Luriantics

After my screed against Mara Vanderslice last night, I decided to do a little more research about her. Here’s what I found out.

• Bill Donahue hates her. Well, one point for you Mara. Any enemy of Bill Donahue is a friend of mine.
• She is an evangelical.
  

  She joined an evangelical Bible-study group at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Indiana, and says she was born again one day while singing the hymn “Here I Am, Lord.”

  Not a Methodist, Unitarian, or United Church of Christ member. A biblical literalist. Not my cup of tea, but hey, folks can believe what they want.

• She has dedicated her life to the Democratic party. She wants to see the party, and our platform succeed.
• As an evangelical, she thinks we win if we reach out to evangelicals on their issues.
  

  Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her two-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical Protestants and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

  And from what I’ve read, her strategy is working.

I just wish it didn’t mean compromising on my values Read the rest of this entry »

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Atrios was right to call out Mara Vanderslice, Kerry’s campaign director of religious outreach in 2004, for suggesting that

atheists and agnostics lack a conscience and a sense of values, and these things only come from religion and the religious.

Kos agreed with Atrios, and took the opportunity to digest recent electoral victories - like Jim Webb’s in VA and Jon Tester’s in MT - have restored a sense of strong values to Democratic candidates without vacuous references to religion.

Then, in rides Jim Wallis on his white horse, to slap everyone’s wrist for classic secular leftism that leaves no room for religion. But he missed the point — it’s not that religion can’t be the source of progressive values, it just can’t be the ONLY source. And if we’re going to take our country back from the people that are convinced there’s only one way, we have to be the torch bearers of multiple ways to infuse values in our politics. I think, as a religious lefty who was raised by religious lefties, that there is more than one way to have values.

Then, Pastor Dan takes a well-deserved shot at Wallis’ elitism:

So Mr. Wallis, let’s make [a deal]. How about if you realize that there are other people in the religious grassroots working carefully and productively to make common cause with secular progressives - they’ve been doing it long before you came on the scene, and they’ll be doing long after we’re both gone - and how about if you save your patronizing lectures. In return, we won’t call you a horse’s ass. How about it?

Booyakasha, Pastor Dan. You got it.

But wait, how did this all start again? Someone is taking John Kerry’s religious outreach chair seriously. Taking her seriously is like taking Neville Chamberlain’s chief negotiator seriously. I say we blame her for the whole thing and move on.

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