Appreciation: Arne H. Fjeldstad

In the world of journalism, Dr. Arne H. Fjeldstad was a rarity.

He was a journalist and among others, Night Editor, at Norway’s largest newspaper Aftenposten or The Evening Post for more than twenty years.

And, he was an ordained Lutheran minister in the local Norwegian parishes. He was the International Coordinator and Editor for World Evangelization, the magazine of the Lausanne Movement, a global effort that mobilizes evangelical leaders to collaborate for Christian missions since 1974.

He earned his doctorate degree in ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1997 for a dissertation on the possible growth of online churches, still early in the age of Internet. He also served as an Anglican minister in the Middle East and North Africa where he published a monthly magazine.

Born in the ancient Israelite coastal city of Joppa or Jaffa in 1957, Dr. Fjeldstad was son of Rev. Torstein Fjeldstad, the founder of Mission Behind the Iron Curtain or Norwegian Mission to the East. It is now known as Stefanus Alliance International, a Christian missions and human rights organization based in Oslo, Norway.

In his later years, Dr. Fjeldstad chaired Gegrapha, a global network of Christians in mainstream media. And he was the CEO of The Media Project, a Washington D.C.-based institution that helps mainstream journalists worldwide to cover religion as an essential dimension of public life.

When I heard about Dr. Fjeldstad’s very unexpected passing at his home in Kristiansand, Norway at 4 p.m. on November 23, 2014, I just wrapped up a Christian media symposium in the northeast suburbs of Beijing, China at 5 p.m. on November 24. The email was from Ms. Caroline Comport, Dr. Fjeldstad’s colleague at The Media Project.

Dr. Fjeldstad would have flown to Seoul later that day to run a seminar for Christian journalists in South Korea. He even would have flown to China. Back in August, Dr. Fjeldstad and I discussed the possibility of having an event in Hong Kong for Chinese Christian journalists before or after South Korea. The China conference was rescheduled to some time in 2015. But I will not be able to meet Dr. Fjeldstad in Hong Kong or anywhere here on this earth.

The first time I saw Dr. Fjeldstad was on May 22-24, 2008, when he invited me to attend my first ever international conference of Christian journalists working in mainstream media. That was in Sydney, Australia, where I also met Dr. David Aikman, a former Time magazine bureau chief in Beijing, the founder of Gegrapha and Professor of History at Patrick Henry College in Virginia, United States. It was with Dr. Aikman’s recommendation that I got to know Dr. Fjeldstad. Before that, I had been in contact with Dr. Aikman and his colleague and later his wife, Ms. Charlene Fu, a former Associated Press correspondent in Beijing.

In Sydney, Dr. Fjeldstad asked me if I would be interested in an international symposium on religion and politics in Washington D.C. to be held in late July and early August in the same year. Just a day after the Sydney gathering, I received a letter of invitation from Ms. Comport. Up to then, I did not expect I would have the honor of meeting Dr. Fjeldstad and some international colleagues at least once a year in different places on this globe between 2008 and 2013.

In 2009, it was in Jakarta, Indonesia, where we explored the possible relationship between war and religion.  In 2010, we met in the Philippines talking about religion and journalism at sea before spending the traditional Chinese New Year’s Eve in Manila, and in May we held the first seminar for Chinese Christian journalists in Beijing. And then we returned again to Jakarta for the topic of defamation of religions. In 2011, we gathered at Purdue University in Indiana for our second symposium of Chinese Christian journalists, and in 2012 we flew to Poynter Institute in Florida for how to help younger journalists with a follow-up in Bangkok, Thailand, a year later.

Throughout all these meetings, Dr. Fjeldstad was for me both a mentor in my profession and a pastor in my faith. Both came much in substance and less in form. He was more like a tour guide and friend who expanded my horizons by introducing me to my colleagues with different backgrounds from across the world including Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America. In him, I saw a great communicator who talked less about himself than about his appreciation of God the great communicator. For him, “to be a human is to be a communicator. And communication - the ability to express oneself - remains God’s gift to humanity.”

With this appreciation, his respect for his fellow communicators was not confined to his relationship with fellow human beings but in the context of God’s communication with God’s created human beings in God’s image. “Communication with Man is a deep desire in the heart of the Almighty God,” Dr. Fjeldstad once said both theologically and journalistically, “His interaction with Man throughout history as reported in the Bible is a challenge for every Christian. Hearing the Good News, living by it and witnessing to it, is the basic calling to all Christians.” On another occasion, he pointed out, “With an anthropology based on the Bible our lives are committed to pursuing truth and sharing truth, as it has set us free to serve fellow human beings.”

In this sense, all Christians are journalists, God’s Good News messengers. Partly because of this, Dr. Fjeldstad did not want all Christian journalists to serve within the Christian media only, but rather among colleagues and audiences who have not heard of or known much about the Good News. “To only communicate to like-minded people sharing the faith is simply not the challenge given by Jesus to those who want to follow him,” wrote Dr. Fjeldstad in an essay entitled “Should Christians become journalists? Reflecting truth in a broken world”.

That was why Dr. Fjeldstad would assemble Christian journalists working in such mainstream media as Time, AP, The New York Times, CNN and similar news organizations serving the general public in different countries. He also worked with experts in various fields to promote the awareness of religion in making sense of the world’s current affairs. A notable fruit was Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. Another was GetReligion, a U.S.-based website that analyzes how the mainstream press covers religion and Lapido Media, a U.K.-based site that advocates “for greater awareness of the faith dimension in policy, governance, and conflict in the UK and abroad.”

Not just all this. In fact, Dr. Fjeldstad also helped bear fruit in my life as a Christian and a journalist. The essays I learned to write for the symposia he organized from 2008 through 2013 later grew into part of a book St. Augustine’s Press in South Bend, Indiana, will publish in 2015, China’s Quest for Liberty: A Personal History of Freedom. In the first chapter, I wrote about how I responded to a journalistic as well as philosophical question Dr. Fjeldstad asked me in late 2011, “What can be put on your tombstone as a headline over your life?” Since then, his question from time to time has helped me to think over how to spend the rest of my life in this world no matter how long or short it will be.

But neither at that time nor any other did I think about how I would respond to the news of Dr. Fjeldstad’s passing. I never thought of the day when he was no longer in this world. All of a sudden, I am having to face a world of journalism without Dr. Fjeldstad, the global pastor of local journalists in but not of this world. A further fruit may be growing.

I once asked Dr. Fjeldstad how to pronounce his first name Arne in Norwegian and what it meant. With his trademark smile, he said its Norwegian pronunciation was different from its English one. And Arne derives from the old Norse word for eagle, arni. Later, I found Arne also referred to the stone in traditional Norwegian homes upon which the fire was lit and it was used in Danish for the flame in a fireplace. When I am looking back at what Dr. Fjeldstad has left in my life, his vision, energy, and warmth are still fresh.