Can Christians Report Fairly On Faith?: 25 Years On The Godbeat With Bobby Ross Jr.

In 2025, the whole world watched as Chicago native Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope.

Everyone also watched as Conservative Christian Apologist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University.

But while religious news events like these were known world round, other important stories are being covered all the time by Bobby Ross Jr., a veteran religion reporter.

In addition to covering the pope and Kirk, Bobby also wrote about Christian parents grieving in the wake of the Central Texas floods, faith’s role in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s NBA championship-winning season and the possibility of Christian higher education in Europe.

On this week’s episode of the podcast, I sat down with Bobby to discuss not only the news trends he anticipates in the year to come — but his career of 25 years covering faith through on-the-ground reporting in all 50 states and in 20 different countries.

Bobby started his career of reporting on what he calls “the Godbeat” back in 2001, when he was working for The Oklahoman.

Today, he is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle, which focuses on covering Churches of Christ all over the globe. He also writes his column, the “Weekend Plug-In” that appears every Friday at Religion Unplugged.

Bobby and Matthew's conversation spanned how his interest in baseball shaped his initial career decision to become a journalist, how he maintains fairness and accuracy when covering difficult subjects within his faith tradition and how to discern what is true in the age of social media and AI.