Our pal Tim Townsend out at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch probes the perils of religion coverage in an age of intolerance in a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review.

(In the interests of full disclosure: I’m quoted in Tim’s piece, as is our columnist Cathleen Falsani, and Tim and I are friends from grad school.)

It’s a worthwhile piece, and raises some interesting questions about our responsibilities as religion writers to accurately and fairly cover all faiths in an age when some are seen as suspect, or violent, or a cover for terrorists. He also probes religion’s ability to cast beat plowshares into swords. As Falsani put it:

The culture wars, as they are called, are a blessing for at least one group: journalists. “Heat is good for a story, and religion is consistently good for that,” says Cathleen Falsani, a religion columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times who covered the beat as a reporter for several years. “Religion is polarizing. Maybe that’s not the way it’s intended to be, but it is.”

Tim’s episode covering a local mosque-especially the comments and death threats from the story that prompted him to have to kill the blog-are well worth a read.