Here’s a kitchen-table story for you. I’m a science journalist who has been thinking about how humans relate to their environment for decades. I’m also an atheist … who fell in love with a religious studies professor.
While I’d be off on reporting trips from West Virginia to India, Stephen Prothero would be teaching religious literacy to students at Boston University. Over the years, our kitchen-table conversations revealed how much our two arenas rarely overlap and how much is lost because of the divide.
We wanted to try to reconcile the split between these siloed beats of religion and the environment so, with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and a base at Boston University, we launched the Religion & Environment Story Project, or RESP.
Our goal is to bridge the divide between religion and science reporting, and to promote new thinking and new narratives that will inform and educate the public, especially on the climate crisis.
In May, RESP partnered up with the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Religion News Association for a webinar entitled “Missing Stories: Uncovering Environment-Climate-Religion Connections.” Watch the whole event, or read the summary in this piece in SEJ News.
Part of this inaugural event was to announce two great opportunities to help journalists find these missing stories. The shared deadline is fast approaching.
- SEJ’s Fund for Environmental Journalism is offering story grants of up to $5,000 for stories that cover religion and the environment.
- RESP is offering a paid 6-month fellowship open to journalists, editors and public-facing academics who are producing — or want to learn how to produce — stories at the intersection of religion and the environment.
Deadline for both the story grants and the fellowship is June 15. Apply now and spread the word to others who might be interested.
For more information on these opportunities — and on stories that cut across religion, spirituality and climate change, follow RESP on Twitter at @ReligionEnviro.
