When the Religious Newswriters Association (RNA) convened their annual meeting in Seattle a few weeks ago, talk among attendees was of the Catholic Church's ongoing sex abuse scandals, of defining "progressive Islam," and of neo-orthodoxy among Generation X. In addition to these lofty concerns, there was shop talk. How do you handle the unrelenting cycle of the church calendar, participants asked each other, and find fresh ways to write about Christmas, Yom Kippur, or Ramadan?

There are other pitfalls unique to their occupation, practitioners admit. For instance, the holy men and women they write about are not always, well, completely holy. So, the saying goes, politics is the only other newspaper beat which is as potentially disillusioning.

Recognizing the many challenges such journalists face, the John Templeton Foundation annually presents a Religion Writer of the Year Award to two recipients, one in Europe, the other in America. The winners for 2002 are Agneta Lagercrantz, 47, who received her prize on June 28 at a meeting of the Conference of European Churches in Trondheim, Norway; and Gayle White, 52, who accepted her Templeton Award at the RNA conference on September 6 in Seattle.

White has spent her entire career at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which she joined in 1972, after earning a bachelor's degree in Journalism at the University of Georgia. Starting as an editorial assistant, she worked her way up to writing features about Atlanta's schools, city government, and then-Mayor Andrew Young. After fifteen years of reporting, however, she felt herself at a crossroads.

"Eventually, most journalists either go on to the business side of the paper, say public relations or advertising, or they specialize in one area," she said. "But I'm a reporter at heart. I love the information gathering process and trying to make something I've learned clear to a reader."

Deciding, then, to specialize, when the paper's longtime religion writer retired, White jumped at the chance to work for a section called "Faith and Values." Since 1988, she's interviewed the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and focused on what she calls "stories about people whose faith has helped them overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles." One such article, printed last year on Mother's Day, told of a college student in Georgia who sickened suddenly and needed to have a multiple organ transplant. Her mother kept a diary of their yearlong experience of waiting and recuperating, which provided a poignant basis for White's reportage.

This was one of several stories that White submitted for consideration to the judges of the Templeton Award. Others were on a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, in which he first envisioned a wall of separation between church and state; and a consideration of the so-called "Andrea Yates Syndrome," where mothers claim to have killed their own children while suffering from a religious delusion that they were actually sending them to Heaven.

Herself the mother of two children, Margaret, 26, and Robert, 23, White said she's a "mainline Presbyterian who married a Methodist and sent my son to an Episcopal college." She works hard to keep her own beliefs separate from her work, she said, because "to be a good religion reporter, you must listen to and show respect for everyone's views, even if you disagree with them vehemently."

A tireless advocate for religion being included in all sections of the newspaper, White is gradually moving away from strictly denominational coverage. "Whenever religion is exerting a lot of political influence — as it is now — religion gets lots of ink," she said. "But, I hope to continue getting at tough questions of ethics and culture."

The European winner is Agneta Lagercrantz who, upon graduating from the Stockholm University of Journalism, joined Svenska Dagblade, Sweden's second largest newspaper in 1979. Lagercrantz first worked in domestic news, then the business section, where she explored "everything that happens between 9 and 5, ranging from questions of leadership and organization, to group psychology." She has one daughter, Maja, aged 18.

After several years on the business beat and writing a book on the topic in 1999, she felt her interest begin to wane. "I was through with money. I wasn't curious anymore. I thought I'd heard it all," she said.

She had consistently gravitated towards "deeper existential questions which arise in the workplace," so when an opportunity came for her to do religion coverage, she decided to give it a try. This decision, she quickly noted, did not arise from her own spiritual experience. Despite being married to a Lutheran theologian, Lagercrantz does not consider herself a religious person - a fact, she suggested, which makes her a typical Swede.

"In this country, 80% of people are Lutheran, yet it's often said that Sweden has a church with no believers, and believers with no church," she observed. "As a journalist, I try to cover what's in the air, and the questions all humans have about life. I'm not interested in writing about bishops and church hierarchy."

In her stories from 2002 that she submitted to the Templeton Award judges, of special note was a five-part series about an experimental prison "monastery" patterned on the writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Eight inmates at a heavily guarded penitentiary in Kumla, west of Stockholm, lived together for a month in silence, broken only on Sundays when they could talk with a Lutheran priest.

"Those in prison management said they'd never seen such a positive effect before," Lagercrantz said. She plans to donate part of her award money to the St. Andrew's Spiritual Fellowship, begun by four of the inmates who took part in the prison monastery. The rest will allow her to continue researching other stories that catch her eye.

Another of her articles looked at "soul counseling," a new border area between psychology and religion. A final piece was on Mother Karin, who is the only Roman Catholic abbess living in Sweden, and the first to be proclaimed since the 16th century.

"I try not to write for those who already have the answers, but for 'questioning' readers," she explained.

Lately, Lagercrantz has written much on the growing convergence of science and religion. For a series of March 2003 stories she did on new images of God, in fact, she only interviewed scientists. While some found this a provocative choice, for Lagercrantz it only made sense to structure the story this way. In her years as a journalist, she's learned that the definition of meaning is not only an exceedingly personal choice, but a vitally necessary one.

"You are not as well emotionally if you have no frame of meaning," she said. "When I was writing about 'burn out' in the business world, I talked to lots of psychiatrists and priests. Gradually, I've come to believe that any frame you can think about and through — be it politics, science or religion — if it provides you with meaning, it's good for your life."

As long as humanity broods upon mortality — and how can we not? — religion writers will continue to describe the liturgies, festivals and scientific theories which arise to help us explain our fate. The best of these journalists deserve to be honored, the Templeton Foundation believes, since learning what's new in belief asks questions that are old as life itself.

To learn more about the Templeton Foundation's Religion Writer of the Year Awards, contact the Religion Newswriters Association at rnastuff@aol.com.

Stephen Henderson, a writer based in New York City, contributes frequently to the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Town & Country, and Religion News Service, as well as other publications.