{"id":12604,"date":"2013-01-02T14:41:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T19:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=12604"},"modified":"2013-01-02T14:41:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T19:41:21","slug":"the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/","title":{"rendered":"The push-back against the push-back begins: &#8216;Mainstream&#8217; evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Well, I told you this was coming.<\/p>\n<p>Last month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/12\/24\/dobson-huckabee-get-a-bit-of-push-back-from-mainstream-evangelicals\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">I wrote about a modest bit of push-back<\/a> from \u201cmainstream\u201d evangelicals against the appalling things said by several religious right leaders following the massacre in Newtown, Conn.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Franklin Graham disgraced themselves by blaming the shootings on the separation of church and state, same-sex marriage and legal abortion, prompting widespread criticism from a wide variety of Christian leaders and just about anyone else who heard what they said.<\/p>\n<p>But, as usual, mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were hesitant to condemn those remarks. Their constituency, after all, is the same white evangelical populace that watches Huckabee on Fox News, listens to Dobson and Fischer on the radio (on 7,000 and 200 stations, respectively), and that inexplicably regards Franklin Graham as the legitimate heir to his father\u2019s legacy. They are thus, understandably, rather timid about criticizing those folks.<\/p>\n<p>Yet a handful of \u201cmainstream\u201d evangelical types did clear their throats and respond to Huckabee and Dobson, including Out of Ur, which is the blog of <em>Leadership Journal,<\/em> the magazine for pastors put out by the folks at <em>Christianity Today.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em>Out of Ur published a guest post by Michael Cheshire, an evangelical pastor from Colorado, who wrote, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.outofur.com\/archives\/2012\/12\/they_think_were.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">They Think We\u2019re a Hate Group, and They Might Be Right<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Cheshire compared the vocal and visible leaders of the evangelical religious right with a \u201ccrazy uncle\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I feel like I\u2019m with a crazy uncle who makes ignorant comments while you\u2019re helping him shop. You have to stand behind him and mouth, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry. He\u2019s old and bit crazy. He means well.\u201d So to my gay friends, scientists, iPhone users, and others he blamed for the horrendous killing spree by that mentally ill young man, I stand here mouthing a few words of apology to you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The rest of Cheshire\u2019s piece was pretty forceful, so much so that I worried \u201c\u2026 it might get him banished into the limbo of \u2018controversial\u2019 evangelical voices \u2014 Cizik-ed away to a seat beside folks like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis, whose continued membership in the tribe is permitted mainly as a way of marking its boundary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that didn\u2019t take long. Less than two weeks later, Skye Jethani posted Out of Ur\u2019s backpedaling semi-retraction of Cheshire\u2019s comments: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.outofur.com\/archives\/2013\/01\/no_were_not_a_h.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">No, We\u2019re Not a Hate Group<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jethani explains that the religious right is not representative of the silent majority of American evangelicals. That\u2019s a false impression, he says, created by sensationalistic journalists and, Jethani says \u2014 citing Timothy Dalrymple \u2014 created by wily progressive Christians. He links to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/philosophicalfragments\/2012\/12\/13\/who-owns-evangelicalism-in-america\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Dalrymple\u2019s unique explanation for the rise of the religious right<\/a>. It\u2019s due, he says, to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2026 people like Fred Clark. I think Fred dramatically underestimates the extent to which he and his ilk shape the public and media perception of evangelicals when they shine a relentless light on every ridiculous and offensive thing an evangelical pastor or radio host does, and completely ignore the good and important work that the vast majority of evangelicals do on a regular basis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12605\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12605\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2013\/01\/Fischer.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12605  \" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2013\/01\/Fischer-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12605\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bryan Fischer speaks at the 2012 Values Voter summit in Washington. Organizers apparently asked Mitt Romney whom he would like to have speak just prior to his speech. Gov. Romney quickly consulted my blog, saw that I had written nearly a dozen posts criticizing Fischer, and requested Fischer precede him because, Romney said, \u201cFred and his ilk shape the public and media perception.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Yes, it\u2019s all true. I started this blog in 2002. At the time, James Dobson was an inconsequential figure broadcasting his radio message daily on a mere 7,000 stations (mostly <em>AM<\/em>). He\u2019d only written a couple dozen books at that point, and only half of those had become national best-sellers. And only 500 or so of the thousands of newspapers and evangelical publications in America bothered to carry his weekly column.<\/p>\n<p>But once I started shining my \u201crelentless light on every ridiculous and offensive thing an evangelical pastor or radio host does,\u201d that criticism \u2014 cleverly disguised as posts about the Iraq War, eschatology, Buffy, Niebuhr, subsidiarity and manufactured housing \u2014 catapulted James Dobson to national fame, leading <em>Time<\/em> magazine to dub him \u201cthe nation\u2019s most influential evangelical leader.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve done the same thing for countless others \u2014 Franklin Graham, Rick Warren, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins and dozens of other such figures who I\u2019ve managed to elevate without ever even <em>mentioning<\/em> them here.<\/p>\n<p>My very first substantial post, on my original blogspot site, criticized Pat Robertson for selling \u201csentergistic\u201d anti-aging milkshakes. The effect of that post was so powerful that it lifted Robertson to a second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses <em>14 years earlier<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>My influence is vast, unstoppable and <em>retroactive<\/em>. Or, alternatively, Dalrymple and Jethani might be talking out of their backsides. It\u2019s one of those.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, Jethani\u2019s endorsement of Dalrymple\u2019s weirdly anachronistic history of the religious right is not the biggest problem with his attempted rebuttal of Cheshire\u2019s piece. The biggest problem with Jethani\u2019s post is that it\u2019s pastoral malpractice. We\u2019ll get to that in part 2.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were mostly reluctant to criticize the appalling post-Newtown statements by their social conservative peers Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Frankling Graham, That&#8217;s understandable. Their constituency, after all, is the same white evangelical populace that watches Huckabee on Fox News, listens to Dobson and Fischer on the radio, and that inexplicably regards Franklin Graham as the legitimate heir to his father&#8217;s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-12604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-religious-right"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The push-back against the push-back begins: &#039;Mainstream&#039; evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were mostly reluctant to criticize the appalling post-Newtown statements by their social conservative peers Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Frankling Graham, That&#039;s understandable. Their constituency, after all, is the same white evangelical populace that watches Huckabee on Fox News, listens to Dobson and Fischer on the radio, and that inexplicably regards Franklin Graham as the legitimate heir to his father&#039;s legacy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The push-back against the push-back begins: &#039;Mainstream&#039; evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were mostly reluctant to criticize the appalling post-Newtown statements by their social conservative peers Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Frankling Graham, That&#039;s understandable. Their constituency, after all, is the same white evangelical populace that watches Huckabee on Fox News, listens to Dobson and Fischer on the radio, and that inexplicably regards Franklin Graham as the legitimate heir to his father&#039;s legacy.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-02T19:41:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2013\/01\/Fischer-300x225.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/\",\"name\":\"The push-back against the push-back begins: 'Mainstream' evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-01-02T19:41:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-02T19:41:21+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were mostly reluctant to criticize the appalling post-Newtown statements by their social conservative peers Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Frankling Graham, That's understandable. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The push-back against the push-back begins: 'Mainstream' evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right","description":"Mainstream evangelical leaders, magazines, bloggers and spokespeople were mostly reluctant to criticize the appalling post-Newtown statements by their social conservative peers Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Bryan Fischer and Frankling Graham, That's understandable. 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Their constituency, after all, is the same white evangelical populace that watches Huckabee on Fox News, listens to Dobson and Fischer on the radio, and that inexplicably regards Franklin Graham as the legitimate heir to his father's legacy.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/the-push-back-against-the-push-back-begins-mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The push-back against the push-back begins: &#8216;Mainstream&#8217; evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":"&quot;Test everything; hold fast to what is good.&quot;","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}