Today’s Reading List – October 17, 2007
It's a Fundamental Avalanche…
Yesterday it was an official of Bob Jones University, today it is Bob Jones III himself endorsing Romney. As we noted yesterday Bob Jones University is FUNDAMENTALIST – those are the creedal Christians that make the Evangelicals look like liberals. As Hugh Hewitt and I discussed on the radio yesterday, if the Fundamentalists are opening the door, the Evangelicals will likely go through it in droves.
There are those to the right of the Bob Jones University, like Bill Keller, but a move like this puts those people so far out on the fringe as to not be worth the effort.
And yet, Michael Luo at the NYTimes thinks Romney is proceeding "gingerly." Frankly, Romney cannot jump on this too hard or he risks alienating people, but Luo's piece, which is the same old, same old, in light of the recent developments from the third party threat to these BJU endorsement just puts the lie to that narrative. It is time for the MSM to get their story right.
Lowell: The news media, especially the MSM, loves a story, and to have a story they need protagonists and antagonists, conflict, and so forth. So when someone says, "Mormons don't worship the same God (or Jesus) that orthodox Christians do," writers like Luo eat that up. Fact is, that argument is so esoteric to most people that it just doesn't make sense. But it makes great copy.
As seems to be typical for the MSM, they are analyzing this election cycle in the last one's terms. The Dallas Morning News notes how evangelical politics is changing:
For many conservative evangelical Christians younger than 30, family values mean more than the issues of gay marriage, abortion and prayer in school. [Emphasis added.]
That, more than anything, is what creedal Christians and Mormons hold most in common.
Breathlessly reported…
By Matt Lewis – there may be a religion speech? Key words:
When it comes to making Romney campaign decisions, I'm told, the candidate makes the final decision. But his advisers are strongly pushing him toward this direction, and it appears his campaign is headed in that direction.
Let me "translate" that for you. A staffer that thinks there should be a speech is floating yet another in an endless series of trial balloons to the press trying to build public sentiment to lever the Governor with.
If I were the Governor I would listen to the people he meets on the stump, not the reporters mind you, the voters. Are they asking about it? I don't think so, at least not most of them.
Quick Links…
OK, it's official, Slate is just weird.
Some good words about how this whole politics thing ought to be done.
Inside Catholic political involvement.
How It's Not Done…
But about 50 people showed up to talk about the war, poverty and trying to seize back the moral mantle some in the GOP claim. The night also featured an Obama video and a campaign altar call…
[...]
…aid Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. "If you are going to parse the different dimensions of how a presidential candidate does religion, he's doing them all."
[...]
The Mount Olive AME Church member signed on as a "congregation contact."
I thought it was the Republicans that pushed the religion/politics line!?
Lowell: It's interesting, isn't it? It seems that when Democrats rely on religion as a moral basis for using government for charitable purposes (e.g., feeding the hungry, clothing the naked), that is acceptable; but when Republicans rely on religion as a basis for holding the line on, or promoting standards of behavior (anti-pornography, pro-traditional marriage, anti-abortion) that is frightening or disturbing.
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jagreer on 17 Oct 2007 at 11:07 am #
FWIW, neither Dr. Taylor or Dr. Jones are “creedal” Christians. Being fundamentalist Christians, they have rejected historic Christian creeds.
A common saying would be “No book but the Bible and no creed but Christ” You have to go into a bit of the history of the fundamentalist movement to understand why, going back to the stating of the fundamentals, but they are independent Christians, not belonging to any denomination.
Mitt Romney and his campaign have made considerable efforts to reach out to the conservative and Christian community in the Upstate of South Carolina. It hasn’t at all been unusual in the past year or so, for Romney to hold discussions and forums with leaders like Dr. Taylor, Dr. Jones, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, who pastors a church about five miles form the Bob Jones campus, etc.
The eastern half of Greenville County, SC, probably accounts of 10% of the GOP primary electorate in the state of SC. Dr. Taylor represents part of that area on county council and is influential there, and Dr. Jones, mostly in retirement now from University administration, represents a significant voice among conservatives.