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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged

PEARL, Miss. — Jerry Mitchell is a legendary investigative reporter — and a devoted Christian who characterizes his secular job as both a calling and a ministry.

In a journalism career that stretches back 50 years to his high school days, Mitchell has earned dozens of the profession’s top awards.

His stories played a major role in putting four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars and helped free two people from death row. In 2009, his intrepid reporting earned him a $500,000 “genius grant” — a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I first met Mitchell 20 years ago on a trip to Mississippi. My family and I worshipped at Mitchell’s home congregation, the Skyway Hills Church of Christ in the Jackson suburb of Pearl, and then enjoyed Sunday lunch with him at a Cracker Barrel (where else?).

At the time, just a few weeks had passed since the June 21, 2005, conviction of reputed Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. 

The Killen verdict was returned on the 41st anniversary of the June 21, 1964, slayings. Only a God who loves justice could have arranged that timing, Mitchell told me then.

“God’s timing is not man’s timing. It never is,” said the journalist, who taped Jeremiah 32:27 to his computer: “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”

Mitchell worked for three decades for the Clarion-Ledger, the daily newspaper in Jackson. He left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Now an investigative reporter for Mississippi Today, he is the author of the 2020 memoir “Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era.”

Mitchell recently accepted an invitation to join the national board of trustees for The Christian Chronicle, the Oklahoma City-based publication where I serve as editor-in-chief. 

In a podcast hosted by the Chronicle’s B.T. Irwin, Mitchell talked about faith and journalism. I found his perspective compelling. These highlights from the interview have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity:

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.

Photo provided by Jerry Mitchell