Good point but it's not talking to a journal not a person, I thought he wants to avoid misrepresentation
How is that so? Race, sexual orientation, gender, age, sure. Religion on the other hand is no different from ideology (or rather, in my view many left/right-wing ideologies are not very different from religions) - they can be chosen and abandoned freely, and they are prescriptive.
Not talking to someone based on their religion on the other hand is really quite rude, shallow and discriminatory.