Ottawa’s Carleton University will be the setting for a second faith and media conference, May 26-28, which will be of great interest to anyone close to communication of faith within a Canadian setting. Under the theme, “How Secular Media Cover Religious Pluralism in Canada,” this conference will focus on what the media are doing to convey the religious or faith realities of Canadians back to their fellow citizens.

The initiative for this conference has come from the Calgary-based Centre for Faith and the Media, which in turn grew out of a 1998 Conference on Faith and Media in which ChristianWeek editors had a leading role, along with other Winnipeggers.

This second conference will feature a keynote address by broadcaster Arthur Kent on “Why the media should cover religion,” and another by Bob Abernathy of the PBS program Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

Others on the program include Lois Sweet, a journalism professor at Carleton, Kirk LaPointe, managing editor at the Vancouver Sun, Michael Higgins, frequent commentator on Catholic topics and president of St. Jerome’s University, Riad Saloojee, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, Reg Bibby, sociologist of Canadian religion, Debra Mason, executive director of the Religion Newswriters Association of the U.S., Bill Roberts, president of Vision TV and many others.

Some of the topics to be covered include “What journalists need to cover the religion beat,” “Defining spirituality in the media,” “Faith on the radio,” “How the Canadian religious landscape is changing,” “Can religion and secularism co-exist?”, “Same-sex marriage in the media” and others.

This conference will help clarify the role that faith plays in the issues that dominate the news day by day and examine how people in the media can sharpen their ability to tell those stories. More information about the conference can be found at The Centre for Faith and the Media website (www.faithandmedia.org) or by e-mailing info@faithandmedia.org