When I started OnFaith over seven years ago, I was an atheist. Actually, I was an angry atheist. You might well ask why on earth I would want to have a religion web site. The fact is, as a journalist, I had been covering political and cultural issues for the Washington Post for over 30 years, and I felt religion was a huge story that the media (yes, the dreaded elite-liberal-East-Coast-secular media) was not covering. I mentioned it to Don Graham, then owner of The Washington Post, now head of Graham Holdings. He suggested I start a religion web site. I told him I knew nothing about religion and less about the internet. He replied that nobody was perfect and challenged me to do it. What choice did I have?
With the help of my friend, author, religion scholar and then-Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, I began gathering a group of contributors and telling a few friends. I might as well have told them I was having a sex change operation. Even my husband, Ben Bradlee, who actually does believe in God and with whom I had had quite a few heated discussions about religion, was shocked. In fact, he still is. To this day, when the subject comes up, he never fails to remark to people, “Can you believe that Sally is doing this?” Where was the person he thought he had married?
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