🔥 Faith, Hope And LA: The Positive Side Of Reporting On Way Too Many Disasters 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
ALTADENA, Calif. — I witness a whole lot of despair.
I always look for a little bit of hope.
As a journalist, I’ve covered way too much disaster and destruction.
The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Hurricanes all over the southeastern U.S. Too many tornadoes to count.
Now I’m in a car with a preacher named Rodney Davis. He’s maneuvering our way through this ravaged Southern California community, where last month’s fast-moving wildfires wiped out entire neighborhood blocks.
I know the numbers: At least 29 people killed in the Los Angeles area. More than 18,000 structures destroyed or damaged. Tens of thousands forced from their homes.
Still, my eyes struggle to grasp the enormity of the disaster zone.
A drone captures structures damaged by the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California. (Shutterstock photo)
“Can I get out and take a picture?” I ask, desperate to snap an image that might — somehow — convey the level of destruction.
I click hundreds of photos, but none manages to paint a full picture.
I gaze at obliterated houses, businesses, schools and churches as my nostrils fill with the lingering smell of smoke.
Davis and I traipse through the ruins of a house of worship.
We discover no miraculously surviving Bible. No hymnal flipped open to an appropriate song. Not even the remnants of a pew or chair.
To our disappointment, only ashes shuffle under our feet.
After over an hour together, the preacher and I both seem to grow weary. Our conversation slows to intermittent faucet drips as our minds try to make sense of nature’s wrath.
Finally, I break the silence with a question, albeit a cliché.
“You ever seen anything like this before?” I inquire.
“Not in my life,” Davis replies. “It looks like a nuclear bomb.”
That sounds about right.
Davis turns the question back on me.
“What’s the biggest disaster you’ve seen?” he asks.
Minister Rodney Davis reflects as he visits a church member’s burned home in Altadena, California. (Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.)
I immediately think of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — recalling the damage both from the wind and the flooding — and say so.
“You would drive all the way from New Orleans down miles and miles and miles to the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” I tell him, “and all you would see was destruction.”
In a column back then, I described “miniature mountains of tree limbs, mattresses, broken chairs, smashed toy robots and mildewed stuffed animals piled high outside thousands of homes.
“Equally striking,” I wrote, “were the bright red X’s painted on each front door, showing the date inspected by search teams and the number of bodies, if any, found inside.”
In Katrina’s immediate aftermath, I found it impossible to imagine New Orleans — which became a ghost town for a while — ever bouncing back.
Yet it did — even if full recovery remains an ongoing process nearly 20 years later.
Just this week, the Big Easy hosted the Super Bowl.
New Orleans’ comeback offers hope for the nearly 100 square miles engulfed by last month’s flames in the Los Angeles area.
It offers hope, too, for journalists like me.
One way I cope with such tragedies is to seek stories of resilience and perseverance — often tied to faith.
These inspiring tales frequently take a while to develop.
I first interviewed Deniece Bell-Pitner after her 15-month-old daughter, Danielle, died in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — one of 168 victims, including 19 children.
Twenty-five years later, I caught up with Bell-Pitner again and found myself deeply encouraged by how she rebuilt her life after all that she endured.
In 2020, Deniece Bell-Pitner holds a portrait of her daughter Danielle, who was killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. In the background are Bell-Pitner’s son Brayden and daughter Dylann holding an Oklahoma City Thunder jersey created by the team to honor Danielle. (Photo by Doug Hoke, The Oklahoman)
“God didn’t do any of this,” Bell-Pitner told me. “So I was mad and angry, and I hated him, but I (eventually) realized, ‘He’s the only way I’m going to get through this.’”
In New Orleans, I met a family — the Marsalises — who survived Katrina by escaping to the balcony of their church. Eventually, a boat rescued them from the flooded sanctuary, and a helicopter plucked them from a highway overpass.
Despite their ordeal, Charles and Angela Marsalis and their sons never lost faith — in God or New Orleans.
In fact, the storm motivated that family to start a new church to serve an inner-city neighborhood beset with drugs, gunfire and prostitution. That congregation still thrives today.
Among those touched by the Marsalises’ story: God himself — at least the actor version of him, Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman.
Actor Morgan Freeman visits with Charles and Angela Marsalis about their Hurricane Katrina experience. (Photo provided by National Geographic Channel)
Five years ago, I covered twisters that claimed 25 lives while leaving an 80-mile path of debris across Middle Tennessee. I profiled a 4-year-old victim named Hattie Jo Collins, who was known for her colorful headbands adorned with flowers, rainbows and unicorns.
Just last year, Hattie’s parents, Matt and Macy Collins, sat down with me — their first interview since the storm — to talk about their tornado experience, their faith journey and their daughter’s amazing words the night before the tornado.
“Serving families that have lost kids — for us, that bears the mark of Hattie,” Matt told me, explaining the couple’s decision to start a ministry for grieving parents. “So every day and every time that we are working on that, we are representing her and her life. And by doing that, we are honoring her.”
Here in Altadena, the pain remains fresh — the sobs still difficult to control — as I noted in a recent news story.
Yet the sun still rises over the scorched earth.
Davis and I wave at National Guard members mobilized to help with traffic flow and other needs. We greet volunteers working on cleanup and emergency supply distribution. We talk with survivors who have lost so much but still see a bright future ahead.
The fire destroyed Beverly Clay’s home and her church. Still, the Altadena resident trusts in God.
“I accept him, and I believe him, and I have faith,” Clay tells me. “I’m not down. I’m not depressed. I’m just thankful that he spared our lives.”
She could focus on her despair.
She chooses to dwell on her hope.
I’m just a reporter, but I’ll do the same.
Inside The Godbeat
Public school classrooms have become battlefields in the culture wars, as Plug-in has highlighted.
ReligionLink editor Ken Chitwood published a primer this week featuring “27 sources on education and ‘church-state separation’ under Trump.”
I wrote an in-depth piece last year on Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, who ignited a national furor with a mandate requiring a Bible in every classroom.
Walters — already at odds with Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a fellow Republican, over a proposed Catholic charter school — is now engaged in a public feud with the state’s GOP governor, Kevin Stitt.
Follow Murray Evans, The Oklahoman’s education reporter, for all the latest developments.
The Final Plug
I feel like I’m forgetting something.
Oh, wait. Is today special for some reason?
I kid. I kid. I really do want to wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to Tamie, my longtime sweetheart. She’s an amazing wife, mother and “Nana,” as our grandchildren know her.
I love you, Slush Puppie! (There’s a story behind that term of endearment, but I’ll save it for another time.)
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.