Because digital religion reporting can pioneer the capturing of the full sensory spectrum of the practices of religion, it can more easily put the soul, the believing dimension, back into the news. What does this mean?
Any art of religion news must take into account the challenges of adequately portraying how people’s senses are alive to the world in religious ways. For most New Yorkers there is a partly hidden and mysterious dimension to the news. Most New Yorkers say that they get courage, purpose, ideas, guidance, and hope from their sensing of the presence of this mostly hidden dimension of reality.
In American society, one of the most prominent “significant others” is a deity. To paraphrase W.I. Thomas who coined the phrase that situations defined as real may have real consequences, “divine others” defined as real may be real in their consequences. In 2018, Pew Research Center reported that 74% of adult Americans talk to God or a higher power. 28% also say that God or a higher power talks to them. 77% say God has protected them, and 67% say that God has rewarded them. In 2020, PEW reported that 62% of adult Americans pray to God daily or weekly. 70% report that religion is important in their lives.
An interaction with “divine others” can play a significant role in emotional well-being, cognitive understanding, and effectiveness in daily life. UCLA sociologist Melvin Pollner found that “divine relations” have as potent an effect on well-being as any other factor. His work suggests that the reporter in his or her interviews should particularly pay attention to the divine’s role as an exemplar, leader, ruler, forgiver, savior, and practical guide because these roles by the divine have the most significant effects on people’s lives and social interactions. A survey team led by our research director interviewed 521 seniors in Manhattan Chinatown and Little Italy about how they dealt with a specific tragedy. Those who prayed to God as the sovereign ruler and savior were significantly less fearful after doing so.
Rikki Tahta is one of many New Yorkers who are searching for God in New York City. Get his book: God in New York
Literary writer Garnett Cardogan and I visited a Taiwanese-American temple in Flushing, Queens. The woman who runs the daily affairs of the temple had a cell phone with photos that showed its history. Part of that history included sightings of the Buddha in the form of brilliant balls of light, “balls of fire containing the Buddha,” in Flushing, and, particularly, over the street of the temple site. She excitedly explained that these photos showed the Buddha and his religion coming to New York City.
How does a news media show off this “purported dimension” that this congregation says is obviously all around (they have photos!), provides them hope, protection, and guidance, and is a sign to New Yorkers? How do we adequately convey how these visual sightings evoke a whole set of deep feelings?
The reporter faces a difficult task if he or she attempts to skip writing about the object of love and merely describe the experience of love. C.S. Lewis once wrote that emotions are the indirect result of a person focusing on an object. Seeing a lover enter the room, a person feels love rising in the heart. A distant, agnostic reaction, like my interpretative qualification “purported dimension,” hardly seems realistic in comparison to how we might report the players and emotions at a sports event. There, even if the sportswriter hates the damn Yankees, he knows exactly how to describe the Yankee play that arouses the heroic emotions of the crowd.
The agnosticism toward religious claims is an emotional bias that we don’t use nearly as often as we do in other types of reporting like sports stories. In fact, in sports news reporting the factual assertions are often grist for round after round of controversies, giving rise to high readership.
The challenge of objective reporting can only be met if we give at least an affirmative sense of the emotional impact of the sighting of the balls of fire. Then, the reader can make his own estimation about what was happening based on a fuller experiential sense of the reality as experienced on the street in Flushing by some Taiwanese-Americans.
Does this practice of sighting the supernatural Buddha have anything useful to contribute to those in our audience who might believe differently? The reporter needs to guide the audience in asking this question. This question of interfaith understanding in New York City is a modern question with ancient roots.
Next: The unconscious influences in the city. The 7 senses of the art of religion news in the digital age. Part 3
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