My second weekly wrap-up column is now online over at Baptists Today. Go check it out.
Here’s a snippet:
Two Newsweek articles must be mentioned. The first titled “Faces of the Christian Right” by David A. Graham is really religion journalism at its worst. Graham includes in his Christian Right list both Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest University Divinity School. Rogers and Wallis are included alongside Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), conservative philosopher Robert George (Manhattan Declaration), Jim Daly (Focus on the Family) and Maggie Gallagher (National Organization for Women).
Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches calls David Graham’s Christian Right list “strange” and points out the obvious: that “legal scholar Melissa Rogers is most decidedly not a member of the Christian right.” Sarah Pulliam Bailey echoes that sentiment over at Get Religion. Bailey asks: “So leaders of the Christian left are now part of the Christian right?” Southern Baptist academic and blogger Denny Burk suggests that Newsweek needs to “rehire Jon Meacham to edit their religion reporting.” That’s not a bad idea!
Read the entire column here.
Be sure to read the Get Religion critique of David A. Graham’s article.
A few good quotes from from the Get Religion post titled Um, Wallis represents the new Christian Right?
Jim Wallis has been calling the religious right dead for a while now. I can’t imagine his surprise when he was included in Newsweek’s new list on “faces of the Christian right.” It is as if the editors at Newsweek are saying, “Ha ha, you thought it was dead, but you’re actually the leader of it — joke’s on you!”
Perhaps writer David A. Graham didn’t write the headline, but he certainly makes a lot of assumptions in his slideshow attempting to capture the current politically-inclined religious leaders.
…Back to Wallis, the author describes him as flying the flag of the “Christian left,” if it exists….So leaders of the Christian left are now part of the Christian right?
David A. Graham ( on Twitter @GrahamDavidA) is a 23-year-old reporter at Newsweek with a B.A. in Islamic Studies & Arabic from Duke.
Wow. I’d like to see a corresponding article on the Christian left to see if anyone remains.
On another note, I’m glad to see that you have time to write again, I’ve always enjoyed your very astute commentary.
interesting article for sure- except Maggie Gallagher is not with the feminist NOW, but instead with NOM- the National Organization for Marriage.
Don’t we get it yet? To much of world, anyone with some actual belief in some basic tenets of Christianity is “the religious right.”
Christian = religious right.
Get ready for it.