Letter to the Editor

LTE: Help Your Loudoun Neighbors in Need

A representative of the county’s various faith organizations calls on residents to contribute to local food bank and other area fulfilling unmet needs.

Letter to the editor, The escalating cost of living combined with the loss of higher paying jobs has put many people in our area in a financial dilemma. Lower wage jobs appear to be a larger share of our community’s total employment. The surge in population and rising cost of housing in our community have added stress on resources and make it much harder for lower wage earners to make ends meet. Those with modest income struggle to pay for housing, groceries, childcare, health care and education, among other essentials.  Imagine the difficulty of choosing whether your family eats or has clothes on their back? Many families with children living in at-risk situations depend on local food banks in order to have enough money to make rent. …

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Countywide Food Drive Aims to Cover Mid-Year Gaps

The Loudoun Board of Supervisors deems May Hunger Awareness Month

Loudoun County residents on average consistently have among the highest incomes in the country, but like every community, some residents fall upon hard times on occasion. While the numbers may not be as high in Loudoun as in some neighboring jurisdictions, plenty of people in the county go without, particularly as the country has struggled to recover from a recession. And that’s a reality that can be hard to imagine in the county’s manicured suburbia. “I had no idea at all that this was a problem in Loudoun County. I was a oblivious,” said Annette Brennan during a recent Loudoun Board of Supervisors meeting. But Brennan, a member of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Sterling, said she learned more and now volunteers for programs like Back …

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Faith and the Local Media

Faith and the local media

I sat down with Sterling resident Mark Gunderman, who often serves as a liaison between faith communities and the media, to talk about the potential relationship between religion and local news.

Journalists can be a little squeamish about covering religion news. No matter what their personal beliefs are, fairly representing the beliefs of those in the faith community means venturing into territory that is often both unfamiliar and a little frightening. Journalists have also been taught to “just report the facts,” and writing about someone’s beliefs can seem like “soft” journalism. After working as a religion reporter in Loudoun, I realized that religion is a powerful, but misunderstood, factor in the actions and motives behind many stories. Many journalists only recognize the faith factor when it is extremist, corrupt, or hateful in nature, as in the “God hates fags” campaign of The Westboro Baptist Church, the Islamic suicide …

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