I recently spent an afternoon tracking down the contact information for a Christian leader who is doing, I think, some really interesting and important work. I carefully crafted an email asking for the opportunity to do an interview. The reply came in under two minutes: No. Thank you, but absolutely not.
Oh well. That’s disappointing. But it’s part of the job. Journalists don’t have subpoena power, so we have to ask people to talk to us, and sometimes they don’t want to.
I was comforted, looking through the CT archives, when I found a postcard from theologian Karl Barth to news editor Gene Kucharsky. Kucharsky had asked Barth a question for something he was working on in 1963 and noted the reply could be brief—just 50 words. Barth said no. At length. And with force.
“I do not like that kind of short talk when serious problems are involved,” he wrote. “Let people become a little silent because there is spiritual food on which they may bite.”The author of Church Dogmatics went on long enough that I couldn’t help but think, He could have just answered the question. But I guess it’s nice to know getting rejected is not a new challenge for CT journalists.
