Peggy Fletcher Stack to receive 2023 RNA Lifetime Achievement Award
by Ken Chitwood, independent journalist, RNA board member
February 23, 2023 — It’s not often that a journalist’s first story lands on the front page. But back in the summer of 1991, Salt Lake City, Utah was reeling with the news that it was not awarded the 1998 Winter Olympics—its fourth failed bid. Amid the disappointment, Peggy Fletcher Stack was sent on her first assignment, to a press conference where the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was to announce they had selected the city as host for its 1998 annual meeting.
Peggy Fletcher Stack (center)
To Fletcher Stack, it seemed a curious place for Southern Baptists to host their general conference, given the prominence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the city.
“I thought it was an odd pairing,” said Fletcher Stack, who has been covering religion in the Beehive State for more than 32 years, “but sometimes social issues and politics can make strange bedfellows out of theological opponents.”
That day, The Salt Lake Tribune led with Fletcher Stack’s debut story about getting the Southern Baptists instead of the Olympics and its lede: “Salt Lake strikes gold after losing Olympics.”
Fletcher Stack, senior religion reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, will be honored with the 2023 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award at the Religion News Association’s 2023 Annual Conference, March 16–18 in Bethesda, Md.
The annual prize is presented to individuals who demonstrate exceptional long-term commitment and service to RNA and its members, and to the field of religion reporting.
Fletcher Stack has served on RNA committees, been recognized by the association through awards, was on the organization’s board under past president David Briggs, served the global religion beat with the International Association of Religion Journalists (IARJ) as board member and current interim executive director, and attended conferences regularly.
RNA is pleased to award Fletcher Stack for both her contributions to its community and to the wider religion beat.
Back in 1991, Fletcher Stack was not even a full-time reporter when she wrote the story on Southern Baptists that landed her on the front page. At the time, it was just a summer job.
Fletcher Stack and her husband, Michael Stack, originally from Utah, came back to his home state to escape the heat in New York City, where they were living. A friend, who was a cartoonist at The Salt Lake Tribune, told her the paper was looking to expand its religion coverage.
With a background studying religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, work as the editor of Sunstone, a Mormon magazine and a variety of writing experiences at a medical ethics think tank, a United Methodist communications department, and a magazine, Books & Religion, under her belt, she thought, What the heck? I ‘speak Mormon’ and I get all these other faiths. I’d be happy to help launch a religion section!
By the end of the summer, she was hired full-time to cover Utah’s diverse faiths.
Having never worked for a daily paper before, she impressed her editor Jay Shelledy right from the start. Shelledy said Fletcher Stack sat down at a computer and never looked back. “Within months, we added another religion reporter and launched the religion section—only the second metro, non-sectarian daily in the nation (behind the Dallas Morning News) with a stand-alone section devoted to religious news and analysis,” he said.
Since then, she has talked her way into a VIP event to interview Archbishop Desmond Tutu about forgiveness, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, interviewed numerous Catholic cardinals, five prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and reported on 62 of the church’s consecutive semiannual general conferences.
Fletcher Stack became a “Tribune legend with a national reputation,” Shelledy said, with “an expertise appreciated by readers and theological experts of all faiths.
“To this day, a good chunk of The Tribune’s legacy reputation is the work of Peggy Fletcher Stack,” he said.
Academic training and insiders’ knowledge of the church got her thinking beyond press releases and official announcements across the years, said Fletcher Stack. “It helped me explore what’s behind the beliefs It helped me be a good reporter and think about the deeper theological and social issues at play.”
For example, one of her favorite stories was writing about a Swahili-language congregation made up of refugees from Eastern Africa, many from Rwanda.
What started as a story about migration and church diversity ended up being about how the Rwandans had brought their trauma, and the tensions between Hutu and Tutsi, with them. “Rather than just being about the church itself, it ended up becoming about how people can worship together after they have been through so much hostility and pain,” said Fletcher Stack.
Stories like these “opened the world of religion to me — everything from exorcisms to Ashura," she said."I was allowed into these intimate moments of people’s lives to share them with others.”
Even though Fletcher Stack never expected to be a journalist, she found an immediacy to the craft of newswriting that helped her frame conversations around religion.
“I could introduce people and ideas through my reporting that they would never meet on their own. I could amplify voices that had been silenced or never heard. I could help them see commonality, where they might only have known differences. Or I could point out harms and traumas that religion can cause,” she said.
When Fletcher Stack sees people reading her stories at the gym or on the bus, she knows they would not find these stories anywhere else. She likes to think that readers might think and talk about religion in a more open, honest way after reading her work.
It has not always been smooth sailing and positive feedback, however. For three decades, Fletcher Stack has regularly received harsh e-mails from readers. “I get more hate mail than anyone else at the paper,” she said, “including the sports writers!”
In a context with a dominant faith, everyone has a strong opinion about religion, said Fletcher Stack. And they let her know about it. On the one hand, it underlines how important her work is and how many people are reading it. On the other hand, she had to develop a thick skin and focus on getting the details right, finding the right sources, and—like the sports writers receiving their own hate mail down the hall—knowing the rules of the game.
“It can be hard to summarize complex ideas about God, the afterlife, and church history in six of seven inches,” said Fletcher Stack, “but what you say matters, the words you use and choose show people that you understand their faith. It requires a constant vigilance, even while working on a deadline.”
David Noyce, managing editor at The Salt Lake Tribune, co-host of the award-winning “Mormon Land” podcast with Fletcher Stack, and her editor for the last 20 years, said it’s her drive to bring breadth and depth to her religion reporting that has helped her thrive over the years.
“Peggy revolutionized independent religion reporting in Utah,” said Noyce.
Fletcher Stack has written about divisive doctrines and inclusive gatherings, emerging trends and groundbreaking shifts, religious eras and “Mormon moments,” he said. “But mostly Peggy writes about people, those who cherish faith, lack faith, question faith and reject faith, and she does so with sensitivity, sophistication and fairness.”
Beyond her work at The Salt Lake Tribune, Fletcher Stack has also dedicated herself to the wider world of religion news and literacy. In addition to having served on the RNA Board from 2001-2003, and playing an active role in establishing and expanding the IARJ, she's written her own, freshly updated children’s book, A World of Faith, to help young readers understand religion.
Maria-Paz Lopez, staff journalist for the Spanish daily La Vanguardia and an IARJ colleague of Fletcher Stack’s for 11 years, said, “Peggy is an outstanding religion journalist whose work transcends the American press to make a wider contribution for the profession internationally.
“She has always showed an acute eye for topics relevant for discussion and a supportive, collegial approach to leadership,” Lopez said, “always promoting diverse journalistic voices from across the world and from religious and non-religious backgrounds.”
Upon receiving news of being awarded, Fletcher Stack said she was honored, but surprised. She still feels her best work is yet to come.
“People ask me if I am ready to retire. I say to them, ‘Are you kidding?’ I always have in my cue 30-50 stories,” she said. “That’s what I love about the religion beat, all the stories.”
After the RNA Conference in Bethesda, Fletcher Stack will return home to prepare for yet another Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ semiannual general conference at the beginning of April, the church’s 193rd and Fletcher Stack’s 63rd. She would not have it any other way.
“I love my beat so much. I wake up every day ready to report. Even the hard stories,” she said. “I know I need to write them. Not everything is easy, but it is always interesting.”
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