The Deputy Editorial Page Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer called upon churches to become "sanctuaries of deliberation," where citizens "uncomfortable with each other" may undertake "risky acts of fellowship…speaking softly with prophetic voices" while taking refuge from the "uncivil combat" that so frequently marks daily life.

Christopher Satullo, an Episcopalian who belongs to St. Martin in the Fields Church in Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill section, said such
activity would recover "the old concept of sanctuary. We cannot hope for unanimous consensus," but by creating opportunities for discourse "we can limit so much verbal warfare and enlarge our dialog so that our unity might become discernible."

Satullo was the third and final lecturer this week in a fall series on
"The Public Church -- Living Out the Good News."  He spoke on "A Voice with Values -- A Credible Media Voice for the Church." The series began three weeks ago with an appearance by distinguished Lutheran theologian Martin Marty, who discussed "Religion and the Public Life."  On October 20, Dr. Katie Day, the Seminary's Associate Professor of Church and Society, discussed "Meeting the Press -- A Theological Encounter."

Satullo, who heads up Citizen Voices, an experiment in civil deliberation, advised churches to avoid the extremes of "cocksure
advocacy" vs. retiring quietly to the study out of frustration at not discovering a coherent voice through the media. He suggested that
churches and journalists can over time find deeper ways to work side by side without "violating each other's core values."

Journalists and the media, he said, are not monolithic in nature. But through such societal practices as the politics of anger and demonization, "many citizens are alienated into becoming spectators and not doers. And that means we are missing a broader understanding of of the work of democracy, which is public deliberation."

Journalists have learned four adages over the years, Satullo said. "Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted…If your mother says something, check it out…If everybody is mad at you, you've done the right thing…If there's conflict, there's a story."

Pitfalls are part of each adage, he said. "For one thing, the size of many media salaries today mean we ought to afflict ourselves. Also, we've discovered that there's a problem with having automatic sympathy for someone on the outside. Not all their claims are valid." Regarding the trusting of facts, Satullo said "facts are slippery and unreliable. Journalists need to practice intellectual rigor without succumbing to easy, cheap cynicism." He said that if "everyone is mad at you, they may have good reason. Have you been truly balanced and accurate? Can a story have more than two sides? Have you made a few false assumptions?" He suggested that it is true that where there is conflict there is usually a story, but the conflict may not be the whole story, and it is wrong to assume that where there is no conflict there is no story. Hence, in the covering of religion, theological fervor -- not theological depth -- gets the attention.

Thus, religion coverage may be reduced to what Satullo called "the snake handler and Swaggart school" with a focus on superstitions, witch hunts, book-burnings, fundamentalism, zealots and crusades. Some religious groups may, in such a climate, succumb to a certain double standard of strident religious activism in order to be noticed by the media. They then lose credibility over such issues as pro life, welfare and gay rights, as they traverse "a broken terrain of discourse." Conflict supersedes consensus. Problems rather than solutions are the focus. Strategy supplants substance. The "meat" of subject matter is assumed to be at the margins rather than in the middle.

"We forget that politics can be honest, that there may be solutions to problems," he said.

Satullo called for churches to be "pilgrim churches" whose people
recognize that "revelation is constantly unfolding, that we are on a
journey of discovery together. We have a map to guide us, but there will be surprises along the way. We may discover that people we thought were friends aren't friends at all. It is a journey of deliberation rather than debate, because debate is destructive of deliberation."

Such a church could decide, he said, that when a school board member makes anti-Semitic remarks in a community, it is appropriate to "invite people to sit down" together to engage in civil, non-threatening discourse "to discover what animates others to see the world differently and to discover common ground.

"Since we cannot really get outside the relationships we have with each other, we will persuade ourselves that our relationships may work better," Satullo said. "Together we may discover a wisdom we cannot find alone."