The kind of deep read that gets people and communities talking while winning awards in the process

Congratulations to Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada and Claire Sadar on their receiving an honorable mention in the Associated Church Press Best of the Church Press Awards for the first two installments of their Sacred Writes series on “Greater Boston’s Church to Condo Pipeline.”

The first of their initial two features looked at former Boston churches being converted into luxury housing, and asked if the city is missing out on potential arts and community spaces. The second, “Desacralized,” went even deeper: “As another historic Black Boston institution is gentrified, a congregation displaced by condos reflects on this trend and what it means.”

We have worked with Claire (through the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism) for years and admire her knowledge of topics relating to religion as well as how those issues tie into public and political life. For this series, we were also fortunate to have the research and reporting hand of Alyssa, whose contributions on background, history, and other critical elements helped make for the kind of deep read that gets people and communities talking while winning awards in the process (this hopefully won’t be the last one). 

We highly recommend sitting back and catching up on all three Sacred Writes articles (you can find the third and final piece, “Sacred Spaces: Special Mosque Edition,” here).

Also thanks to the Henry Luce Foundation, which funded the Sacred Writes project through Northeastern University to “promote public scholarship on religion,” and to Derek Kouyoumjian for the incredible pics on parts one and three.