Welcome to another installment of LOVEboldly’s interview series. Previously , Randy Roberts Potts, Derek Webb (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), Logan Mehl-Laituri, Tripp York, Wesley Hill, Jen Thweatt-Bates, Peterson Toscano, Jenell Paris, and Alan Chambers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) offered their perspectives on a number of issues related to faith and sexuality. Now we are privileged to share an interview with Jeff Chu.
Over his eclectic journalistic career, Jeff Chu has interviewed presidents and paupers, corporate execs and preachers, Britney Spears and Ben Kingsley. As a writer and editor for Time, Conde Nast Portfolio, and Fast Company, he has compiled a portfolio that includes stories on megahit-making Swedish songwriters (a piece for which he went clubbing in Stockholm); James Bond (for which he stood on a Spanish beach and watched Halle Berry emerge from the waves over and over and over); undercover missionaries in the Arab world (he traveled to North Africa and went to church); and the decline of Christianity in Europe (he prayed). On the wall of his New York office, you’ll find a quote from former Senator John Warner, who once told Jeff: “You’re a good little interviewer!”
A California native, Jeff went to high school at Miami’s Westminster Christian, where he sat behind Alex Rodriguez in Mr. Warner’s world history class. A graduate of Princeton and the London School of Economics, Jeff has received fellowships from the Phillips Foundation and the French-American Foundation, and in 2012, was part of the Seminar on Debates in Religion and Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School. The nephew and grandson of Baptist preachers, he is an elder at Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York. He loves the San Francisco 49ers, the Book of Ecclesiastes, and clementines. And he detests marzipan more than he can explain in words (Amazon).
I wanted to hear others’ stories, and to have the room to process all that for myself. I wanted to understand the ways in which other people had tried (or failed) to reconcile their faith with their sexuality. I wanted to get a glimpse of the choices they made, the struggles they had, and the lessons they learned, so that I could try to figure things out for myself.
Jeff Chu, an editor and writer at Fast Company, leads the magazine’s coverage of China, philanthropy, and urban affairs. Before coming to Fast Company, he spent a very long nine months at the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio and seven years at Time magazine, where he was a London-based staff writer (his first cover story was on Britney Spears and her Swedish songwriter, Max Martin) and then a New York-based writer and editor. The grandson of a Baptist preacher, he has written and reported extensively on religion, both at Time and at Fast Company.
Jeff was born in California and went to high school at Westminster Christian in Miami, where he sat behind Alex Rodriguez in Mr. Warner’s world history class. A graduate of Princeton and the London School of Economics, Jeff was a 2004 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow (his project examined complaint in American history) and a 2011-2012 French-American Foundation Young Leader.
– See more at: http://doesjesusreallyloveme.com/about/#sthash.HGaK6VCj.dpuf
Jeff Chu, an editor and writer at Fast Company, leads the magazine’s coverage of China, philanthropy, and urban affairs. Before coming to Fast Company, he spent a very long nine months at the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio and seven years at Time magazine, where he was a London-based staff writer (his first cover story was on Britney Spears and her Swedish songwriter, Max Martin) and then a New York-based writer and editor. The grandson of a Baptist preacher, he has written and reported extensively on religion, both at Time and at Fast Company.
Jeff was born in California and went to high school at Westminster Christian in Miami, where he sat behind Alex Rodriguez in Mr. Warner’s world history class. A graduate of Princeton and the London School of Economics, Jeff was a 2004 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow (his project examined complaint in American history) and a 2011-2012 French-American Foundation Young Leader.
– See more at: http://doesjesusreallyloveme.com/about/#sthash.HGaK6VCj.dpuf