I would suggest a “Some Of Our Best Friends” Award for those blogs or political organizations that partly depend on evangelical votes or money, but in fact feature few if any evangelicals.
They can be relied on to say, “Some of our best friends are evangelicals. . . ” but can never seem to find one to exercise genuine leadership.
For example, is there an actual evangelical who writes for NRO’s (very excellent and informative group blog) the Corner? As the 2008 primaries showed many, many conservative voters are evangelicals (not all evangelicals of course are political conservatives, but most are) . . . but I cannot recall one who regularly writes on the Corner. By my count there may be more atheist/agnostic writers there than evangelicals. Given the demographics of the right/conservatism isn’t that a bit odd?
October 20th, 2009 | 2:38 pm | #1
Asked about the name of the award (“Some of Our Best Friends”), I would reply that I drew it from the terrifically disturbing reply to any question about whether a man has issues with group X: “Some of our best friends are X!” . . . as if nobody with disturbing views ever had a “friend” in the group they misunderstood.
Rule of Thumb: One can be pals with a person while still generalizing badly about their group. (Especially under the “y is a good X” rule . . . where the y you know is a good X as opposed to all those other silly Xs.)
October 20th, 2009 | 2:40 pm | #2
Let me comment on my own comment . . . he said Obama-ishly . . . and say that there is an Uncle Tony type who enjoys being the “good evangelical” while allowing the rest of his kith and kin to be stereotyped.
October 20th, 2009 | 2:48 pm | #3
Well, Mark Hemingway writes for them pretty regularly; or don’t Missouri Synod Lutherans (like me) count as evangelicals?
October 20th, 2009 | 2:51 pm | #4
If I count, then Lutherans count for sure!
I would suggest, however, that a few good (thoughtful) Southern Baptists would even things out.
October 20th, 2009 | 2:56 pm | #5
. . . don’t Missouri Synod Lutherans (like me) count as evangelicals?
Anthony Sacramone confirmed for me today that Lutherans can indeed be evangelical. ; )
Ironically, the Lutherans who would least likely identify as evangelicals are probably those from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
Good point about Hemingway, though. He definitely counts as (a) an evangelical and (b) someone who posts over there often.
October 20th, 2009 | 3:01 pm | #6
It is good to know about Hemingway, but I still maintain that based on their votes/numbers in the movement evangelicals are radically under served and other groups over represented. I am NOT calling for weird affirmative action, but sensible market sensitivity.
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