In June 2014, TIME magazine correspondent Elizabeth Dias visited Calvin College and participated in a public interview about her TIME cover story "The Rise of Evangélicos" published April 2013. Her article signaled a "Latino Reformation" in the US and provided an indepth look "inside the new Hispanics churches transforming religion in America."
John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, conducted the interview. He asked Elizabeth to reflect on the following questions:
- Reflect on your journey to TIME. How does someone from Phoenix, Arizona, educated at Wheaton College and Princeton Seminary, wind up doing religion reporting at TIME magazine?
- Tell us how this cover story came to be.
- Tell us more: What shapes your reporting instincts? How do you know it’s a national story?
- Is there a signature story that represents the main story line of the project?
- Talk about the dynamics of mega and micro churches and how this story is shaped by church size and location.
- What influence and shape has television ministry and social media made?
- What are your impressions of regional, ethnic, and cultural diversity as they relate to the story?
- What have been the responses and reactions to the story?
- In the larger ecology of North American Christianity, as a journalist how would you challenge scholars and academics who research and write about Latino Protestant congregations?
- Talk about the role journalists play in relationship to pastoral ministry and to those people—pastors and others in leadership—who are consumers of journalistic writing.
For related Protestant Latino worship projects sponsored by the Worship Institute, see our Protestant Latino Worship Practices Resource Guide.
