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Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
This week, we dive into the top religion news stories of the year as chosen by the members of the Religion News Association. We’ve assembled a cadre of top religion journalists – Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post, Kalpana Jain of The Conversation, Jaweed Kaleem of The Los Angeles Times, Nicola Menzie of Faithfully magazine, and Bobby Ross Jr. of The Christian Chronicle – to discuss his or her choice of the most important religion story they covered and why; and then we look to explore some of the possible explosive religion stories of 2022 – the challenge to Roe v. Wade, the ongoing decline of religious attendance, and the growing individualization of personal faith.
When COVID Becomes a Religion Story
Our reporters talk about how COVID-19 affects both the way they report and what they report.
Finding the Faith Angle in the Big News
Religion reporters like to say “religion is always in the room,” meaning there is a religion, faith, or spirituality angle to all of the big news stories of the day. The trick is looking hard enough, far enough, and long enough. In this segment, our reporters talk about some of the religion stories they found in unlikely places this past year.
Insurrection – How the Attack on the U.S. Capitol Became the Top Religion News Story of the Year
Religion journalists across the country picked the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as the top religion story of the year. Was it also a political story? Yes. Was it also a law enforcement story? Definitely. But as the variety of Christian symbols on display among the rioters made clear, it was also a dramatic illustration of the rise of Christian nationalism. Our journalists talk about the different faith angles they took in their coverage of the attack and then look ahead to what stories they think they’ll chase in 2022.
