Chaplaincy Innovation Lab – Templeton Religion Trust Fellows were selected in October 2023 to join a team that will profile recipients of chaplaincy and spiritual care. These profiles are part of an academic project studying opportunities for spiritual care across the American population, with particular attention to interfaith encounters. The pieces created by these journalists will be shared on the Lab’s website as well as traditional journalistic outlets. Fellows will also participate in webinar reporting on the full project at the end of the fellowship.
Chaplaincy Innovation Lab - Templeton Religion Trust Journalism Fellows
Alison Bowen
This story will focus on how spiritual care has helped recipients who themselves have no faith. Often, chaplains enter patients’ rooms and simply build connections by finding out what moves patients or asking questions like what has helped them through hard times in the past. This may be prayer, faith, or it may be music. Digging into this topic will pull on many layers, from how chaplains are trained, to how we struggle with making sense of hard times in our lives, to the very individual way each human being can find comfort.
Alison Bowen is an award-winning reporter and editor whose work has appeared in publications across the country. Her journalism has covered a wide range of topics, from immigration to family dynamics to health. She is a 2019 Livingston Award finalist for her Chicago Tribune reporting revealing emergency room nurses were not trained to administer rape kits, which also prompted legislation. She’s received fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and Carter Center for her reporting on topics like patient care and mental health. Her work has appeared in publications including The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and Chicago magazine.
Story
“Hospital chaplains finding ways to help the ‘nones’ — patients who identify as religiously unaffiliated” Chicago Tribune, May 13, 2024. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/13/hospital-chaplains-finding-ways-to-help-the-nones-patients-who-identify-as-religiously-unaffiliated/.
Kara Bettis Carvalho
Police officers in the US have higher rates of depression, suicide, substance abuse, divorce, and domestic violence than most other fields. In the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020 and rising racial tensions and calls for reform, the stakes and stressors law enforcement officers face have only risen, leading to increased retirements and resignations. Chaplains are needed more than ever to aid officers in their work. But is the spiritual care by chaplains effective? My reporting will explore this question and address the role that chaplains play in the longevity of police officers’ careers and how they have helped officers face increased hostility in recent years.
Kara Bettis Carvalho is an award-winning journalist and features editor at Christianity Today.
Story
“Police Officers Are Burning Out. Can Chaplains Help?” Christianity Today, May 16, 2024. https://christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/may-web-only/law-enforcement-trauma-can-chaplains-help.html.
Linda Freund
Freund will produce a documentary about an exoneree who was wrongfully convicted and later freed from death row. The narrative will explore the impact of prison chaplaincy on helping people face the moral dilemma of an unlawful conviction and sustain hope during a period of prolonged crisis. It will also examine the United States’ mass incarceration system, addressing racial disparities in sentencing, the nation’s soaring incarceration rate, and the challenges of addressing mental health needs behind bars.
Linda Freund is an independent multimedia reporter. She recently served as a senior video journalist for The Wall Street Journal and a journalism fellow at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Prior to this, she worked as a roving foreign correspondent contributing reports from conflict zones across South Asia and East Africa. Her work focuses on emerging markets and the socio-economic origins of conflict and trauma, spanning such topics as Europe’s refugee crisis the reintegration of FDLR combatants in the DR Congo, and the fate of Maoist rebels in Nepal and stone pelters in militarized Kashmir.
Magdalena and Noel Rojo
Having no shelter, the unhoused population is constantly exposed to the outside world, which can frequently be a stigmatizing ordeal. How does this impact their inner world, including their spirituality?
Based in Denver, Colorado, our story revolves around the unhoused population, which has increased by one third within a year. The unhoused population in the US already benefits from spiritual care, but there are unique aspects that may affect the demand for it. By sharing stories of the unhoused recipients of spiritual care, we hope to explore the specifics of chaplains' work with this group and to provide guidance to chaplains, organizations, and institutions on how to approach them effectively.
Magdalena and Noel Rojo are a Slovak freelance journalist and a Mexican-American photographer covering social issues, global challenges and human rights. The Rojos founded the documentary project Women Who Stay that brings a different perspective on migration – the perspective of women left behind after their male counterparts migrate. A narrative non-fiction book from the project was published in Slovakia in 2023 including stories from Mexico, Ethiopia, Senegal, India, Romania, and Slovakia. The Rojos were journalist fellows in the Spiritual Exemplars Project by the USC. Their work was published in the international media, such as Thomson Reuters Foundation, The New Humanitarian, Deutsche Welle, Mongabay, and more.
Story
“Recovering connection with God and others: how chaplain’s support Denver’s unhoused,” Religion Unplugged, March 5, 2024. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2024/2/26/recovering-connection-with-god-and-others-how-chaplains-support-denvers-unhoused.
Photos by Noel Rojo to accompany this story are available here.
Gina Ryder
In a climate where suicide is the leading cause of death in the criminal legal system and carceral settings are de facto mental health facilities, this project looks at the role of chaplaincy in the mental health crisis in prisons and jails.
Gina Ryder is a freelance journalist and educator based in New York City. Her writing about mental health, labor, religion, and the human experience has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Marie Claire, and Boston Globe’s STAT. Gina is a senior writing instructor at John Jay College’s Institute for Justice and Opportunity where she serves students impacted by the criminal legal system. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Temple University and a master’s degree from Columbia University.
Story
“This daredevil has one of the most dangerous jobs. His priest is on standby,” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2024. https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2024-09-19/circus-vargas-this-daredevil-has-a-dangerous-act-the-globe-of-death-his-priest-is-on-standby
Heidi Shin
Heidi Shin will be reporting about the role of spiritual care in the lives of immigrants, in young adulthood, as they transition from their cultures of origin to the cultures in their new homes, and they redefine their beliefs as their own.
Heidi Shin is a journalist, podcast producer, and writer. She’s especially interested in the stories of immigrant communities and the inevitable connections between stories abroad and our lives in the US. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Snap Judgment, Atlas Obscura, BBC, WGBH, and PRI’s The World, amongst other outlets. She teaches about podcasting at the PRX Podcast Garage, Harvard University’s Sound Lab, and leads Boston’s Sonic Soiree. Heidi also consults about podcast development and speaks about reporting in immigrant communities, mental health, and racial identity. You can reach her @byheidishin (Twitter/X) + @shinherrie3 (IG)
Story
“Chaplains open doors for international students on campus,” The World, May 10, 2024. https://theworld.org/stories/2024/05/10/chaplains-open-doors-for-international-students-on-campus.
Kimberly Winston
I plan to focus on disaster victims and the chaplaincy care they received in Paradise, Calif. or other stricken communities.
Kimberly Winston is a religion reporter with three decades of experience, most of it as a freelancer. She is currently a producer for the public radio program “Inspired.” As a reporter for Religion News Service, she was the first American journalist to cover atheism as a beat for a mainstream news outlet. Stories have taken her to most of the 50 states, as well as to Pakistan, Bosnia and Europe. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and on Five-Thirty-Eight, among others. She is an alumna of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and lives in the San Francisco Area.
Story
“A new kind of chaplain is helping people deal with ‘climate grief’,” NPR, September 6, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/nx-s1-5092402/eco-chaplains-helping-people-deal-with-climate-grief.