The sweep and breadth of Woodward’s career here, if not exactly Biblical, is at least unusual in a business that measures experience in sound bites. He started with us when John XXIII was presiding over Vatican II and a vigorous Billy Graham, with golden tongue and golden mane, was becoming the preacher to presidents. On Woodward’s watch, popes have come and gone. Entire spiritual movements have captivated America, then gone the way of all flesh. He chronicled the Carters–Jimmy and sister Ruth, the evangelist–and explained the Methodist roots that formed Hillary Clinton. He’s described the fall of powerful denominations and the rise of pick-and-choose megachurches. He’s been at it long enough to see both the left and the right claim title to the Holy Writ. And he’s been wise enough to remem- ber that it’s not theirs, but ours, all of ours.
He’s written on other subjects, too. He helped invent our Family and Ideas sections. One week he’ll discuss the politics of virtue, another the lingering value of footnotes. But always, he comes back to religion and its intersection with American culture. Woodward’s work matters to our audience. One example: his cover stories tend to be among our best sellers year after year. And, it’s a great beat. How else would he have met the sublime Abraham Joshua Heschel, the divine Dalai Lama, and rogues we’ll just avoid naming here?
Woodward writes books, too. ““Making Saints,’’ his report on the way the church canonizes its holiest men and women, is the standard work on the subject; it has been translated into five languages. His ““Grandparents/Grandchildren,’’ written with psychiatrist Arthur Kornhaber, is a powerful study of the intergenerational family.
But what does Ken Woodward really hold sacred? Just look where he takes his family each year on pilgrimage. It’s a cathedral of sorts, one festooned in green and gold and immortalized for miracles and heartbreaks: the football stadium at Notre Dame. You can take the boy out of South Bend, but you can’t take South Bend out of the man.
