Richard Ostling is an American author and journalist living in Ridgewood, New Jersey.[1] He and his wife, the late Joan K. Ostling, are the co-authors of Mormon America: The Power and the Promise.[2] They have two children, Margaret and Elizabeth.[1] Elizabeth plays flute in the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
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Richard N. Ostling (born July 14, 1940) is a journalist who reports on religious topics. He is a senior correspondent for Time magazine[1] and the president of the Religion Newswriters Association.[1] Once a senior editor of The Michigan Daily, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan and holds master's degrees in journalism and religion. He has conducted religious interviews on at least four continents.
Richard Ostling previously reported for the Morning News and Evening Journal and Christianity Today[1] as well as once being the chief religion writer for the Associated Press, where he spent eight years.[3][4]
He has written many cover stories in over 27 years at Time and has a broadcast on CBS Radio as well reporting regularly for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.[1] Over the course of his career, he has interviewed several notable religious figures such as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, the late Mother Teresa, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).[4] He also authored many of the TIME magazine stories on the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, including cover stories on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as well as the scandal-plagued televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.[5] Ostling was the co-author, with Dr. Bernard Nathanson, of Aborting America, a history of the abortion rights movement in the United States.[6]
Richard Ostling was born in Endicott, NY.[1]
The Center for Religious Inquiry has called Richard Ostling "one of the most distinguished and honored writers on religion in America."[7] The New York Times Book Review calls Mormon America: The Power and the Promise "eminently fair, well researched, and exhaustive."[4]
Joan K. Ostling (June 29, 1939 – January 11, 2009) was an assistant professor of English and journalism at Nyack College,[1] as well as having taught at several other evangelical colleges.[8] She also co-authored a comprehensive bibliography of books by and about C. S. Lewis. Joan Ostling earned master's degrees in English and political science, and was a writer and editor for the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, D.C.[2][9]
Joan Ostling died of breast cancer on January 11, 2009 at her home in Ridgewood, New Jersey.