I posted some thoughts a week or two ago about journalists and religion. Now Columbia Journalism Review has published a whole article (and a good one) on the topic.

It reminds me of when I was a Southwest Conference sportswriter. That was the Bible Belt, and it was common for athletes interviewed in the lockerroom to credit whatever success they had to the Lord (to their credit, they never blamed God for their dropped passes and penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct). Whenever an interview took this turn, I saw reporters setting their notebooks aside.

It struck me as odd. If a player attributed his success to, say, an eighth-grade coach, or to a change in diet or exercise, that would go right in the paper. But God as an explanation for human achievement was somehow out of bounds. You'd almost think the Supreme Court had ruled that God had no place on athletic fields (at least not those of public schools).