LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY mysticknyght)

...it's an interview with Evangelical author Randall Balmer, who is promoting his new book, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament.

Evangelical: Religious Right Has Distorted the Faith

President Bush and the Republican Party find strong support among evangelical voters. But in his new book, Thy Kingdom Come, author Randall Balmer says that allegiance is misplaced.

"I don't find much that I recognize as Christian" in the religious right, says Balmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University and contributing editor to Christianity Today.

He says blind allegiance to the Republican Party has distorted the faith of politically active evangelicals, leading them to misguided positions on issues such as abortion and

I like how he takes Evangelicals to task for being "pro-life" with respect to abortion but so silent on the subject of torture.

Another interesting aspect of this particular interview is that the reporter is NPR veteran Linda Wertheimer and not "religion" reporter Barbara Bradley Haggerty. Haggerty received some serious and scathing criticism for some atrocious reporting on Kerry in the 2004 election, as well as extremely biased reporting on "Intelligent Design" in 2005. Her ethics have been questioned because of outside "seminars" in which she's participated.

When all this blew up, NPR glossed over Haggerty's misdeeds, but it appears from her workload (her last story was in March) that she's been benched.

The link has an excerpt from his book, as well. Interesting reading.