...The temptation is to have more posts about things that you know are going to click, which skews your news judgment.''

This is a subject that has received some attention elsewhere. GetReligion's Terry Mattingly weighed in earlier this summer, in a post cheekily titled, "How to avoid comments at GetReligion." An excerpt:

"Here at GetReligion, we are well aware that certain subjects cause more comments than others, including the work of trolls that like to set straw men on fire — thus driving up comment-page statistics. Some cynical readers out there may even believe that this leads to lots and lots of GetReligion writing about clashes between lesbigay Episcopalians and conservative believers in California. If Mormons are involved, that’s even better...We also know how to avoid receiving comments on GetReligion posts and what we have learned, frankly, often makes us depressed. We realize that this is a comment on the nature of cyberspace communities, but all we have to do to avoid comments is write posts that: Praise the work of mainstream journalists. Negative writing inspires more debate; Focus on trends in Judaism, Islam or other faith groups that (in U.S. media) are not all of that powerful or viewed as out of the mainstream; Try to call attention to journalistic issues linked to foreign-news coverage about religion; Openly seek calm, informative feedback from readers about how to solve a journalistic puzzle that really needs to be solved. So if you want to throw cold water on a comments board, all you have do is write a post that praises a mainstream news organization for its insightful coverage of an important event on the other side of the world, while also asking for feedback about the issue that’s involved. Right, that’s the ticket."

In my own brief blogging career, Sarah Palin has been the gift that keeps on giving -- she has generated an astonishing number of comments, from both ends of the political, and theological, spectrum, many of them saturated with incredible hostility directed by the non-religious at the religious and vice versa. And, I must say, four groups in particular seem to draw a huge amount of venom on this blog: Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims and Scientologists. I've junked all kinds of comments that I have found just beyond the pale -- those that use certain obscenities, of course, but also those in which readers allude to the sexual fantasies they have projected onto Sarah Palin, those in which people express pleasure at the crucifixion of Jesus, and so on. But that still leaves plenty of room for name-calling and a lot of mean-spiritedness, bias, and, arguably, hatred, that, at least to me, is unsettling.

A colleague of mine suggests that the web is self-correcting; one person posts a nasty comment about the Catholic Church, and another posts a comment rebutting the criticism. And there's an element of truth to that. But the tenor of that exchange is often ugly. I haven't yet figured out what it all means -- I don't know what relation the opinions expressed by commenters has to the opinions of our overall readership, and I don't know what fraction of non-commenters even bother reading the comments. A local Episcopal priest e-mailed me yesterday and told me that, upon reading the comments to an item I posted about the local mosque, "I encountered the blogging (comments) about it - reminding me once again why I don't blog or read much blogging. My hair gets on fire too fast - and it would even if I were bald."

Nonetheless, here at the Globe (and many other news organizations are doing the same) we are moving rapidly in the direction of enabling comments on more and more content, as one part of an effort to allow readers more ways to engage with our site. But as news organizations try to find their way in this brave new world, the whole question of what it means to host a conversation seems ripe for a lot more consideration.

As always, and fully aware of the irony here, I'd love to hear your thoughts, so comment away.

(Image above is of the Fremont Troll in Seattle.)

Greetings from Washington, where I'll be blogging for the next few days from the annual convention of the Religion Newswriters Association, which is an organization made up of the small fraternity of journalists who regularly write about faith for the mainstream press (i.e. not for denominational or other religious publications).

This is a tough time for the news business generally -- we have more readers than ever, thanks to the Internet, but fewer and fewer of them pay anything to read us, also thanks to the Internet -- and the religion beat is suffering collateral damage. I've been on the beat for eight years now. When I started, the beat was thought to be on an upswing, as a lot of major newspapers had been investing more talent and resources in coverage of religion, and playing the stories more prominently. But the economic woes of the industry, combined with the unexpectedly rapid shift of readers to the web, have not been kind the beat. The Dallas Morning News, which year after year was recognized for having the best religion section in the nation, eliminated its standalone section. At the nation's biggest newspapers, the number of people assigned to religion appears to have dropped as beat reporters have left and not been replaced. Bill Lobdell, a former religion writer at the LA Times, recently wrote (in a blog item headlined, "The death of the religion beat"), "When I first was put on the religion beat for the Los Angeles Times, I was the fourth full-time reporter covering faith for the newspaper. Today, there is one reporter — who...has often been pulled to cover other types of stories." At smaller newspapers, the beat has been eliminated, or beat reporters have been asked to juggle multiple subjects.

The impact on the beat of the audience migration to the Internet has been harder to measure, but my own sense is that the hunger for sizzle and flash on the web (driven by the focus on traffic and clicks), has, at least temporarily, reduced the visibility of the religion beat at many publications. One of the subjects the 120 religion reporters who are gathering here this week will be discussing is how best to represent religion journalism on the Web. Obviously this blog represents an effort on my part, and that of the Globe, to at least experiment with using this voicier, and photo-rich, format, as a way to engage more of our many Internet readers with the religion beat. But we are still figuring out how to do that without diminishing what we offer the still-large audience for traditional journalism (i.e. detailed, nuanced, original stories, whether they are read in print or on the Web).

All gatherings of journalists these days are filled with the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, and this gathering will be no exception. Just within the last few weeks, several veteran religion writers -- Sandi Dolbee of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Tom Heinen of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel among them -- have announced they are taking buyouts. Earlier this year, Mark Pinsky of the Orlando Sentinel was laid off, and I just got an e-mail from Ari Goldman, a former religion writer for the New York Times, and now a professor at Columbia Journalism School, saying that the Daily News is killing his religion column. From Ari's e-mail:

"My editors at the Daily News called last week to tell me that they were cutting the 'On Religion' column that I’ve been writing twice monthly now for a year and a half. They are facing another series of staff layoffs and a diminishing news hole, they told me. They reached me, of all places, in Rome where I was attending a conference on covering the Vatican. I managed to squeeze out one last column, datelined Vatican City...It’s been a great run and I hope to find other venues for my religion writing, but this is yet another reminder (as if we need one) of the precarious state of our business."

GetReligion, a web site that critiques religion coverage, weighed in on the state of the beat last month, in an item headlined, "RIP: The religion beat?" An excerpt from the post, by Terry Mattingly:

"The problem, of course, is that there is more religion news out there than ever, not less, and the beat is getting more complex, not less. On one level, we have to see this religion-beat crisis as a reflection of what is happening in the news industry. There is no painless way to cut a shrinking pie. Yet, of course, the news pie is not shrinking. It’s changing into forms that do not include solid, workable forms of advertising. A key element of American public life and discourse is hanging, twisting slowly in the wind, waiting for someone to create an ad form more winsome than those pop-up mini-monsters that we all hate so much. However, do not click “comment” and tell me that you get all the news you need from the Internet and from blogs. It takes real money to pay people to report and edit real information. Most of what happens in weblogs — like this one, frankly — is secondary writing and criticism. We are all like those little fish stuck on the flanks of big sharks. Someone has to fund the shark, which does the real hunting."

Stay tuned.

Religion News Service, the nation's only secular wire service about religion news, is surviving the demise of its parent organization, the Newhouse News Service, which announced this week that it is closing, another victim of the economic turmoil that is roiling the news business.

The editor of RNS, Kevin Eckstrom (an Easton native!) e-mailed a widely-read media industry news site, Romenesko, to reassure subscribers yesterday. And today, after I asked Eckstrom, who is also the president of the Religion Newswriters Association, for more detail about what's happening, he added this explanation:

"Since 1994, RNS has been owned by Advance Publications, which is the same company that owns the 26 newspapers in the Newhouse chain and the Conde Nast (GQ, New Yorker) magazine empire. All that remains unchanged. We're still a subsidiary of Advance. What will change is where we show up for work each day. Currently we're housed at Newhouse News Service, which is closing, so we'll be going out on our own and relocating to new office space. Our subscribers and readers won't notice anything different in the quality or quantity of our reporting."

What a difference a headline makes.

A story I wrote last week, reporting that a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests was holding a ceremony at which it planned to declare three women to be ordained Catholic priests, caused a bit of a firestorm because of the headline, which said “3 women to be ordained Catholic priests in Boston.’’ The headline – which I did not write or see before publication -- was paired in the paper with a subordinate headline that said “Excommunication automatic, church warns,’’ but the construction proved problematic when readers, particularly on-line, saw the main headline as a legitimation of a ceremony that the Catholic Church says is invalid. The criticism, as happens these days, rippled through the blogosphere, and I got quite a bit of very angry e-mail.

We ran a clarification; I posted much of the e-mail I received; and I personally wrote to everyone who e-mailed. Then, when the actual ceremony took place, I filed a breaking news story to the web, that ran under the headline, “Group claims to ordain women priests in unsanctioned ceremony,’’ and a slightly different version for the Monday morning paper, which ran with the headline “Dissident group claims three women ordained as priests’’ (in an early edition, the word "upstart" was used in place of "dissident.") The Globe tried, in those headlines, to reflect the debate over what was taking place.

The language I used in the stories also changed somewhat. I’ve been at this a long time, and I knew the subject of women’s ordination is a bit of a minefield, so in the first story I avoided using the word “Mass,’’ or the titles “Rev.” or “Bishop” in front of a woman’s name, knowing that those terms would be debated. The story was very clear that the Catholic Church viewed the ceremony as invalid, and the women as excommunicated; it quoted from the Archdiocese of Boston, and Pope John Paul II, and I thought it was quite clear and fair. I did call the event an “ordination ceremony’’ – my reasoning was that there are lots of such events in Christendom and beyond that are not sanctioned by Rome, some by Catholics not in union with Rome, and some by non-Catholics, and it seemed to me that the standard practice of newspapers is to honor the language used by religious groups. When an evangelical church declares someone ordained as a pastor, we say that person was ordained as a pastor; we don’t conduct an examination of his or her theological training, and we don’t ask who else would recognize this person as ordained.

But the reaction suggests that many readers didn’t read the story the same way I did, especially once they had seen the problematic headline, and so I decided to rethink the use of a few words – especially “ordain” and “ordination” – in the story about the actual event. In the end I decided to use the word “ceremony” rather than “ordination” to describe what was taking place, unless it was attributed to someone, and to attribute every description that I thought might be contested. That resulted, most awkwardly, in this phrase, “They then helped preside over a service at which they declared bread and wine to be consecrated and offered what they called Communion to anyone who wished to receive it.”

The coverage of the Sunday event has generated another round of e-mail which I am posting below. Much of it acknowledges the effort at greater precision, but some of it criticizes me – or the headline writer -- for going too far in the other direction. Some of it comments on the vitriolic tone of the discussion. And a blogging priest who has been subjecting my coverage to Talmudic scrutiny offered a line-by-line analysis of the evolving coverage, concluding that the second story was better than the first. (Thanks!)

A few lessons I take from this episode:

- A traditional journalistic device for communicating more information about a story, the “subhed,’’ does not translate to the Internet. The initial story had a subordinate headline, or subhed, that made clear the church’s view of the ceremony, but even on Boston.com that subhed was dropped on many pages, and as the story migrated through the blogosphere, the story was referred to only by the main headline, which was, at best, disputable.

- Another journalist convention, “play,’’ is also irrelevant in cyberspace. As I explained to some readers, if the Catholic Church had decided to ordain women, that would be a huge front page story. The stories about the ceremony this weekend ran at the bottom of page B1 – a signal, in our view, that the matter was interesting and newsworthy, but not huge. But, of course, in cyberspace those distinctions, which we at newspapers spend a lot of time thinking about, are obliterated.

Some people asked me why we covered the story at all. Several of the e-mailers said they saw no distinction between the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, and any individual who just declared himself or herself to be the president or the governor. This was my response to one of those readers: "The rationale for coverage is that this is the major group involved in a subject of high public interest and with at least some claim to, or argument for, legitimacy, which is why the Vatican and the various dioceses have responded, which Beacon Hill etc. would not do if your friends swear you in as governor. The e-mails I got make clear that there is a group out there that wishes we would simply not acknowledge that this group exists or is having this event, but that would be an editorial judgment as well, one that many people would view as censorial. I suppose each of our readers, given the options of all that takes place in Boston and the world each day, would put together a different set of stories if they were in charge of the newspaper, and all I can tell you is that we are making the best judgments we can, hour after hour and day after day, trying to decide what is important, significant, interesting, and trying to cover those events and issues in a way that reflects what is happening fairly and precisely."

I’m moving on to other stories, but I’m always interested in your thoughts, so feel free to e-mail.

The first round of comments, reacting to last week's story, is archived here. And the newer comments, responding to coverage of the actual event, is below (if you don't already see them, click on "full entry"):

John L. Allen Jr., the highly regarded Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, is moving to the Big Apple in July.

John, who announced the move today in his widely circulated weekly e-mail, The Word from Rome, plans to write more about the Catholic church in the U.S. and worldwide, and will retain the title of Rome correspondent, travelling to the Vatican as needed. He is moving, he says, for a better vantage point on the global church, and to more easily accept the many speaking invitations he receives.

John is an astonishingly prolific author and articulate commentator whose combination of knowledge and insight about a secretive institution -- the Vatican -- has made him much in demand on the speaking circuit and in the media. He is also a master of timing; his most recent book, "Opus Dei,'' takes a look at the controversial Catholic organization on the eve of the release of the film version of "The Da Vinci Code;" his book "Conclave" proved essential reading for those interested in what happened after the death of John Paul II; and the Vatican official he chose to write a biography about, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, wound up getting elected pope.

On my first stroll through a sunny (!) St. Peter's Square at midday today, I collided, amidst the tourists and the souvenir kiosks, with two Boston television crews, and the Vatican press office appears amused by the small flood of Boston reporters who are descending on the Eternal City to cover Friday's elevation of Archbishop O'Malley to cardinal. Economic woes are reducing the size of the media presence here, and preventing a few outlets from coming at all, but there are already two dozen Boston media folks here, including journalists from the Globe, CBS4, WHDH-TV, and NECN, as well as WBZ radio, Boston Catholic Television, The Pilot, and a still photographer brought over for other archdiocesan publications. WCVB-TV is expected to send a crew later in the week, and is already promoting its "live from Rome" coverage.

It's still a far cry from the scores of reporters who came to Rome in 1985 to cover Archbishop Bernard F. Law's elevation to cardinal. That year, several stations sent as many as a dozen employees each to cover the consistory; this year, most are sending a crew of three (a producer, a cameraperson, and a reporter). There are two journalists here who also covered the consistory 21 years ago -- NECN prime time anchor R.D. Sahl, and WHDH-TV cameraman Don Nelson -- both of whom were employed by what was then WNEV-TV (Channel 7). The budgetary problems of the news media have clearly played a major role in reducing the number of reporters here this week, but Sahl said the atmosphere also has been transformed by the abuse crisis and other societal changes, and that, "laypeople have been looking at this one through a different lens.''

O'Malley, who has often seemed uncomfortable with the news media, and who avoided reporters as much as possible during his previous assignment in Palm Beach, Florida, was at the top of his game yesterday as he fielded questions for about 20 minutes from reporters gathered at the North American College, a residence for American seminarians in Rome. O'Malley was upbeat, funny, and seemingly at ease. He took several questions about Law -- not his favorite subject -- without displaying any irritation or displeasure -- and he has promised to take reporters on a tour of the Bridge of Angels (Ponte Sant´Angelo) in Rome tomorrow, as well as to be available to the local press for an unprecedented six days.

"We're very grateful to all of you and to the various media outlets that you represent for the resources that you've given to allow us to be able to be in contact with the Catholic community back in Boston and New England so that our people can feel that they're a part of this very important event in the life of the church,'' he said.