At Christianity Today, Sarah Pulliam reports that some prominent Christian conservatives not only dislike being associated with the “Religious Right” but also question the conceptual legitimacy of the term and the group that it supposedly denotes:
Like Warren, many groups would rather distance themselves from the Religious Right, even though they may agree on several political issues. Richard Land said he corrects numerous reporters who call him a leader of the Religious Right, explaining that he represents a group of Southern Baptists who would probably consider themselves conservative evangelicals.
“When the so-called ‘Religious Right’ agrees with us, we applaud their good taste and good judgment,” said Land, who is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Some phrases need to be eliminated from journalists’ vocabulary entirely, he said. “Until Tony Perkins or Jim Dobson puts a pistol on the table and threatens to kill someone, they shouldn’t be called ayatollah of the Right or the Jihadists of the Right.”
Read the entire article here. See also The Immanent Frame’s recent series on evangelicals & evangelicalisms.
