An Eye for Untold Stories: RPL Journalism Fellow Deborah Jian Lee
Chloë-Arizona Fodor, MTS ‘25, CRPL in Journalism, and RPL’s Affiliate in Religion and Conflict with the Religion News Service, sat down to talk with Deborah Jian Lee about her relationship to journalism and the impact of RPL on her work. Lee is an award-winning journalist, radio producer, and senior editor at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She is in her fourth year as the RPL Journalism Fellow.
Chloë-Arizona Fodor: What were the key moments that steered you towards this niche of religiously literate reporting?
Deborah Jian Lee: I grew up atheist, but I was always very curious about faith. I was also trying to understand my own identity as a daughter of immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong. My friends came from different faith backgrounds, and I eventually found myself at a Chinese and Taiwanese immigrant church youth group, where I had an experience of faith. I fell in love with my faith community. When I went to college, I was looking for the same thing and ended up a leader in one of the largest and most influential Christian evangelical Christian organizations in the country. It was intense. I was contending with how my community interacted with people from different backgrounds . . . people who looked like me, or in how they treated women and LGBGTQ people differently. I spoke to my community about the colonial history of our faith and how we might decolonize it. It caused a lot of conflict! I had to reckon with my faith community and my own value system and identities. I eventually left the evangelical world but returned to it later as a journalist.
CAF: How so?
DJL: As a journalist, I was really interested in understanding why people who were part of marginalized identities decided to stay within the evangelical world. I spent years researching the history and the current day evolution of the evangelical movement by exploring the narratives of evangelicals from very diverse backgrounds and beliefs.
CAF: Did that work change your journalistic process or style?
DJL: Definitely. It helped me develop an eye for teasing out untold stories. I've always been interested in turning the camera towards communities that are underrepresented. I find that when we look to those communities, we get a clearer picture of the gaps in our society. It helps us better imagine workable solutions to making our society a more equitable and just place.
CAF: Do you feel like the way you do your work has changed in the four years that you've been with RPL?
DJL: I think so. I really, really appreciate the framework that RPL has provided. It has helped me explain my work, and it has given me tools to be a better journalist. For example, in RPL we talk a lot about internal diversity. The heart of my book was trying to make a case for the internal diversity of the Evangelical movement. When we think of Evangelicals, we often picture someone who's white, conservative, going to a mega church, with a certain amount of affluence and power. In reality, the Evangelical movement is incredibly diverse on all levels, class, race, gender, and identity. It’s this rich, diverse ecosystem that is often flattened and represented by the most powerful and loudest voices. RPL’s language and framework of internal diversity has helped me talk about my work and it’s helped remind me to continue reporting through that lens.
It's also important as we're doing this work to be in a community of people who are willing to challenge you and bring in new ideas. Through RPL I'm in constant conversation with people who are experts in education or popular culture. It’s made my work more interesting and dynamic.
CAF: At RPL, we often use the term ‘moral imagining’ to describe the idea of moving forward with hope not because you can guarantee that change will occur but because it’s the right thing to do. What does moral imagining look like in journalism?
DJL: That’s a really good question. I think the work that I do at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project really fits into that framework. We want to tell stories about economic inequality in America by uplifting the voices who are actually experiencing it. We don't want to fit into this old media paradigm of the wealthy reporting on poverty. It tends to be very ‘outside-looking-in' and there’s a lot of poor-shaming in those narratives. Instead, we uplift journalists who are personally connected to economic precarity. Giving them the resources and platform to report on their lived experiences and their own communities allows for much more nuanced and multifaceted stories. They're able to both explain the systems that reinforce poverty and show the beauty and culture that people are able to create despite those challenges.
CAF: I think the work you guys do makes the idea of moral imagining extremely tangible. I mean, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project offers funds for people to write stories in their communities. Like we said earlier, it’s so easy to get caught up in these theoretical terms like ‘moral imagining’ and stop there. But it's another, vital thing to take it to that next phase of action, which is what y’all do.
DJL: For us, moral imagining of the future means discussing the reality of economic hardship now, while also showing the strength and creativity of communities that are often cut out of the media discourse. We’re building narratives of solidarity across the class gradient, which is foundational for a stronger future.