Ask most people what they know about religion in the Pacific Northwest and you'll get a shrug. Or a knowing smile. "Isn't that the none zone?"
I've heard some version of this for the 14 years I've been running FāVS News, a nonprofit digital newsroom devoted entirely to local religion coverage. People assume the region is too secular, too outdoorsy, too spiritually independent to bother with. National religion media largely agrees — or at least acts like it. Coverage of faith in the Pacific Northwest is thin to the point of invisible.
But here's what I've actually seen on the ground: Two friends, inspired by Buddhist monks, are planning a 90-mile kindness walk in Western Washington. A prayer rug is connecting Muslim and Indigenous communities across the Pacific Northwest. At a Seattle talk, Rick Steves and Episcopal Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee warned packed rooms about the threat of Christian nationalism. None of this is the story of a godless region. It's the story of a region whose religious life has gone largely uncovered.
This year, FāVS News is expanding statewide across Washington. What began in 2012 as a hyperlocal newsroom covering Spokane is now a regional wire syndicating to 15 media partners - and counting. We're adding reporters and columnists and deepening coverage in communities that have never had a religion beat. We're making the case — loudly — that what people believe, how they practice, and how faith shapes public life matters everywhere. Especially here.
For LGBTQ+ readers, that's not an abstract story. Faith communities hold enormous social power — they shape elections, run school boards, operate food banks and foster care systems, and set the cultural temperature of the towns they anchor. The congregations blessing same-sex unions and the ones funding campaigns against our families are both operating in your backyard. When local religion coverage disappears — and it has largely disappeared from American newsrooms over the past two decades — that power goes unexamined. Covering it does more for our communities than ignoring it ever could.
As a queer woman who has spent more than 20 years on this beat, I've sat in sanctuaries that felt like home and ones that made clear I wasn't welcome. I cover both with the same curiosity and the same rigor. That's the job — and it's never been more necessary.
The "none zone" label isn't entirely wrong. The Pacific Northwest does have higher rates of religious disaffiliation than other regions. But disaffiliation isn't the same as indifference to meaning-making, community, or the questions religion has always tried to answer. And the millions of people in this region who do affiliate deserve journalism that takes their lives seriously — and asks hard questions about the institutions that shape them.
FāVS is bringing that coverage to all of Washington. Stonewall News Northwest, a media partner, shares our belief that religion coverage matters. If you have a story about faith, doubt, community, or the ways religion is shaping life around you, we want to hear from you. Reach out at tracysimmons@favs.news. The Pacific Northwest has a religious life. It just needed someone to cover it.
