‘America’s Churches’: FNC’s Benjamin Hall Visits God’s House

The first three episodes of America’s Churches are now streaming on Fox Nation.

But, none of them is on the list of churches I sent to the host, Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, after we spoke last year.

So, we had to have a chat about that.

Not My St. Louis Cathedral on America’s Churches

In the fall of 2025, I talked to Hall about his two books chronicling his devastating injuries in Ukraine while reporting on the war there, and his near-miraculous recovery (you can read about it, and watch the video, here).

One outgrowth of that recovery was a reawakening of his faith. He mentioned he was thinking of visiting churches for a series on streaming service Fox Nation. He asked for some suggestions, and I forwarded a lengthy list.

Got all excited when I saw that St. Louis Cathedral was on the list for America’s Churches, until I realized it was the one in New Orleans, not the St. Louis, Missouri, one on my list.

“I knew you were going to ask me that, as well,” said Hall, when we spoke on Holy Thursday.

The initial three episodes for America’s Churches look at the Brigade of Midshipmen Chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy; the New Orleans cathedral; and the interfaith Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University.

There are also a few clips highlighting other places — and none of those was on my list, either. But there are reasons behind the ones that are on the show.

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What Benjamin Hall Was Looking for in Churches

British-born Hall is normally based in London, but on the day we spoke about America’s Churches, he was at Fox News HQ in New York City, filling in for anchorman John Roberts on the daily FNC show America Reports.

“Look,” he said, “it was a long list … there will still be some churches yet to come. But I tell you what we wanted to do initially is we wanted to focus, first of all, with the first three on each one connected to something different.

“So the Naval Academy, wanted faith and service. We wanted faith and disaster, so we wanted Katrina. So, New Orleans and Katrina.

“We wanted education as well. And Syracuse is a university that’s really open to faith and education and embracing that and sports.

“And so we really liked the three different themes of each one. And although the churches are beautiful in each, we really wanted a deep understanding of what the church did to that community in different senses. And that’s why we picked the first three.

“Churches are so beautiful, and they have history in them and everything else, but they’re about communities. They’re about bringing people together.

“You go to churches at your best moments and your worst moments, which I find so fascinating. There’s nowhere else in the world that you do that, nowhere else.

“And so that’s how we picked these first three, was focusing on different themes for each one.”

OK, I forgive him.

A Catholic Journalist Begins a Journey Back Home

Visiting churches isn’t something that Hall, who spent decades as a war correspondent, normally had as a priority.

But the devastation of war, and his own personal experience, led to a reawakening of the faith of his childhood, handed down by his Filipino/Scottish father.

“I was raised a Catholic, strict Catholic,” he said. “I was educated in a Benedictine monastery, and it was my whole life really.

“And as I started covering conflict, I sort of drifted away from it. And I spent many years in the Middle East, and I saw wars. And I covered so many natural disasters.

“And all those questions about, why does God allow these? Why do some of these people say they’re doing it in God’s name, in Allah’s name? So very different, but …”

Not everybody covers war or disaster, but like many people in their 20s, Hall began to drift from the faith of his youth.

But, he said, “There were always a few stories that brought me back to my religion. I remember seeing this one church in Northern Syria, ISIS had demolished it.

“They’d targeted it on purpose, right in the desert. They’d put mines around it, they’d burnt it down, and we went there during the battle against ISIS.

“I remember walking through the one path they’d cleared into this church that had been burnt and bombed, and there was this burnt altar, the walls burnt, the ceiling fallen in, but the crucifix was still standing in the most amazing way, and it was lit up.

“And I walked in and I’d just got this incredible feeling. And even though I was on my journey, I stood there in that moment and I felt it again.

“And there were a few occasions where I would feel it again, and so it never left me. And I was always talking about it and thinking about it.”

Calling Out From the Foxhole

Then came the end of Hall’s frontline-reporting career, when, on March 14, 2022, he lay, severely hurt, on a road outside of Kyiv, the victim of incoming fire.

He said, “And when I was injured in Ukraine, right after the attack and I was lying there and really badly injured, and I thought of my family.

“And then the next thing I did is I asked God to please save me and get me home. There, again, in that moment, I turned back to God, and I asked Him.

“They say there’s no atheist in a foxhole and, boy, did I find that. But it really didn’t just bring me back straight away.”

By the way, I highly recommend Hall’s books, Saved and Resolute (especially the audio versions, which he reads).

Saved, the story of how he was exfiltrated from Ukraine, is the stuff of an adventure film. Resolute chronicles the saga of his recovery at the Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio, Texas. There, he … I’ll let him tell it.

Hall Finds Faith … Again

Hall asked himself why God had allowed him to be nearly killed, and why his colleagues on that day, Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, had to die.

He may have been on the long road to recovery, but his faith journey had stalled. BAMC had a hospital chapel, but Hall didn’t go in, until one day …

He recalled, “It was next to the canteen on the military base. It was such a long line at the canteen one day. I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go into the chapel.’ That was kind of the moment.

“I wheeled in and just that feeling that I’ve always got when you go into churches, to be reflective, to sit there, to talk to Pierre and Sasha, who had died.

“I sat there and the chaplain was there, and I spoke to him. It just became this idea of not, ‘Why did God allow this to happen to you?’, it’s, ‘How can God help you to get through it? What can you build on this?’

“That was just the beginning of it.”

Going Into America’s Churches — and Other Ones

Hall said he often goes into churches when he sees them, just to sit and reflect.

“Since I went into that chapel,” he said, “I’ve started going more often again, and my faith started to rebuild itself.

“I approached Fox and I said, ‘Look, I think churches are beautiful. First of all, they’ve got history. Can I go off around America and can I go and talk about a few certain churches?'”

There are those who love to go to churches and feel the presence of God — and there are those who say they don’t need a church to do that.

Hall understands both.

“I had parents,” he said, “who both were on two different sides of that. My father loved churches and everything about them, and the architecture and the history.

“My mother felt she could find religion anywehre. She loved walking onto a field and sitting under a beautiful tree. My mother was saying, ‘No, it’s everywhere. It’s under that tree.’

“My father always said, “Yes, but you feel as if you are in God’s house when you’re in church,’ is how my father thought. But it is everywhere.”

God Is Everywhere, But a Church Is a House of God

In Catholic theology, because (except on Good Friday), a church contains Consecrated Hosts — which are the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ — the Master of the House is always home. That’s the meaning of the lit Vigil Light.

Hall said he definitely feels closer to God when he’s in a church, leaving his troubles outside the door.

“That’s what I do in church,” he said. “I just let those disappear, and I just go back to the one thing that matters everything. It’s just your moment to sit there and talk to God and to think about the bigger things.

“I think of family, I talk to my parents … just the much bigger, bigger issues. I walk out of there and I always feel that weight has been lifted in a certain degree.

“When I go to church, and I quite often go not for Mass, like if I’m between meetings, and I’m driving around, and I know there’s a church, and I’ll just swing by.

“I’ll run in because I want to say a prayer. I always run in, but I always walk out slowly.

“It’s as if something has sort of just slowed me down, reminded me not to get so worked up, hyped up about things, and just slow it all down again and appreciate things you’ve got.”

The Current Catholic Moment

For whatever reason, the numbers of people coming into the Catholic Church at this year’s Easter Vigil Mass appeared to be up, not just in the U.S., but in Europe.

They’re not record numbers, which were much higher in the year 2000, but according to a piece in The Pillar, they do generally represent a reversal of the downward trend of recent years.

And, if social media is to be believed (and the evidence of my own eyes), a lot of these folks either being baptized and confirmed, or just confirmed, are young adults.

Social media also reflects a trend toward young adults attending Mass — at least in New York City.

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Hall Feels a Part of the One Big Catholic Family

I asked Hall about this, and he thinks it’s a ripple effect of COVID and the upheaval and uncertainty in the world, as many young people seek family, community and tradition.

My own parish priest talked about the Faith as a family today at Easter morning Mass. That’s what Hall felt when was standing in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican in Rome, on assignment to cover the conclave in 2025.

He recalled, “Standing among them and realizing that I was part of this huge group of people all unified with one belief, one idea, standing there and looking up at St. Peter’s. That was a defining moment for me.

“And you can forget the power of the Church perhaps, but that reminded me in such a big way. And people from every country, of every age, of every nationality and race, all there together. It was a remarkable moment.

“I left there, and I went home to my wife and I said, ‘That might well have been the most incredible story that I felt, more than any of the wars or anything I’ve done.’

“There was something so unifying about that moment. And maybe that led to wanting to make this series as well, because I really thought about faith after that.”