Investigating religious groups? These records might help

By Liam Adams, The Tennessean

I went out of my way to attend NICAR 2026 for the first time, hoping to unlock a bunch of
trade secrets for accessing records on my beat.

As a religion reporter who often encounters legal hurdles for public access to internal info, I ventured up to Indianapolis from Nashville with a hunger for techniques that I assumed I hadn’t learned yet about.

NICAR was revelatory and inspiring for other reasons — but not that one.

Right before NICAR, I was covering National Religious Broadcasters v. IRS, a high-profile legal battle that was expected to defang a federal prohibition on churches from endorsing political candidates (spoiler alert: A proposed settlement failed in a surprise turn, keeping intact the federal Johnson Amendment, part of the U.S. tax code that prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofits — including churches and charities — from endorsing or opposing political candidates.).

I thought about that case and its potential ramifications at NICAR during a deep-dive workshop on nonprofit data, when ProPublica journalist Andrea Suozzo brought up her story from July 2022 about how the Family Research Council changed its tax designation to a church. The council wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last conservative evangelical nonprofit to do so as part of a strategy to further shield their financials and other internal information from public view.

In that workshop — and a chat with Andrea — I realized that access to public information about religious organizations, in some ways, is becoming harder.

Federal tax policy is already hugely deferential to religious organizations’ privacy. Now some of those faith-based groups are taking advantage of those protections in new ways.

With this epiphany from NICAR, I thought of some categories for accessing records about religious organizations that might be less apparent to reporters who heavily rely on FOIA. This list is not exhaustive, nor does it supplant skills that all reporters use for digging up information — chiefly, working with sources to identify targeted requests.

1. Lawsuits: Complaints and discovery materials in important civil cases against the
   Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have been the genesis of a crisis over clergy sexual abuse. A recent reminder is Robert Downen’s latest story for Texas Monthly, “He Remade the Southern Baptist Convention in His Image. Then Came the Abuse Allegations,” on the late Texas appellate Judge Paul Pressler, a Southern Baptist leader accused of sexually abusing young men.
   
   A sexual abuse lawsuit filed by Gareld Duane Rollins against Pressler led Downen to start the Abuse of Faith investigative series for the Houston Chronicle. That sparked a reckoning over abuse and SBC leaders’ handling of the crisis over two decades. That reckoning — and a third-party investigation — triggered other lawsuits that revealed even more about high-profile abuse allegations and Southern Baptists leaders’ response. Those lawsuits and a different series of cases against personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, well-known for his conservative evangelical beliefs, have been most helpful for compiling otherwise unavailable data and details about problematic administrative actions often revealed in deposition transcripts.
   
2. Third-party investigations: There’s been an uptick in third-party inquiries into abuse, financial mismanagement and other misconduct in congregations and denominations in recent years. Those inquiries resulted in written reports that journalists could mine for details and story ideas. These investigations often happen when a faith community is facing pressure to restore public trust, motivating leadership to hire contractors — the two biggest are Guidepost Solutions and GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment).
   
   As a result, reports are often publicly available. But sometimes they aren’t, which means you’ll have to get a leaked copy from someone within church administration or a victim interviewed by investigators. These reports are most helpful for getting a peek at internal church records and key technical details such as dates, names and background on other criminal or civil judgments. Investigators also offer an assessment on an institution’s culpability in preventing and responding to alleged misconduct.

3. Internal church records and why polity is your friend: Believe it or not, many religious groups are exhaustive record-keepers (I’ve found Presbyterians to be the most anal, slightly more than Methodists). The challenge is knowing where to look, which, in turn, affects who you ask. The word “polity” sounds intimidating, but it’s just a fancy term for church governance.
   
   Understanding polity has proved useful for me time and time again. Past examples include scoops about the federal government’s criminal probe into the SBC, an explainer on the Reformed denomination that claims Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a member and an in-depth report on Presbyterian congregations that disciplined women who came forward with abuse allegations. Each tradition is different, but some basic knowledge of how they’re structured goes a long way in discerning where to look. Plus, it often helps establish trust with faith communities that otherwise assume the media is disinterested in learning more about their core beliefs.
   
4. Property records: In certain scenarios, it’s helpful to analyze publicly available records about who owns what property, who sold which property to whom, and how much a property is valued at. However, don’t necessarily expect to be able to compare the valuation of a property to internal church ledgers if, for example, you wanted to know how much of a church’s budget went toward purchasing a property for its pastor. One impressive example is a Houston Chronicle investigative report on Catholic parsonages.
   
   One of the best stories involving religious leaders and property records recently has been ProPublica’s investigation on a Tennessee pastor who operates a nonprofit at a Washington D.C. townhouse where House Speaker Mike Johnson stays at. In that instance, property records helped trace associations between religious leaders, top elected officials and a Republican megadonor.

I sympathize with the fact that even if you’re not dealing with the hurdles I’ve mentioned here, there are other major obstacles you may face in trying to obtain records (i.e. an agency takes forever to respond to your request).

We all have learned about the importance of persistence. I hope some of these tips help you be persistent in seeking records about religious organizations. The need is perhaps greater than ever with the level of influence that certain religious organizations have within President Donald Trump’s administration.

Also, I joined a panel with fellow religion reporters Jack Jenkins, Tiffany Stanley and James Grimaldi at IRE26 at National Harbor, Maryland to discuss some of these same techniques. In case you missed it, catch the recording here.