Response from Ms. Pratt

I thought it was classy of her to write me back and her response was very thoughtful. I think the lesson I have learned is to always, always, always try to understand before making my (usually highly flawed )OPINION known??

Actually, I don’t lean either way in reporting, but the people I interview certainly do, on both sides. Each only wants to see his/her own viewpoint represented! So much for freedom of speech. It’s a human characteristic and is true across denominations that we only want our own viewpoint mentioned. Anything else is perceived as bias or “negative.” Newspapers by design can only hit a few high points on any story, television even less with sound bytes. Now we have the Internet and blogs so that every viewpoint can be expressed to exhaustion! We are in an interesting time of transition in communications.

Back to the story, we don’t have that many Episcopalians in Lubbock, so until it heats up locally, we don’t do a lot of reporting on the issue, although we do run AP stories on the national developments.

Looks like if this new church start goes through here, the issue will become more local. Even so, the numbers are small compared to other churches here.

The bigger story is the future of the institutional church of whatever denomination. Will it recover or retool? Will people tire of doing their own thing? The latest trend predictions I’ve heard say that the churches with ultra-liturgical or ultra-contemporary worship styles will thrive and the various combinations between will struggle.

I don't think I would like being a Religion reporter... Not an easy job today seeing how polarized religion has gotten. "May we all be one..."