The NY Times hypes a friendlier more cuddly type of evangelical...the president of the National Association of Evangelicals! Supposedly Leith Anderson is an example of the new, and people are "holding him up?" Eew.

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Newspapers are at their best when they stick to the facts.

"A man was killed yesterday when the truck he was driving..."

You get the picture: a government is overthrown, 90 people die in a car bombing, a new opinion poll unsettles the earth, etc.

The New York Times does well to report the facts. It is perhaps the best straight news newspaper in the country, especially in foreign affairs.

It does well in its opinion pages. Opinion pages are explicitly biased.

But the Times is utterly disgraceful when articulating a dubious political phenomenon as it did today in a prominent article.

The religious right has had little press or recognition well into the second primary fundraising quarter of the 2008 presidential elections. Why? The issue of gay marriage has disappeared and with it, essentially, the political influence of the church.

How did it all happen? Because Ted Haggard, former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, got outed for having sex with a male prostitute.

Even the Buba types smell hypocrisy when a church condemns homosexuality while its leaders indulge in said behavior.

That leaves pro-business interests with a little problem. Without 20-30 million homophobic white people in near apoplectic rage over gays getting married, the business elite have no way to win an election.

What do I mean? Dahlia Lithwick describes this "bait and switch" tactic in Harper's Magazine. "[President] Bush allowed his base to dream of an America without gay marriage, without abortion, and where black people would know their place.

"But then comes the switch. Bush's actual appointees to the federal bench don't necessarily adhere to a socially conservative worldview...They do have an agenda, but it is not the agenda of the Christian right. It is the agenda of George Bush."

As a result of the scandals that rocked the Christian Right last fall, all the chatter about "family values" has subsided. The church is utterly absent from the political scene. James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family, has tried desperately to grab headlines (most recently praising Mitt Romney), but otherwise the religious right is so far irrelevant. Well, here comes the Times to revise reality.

The old masters like Falwell are dead or ineffective anymore, the Times writes, "In their stead a new generation of leaders who have mostly avoided the openly partisan and confrontational approach of their forebears have become increasingly influential."

You didn't know that, did you?

Where are the facts? What in God's name is the Times referring to? If I look out my window right now, am I going to see a mob of young Christians (who are under the influence) teeming on yonder hilltop?

The Times identifies two new leaders: the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, and the Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago.

And what typifies these youngsters? "The new breed of evangelical leaders...are more likely to speak out about more liberal causes like AIDS, Darfur, poverty and global warming than controversial social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage."

Has the Times handicapped the likelihood? If so, we don't get to see hard numbers.

So Rick Warren and Rev. Bill Hybels, does the Times have your attention now? Your names are on its front pages! Maybe your starting to get some of that influence the Times is reporting that you already have.

But, wait! What's this next paragraph? Everything looks dandy and liberal.

"But the conservative legacy of the religious right persists," the article states, "and abortion continues to be a defining issue, even a litmus test, for most evangelicals, including younger ones, according to interviews and survey data. "

Uh oh, so at the end of the day, you still have to vote Republican if you're a Christian. We get an interview from somebody, maybe he's a new leader.

"'The abortion issue is going to continue to be a unifying factor among evangelicals and Catholics,' said the Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who is often held up as an example of the new model of conservative Christian leaders. 'That’s not going to go away.'"

What's this? The president of the National Association of Evangelicals is being touted as one of the new leaders? That's not possible. The NAE is Ted Haggard's old romping ground. The NAE is Religious Right politics as usual.

And who are the people who "often" hold up Leith Anderson as an example of the new model of conservative Christian leaders?

The NAE is in bed with the corporate agenda. They are part and parcel of the bait-and-switch that Lithwick describes.

The Times lured us in with a nice little tale about a new breed of Christianity, they promised us that this new breed of Christianity is gaining political influence (even at a time of devastating diminution for the church), then they introduce us to the new leaders and they are the very same who have made themselves irrelevant and in need of a boost from the Times in the first place.

How can the Times write so many unsubstantiated claims and get away with it? How can the Times pander so completely to the false paradigm of abortion being an election topic. Abortion is an electoral issue created by the business elite to win elections.

Jerry Falwell & Co. (from whichever pole of the world he's chuckling over this article from) couldn't have paid the Times to write a better article.

Authors Bio:

Dean Powers lives in Castleton, VT. He has apprenticed at several newspapers including The Nation. He currently writes for OpEdNews. He can be found at facebook.com/deanppowers.