Jeff Sharlett, The New RepublicThis shocking! development was reported by Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation two months ago. (And duly mocked here in Rantburg.) Strangely enough, TNR does not give Ehrenreich credit as a source.
Clinton, an evangelically inclined Methodist, is by far the most religiously rooted and theologically astute of the three candidates, a Christian intellectual schooled in the cold war religion of Reinhold Niebuhr's post-leftist years.
Clinton's faith is not the liberal version of Christianity that Democratic leaders have traditionally invoked--instead, her version, exemplified by her alliance with a shadowy network of powerful conservative Christians,
Eeeeeek! Christers! Aaaaahh, get 'em off me!
is steeped in the kind of establishmentarianism that she has otherwise tried to distance herself from throughout the primary season.
| That'd make her antidisestablishmentarian, I'd guess. What's her position on the homoöusian controversy? |
She attends prayer breakfasts! She probably even eats the French toast!!!
"Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer"--and the de facto leader of the The Family, dubbed by Time the "Stealth Persuader"--
| aka Good Pope Doug... |
| With my own eyes I've seen him turn water into root beer. |
Eeeeew! Ick! Gross!
Of course, The Family no more owns Hillary than Jeremiah Wright's beliefs define Obama's or John Hagee will choose John McCain's bombing targets. For one thing, Hillary is not a member of Coe's Family.
(which kind of undermines the preceeding 2,500 words of alarmism)
Rather, she's a "Friend," a semi-formal designation that marks her as less elect than a member but more chosen than the rest of us. Her goals are not always their goals, but, when they coincide, Hillary and Family members work well together, as on initiatives to reframe workplace religious freedom as a license for religious discrimination and international religious freedom as a justification for an interventionist foreign policy. As with Wright and Obama, the problem is not whom Clinton knows, but the ideas she shares.
Don't elect her! She'll get Christer cooties all over the Democratic Party!
It's interesting to note the comments from TNR readers following the article. Nobody questions the accuracy of TNR's characterization of the group. (They're subscribers and true believers of the moonbat faith. To question TNR would be apostacy! Blasphemy, even!) Nobody asks if we should be similarly concerned that Obama is one of them damned superstitious fundo-Christers too. One commentrer does wonder aloud, "Would anyone besides me relish the opportunity to vote for a politician who--cough, sputter--was, you know--ahem--an atheist?"