Kelly Jasper

This year has flown by. It’s contest time for most newspapers right now, which means we comb the archives for the year’s best.

I’ll post with those in the coming days, but had these few recent stories to share.

The Augusta Chronicle’s Saturday faith section fell on Christmas day this year. I wrote about the Salvation Army’s church in Augusta, which is often over-shadowed (in a very good way) by its charitable work. Nationally, that means the number of soldiers is falling. But that’s not so in Augusta. The Corps is expanding here with the development of the Kroc Center. Read on for more on the Salvation Army’s history – and future – in Augusta.

(P.S. I love our copy editors. This story ran with the headling ‘Ringing Church Bells, too,’ which is just … perfection.)

A week or two earlier, I worked with photographer Corey Perrine for this story and photo essay on The Old Frontier, a unqiue Cowboy Church that’s growing into a youth retreat center outside on Tomson, Ga. Click through just to have a look at these photos. They’re amazing. So is the sort of determination and vision it takes to get a program like this off the ground.

That same week, we produced a three-part package on 12 Bands, an Augusta charity that benefits childhood cancers. The group took a well-publicized haitus last year. We followed up with articles on the group’s new national focus, and stories of the children 12 Bands hopes to help. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

It’s been years since I’ve been to Colorado. Fortunately enough I don’t have to wait much longer.

The Religion Newswriter’s Annual Conference starts Sept. 23 in Denver. Thanks to the generous gifts of a whole lot of journalist folks (I mean it: generous, really. These are journalists, after all) I’m able to attend on a scholarship this year.

So. Very. Excited.

I used to live in a nice little town, Fountain, outside the massive Fort Carson. Though I’m well-removed from the Army, Air Force and all of its affiliates these days, I still find myself in a nice little city on the edge of another sprawling base, this time in Georgia. Go figure.

See you in Denver!

P.S.  The Georgia Press Association Awards came in.  The newsroom took home some 35 awards, and I pocketed first place  in  religion coverage.  Maybe pocketed is the wrong word. Not only is the plaque too big for pockets, but you don’t take the thing home anyway. You get the point.

 Big story. Really big story. Even if the name Keeton isn’t ringing a bell, her dilemma almost certainly does. She’s the local college student that made national news after suing Augusta State University, which she claims requires her to change her Christian beliefs in order to graduate with a counseling degree.

Here, we check in with a number of folks to make sense of this case, as well as a number of other recent church/state conflicts.