Christianity,  Politics

Michele Bachman’s Leap of Faith

Ryan Lizza has written a thoroughly unflattering article about Michele Bachmann for The New Yorker titled “Leap of Faith: The Making of a Republican Front-runner.” The article takes a close look at her Christianity as a key to understanding her candidacy. He writes:

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared.

Christian readers will be interested to learn that among the dangerous and subversive figures to influence Bachmann are Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey. Regardless of what you think of this candidate, it is worthy of note how Christian conviction is portrayed as “extreme” in this article. Read the rest here.

3 Comments

  • Allie

    And it also makes you wonder if the New Yorker would run such an article in examining the Christian views of Obama…It seems when this was going on, many in the New Yorker decried such actions.

    In conjunction with that, I could also imagine the firestorm if the New Yorker or another major publication ran such a slanted piece involving Mitt and his Mormonism.

  • Christianes

    I did not know all those things about Bachmann. Now, are they TRUE ?
    Or did someone make them up ?

    Not sure of the point of this post.
    Perry seems to enjoy the patronage of the Christian fundamentalist/conservative group so far, so maybe it will benefit HIM to show an article like this about Bachmann, who also has curried the favor of fundamentalist/conservatives.

  • Joshua

    It’s a bit ironic to me that Lizza can only describe Bachman’s beliefs, searching wildly for the fringe, crazy-sounding tidbits from Francis Schaeffer in the midst of a rant on Romanticism. Try as he does to paint her as a right-wing, racist extremist, Ryan has no normative framework from which to judge. And in fact, his assertion that “most Americans” are not even familiar with this hyper-conservative talk of Christian worldview seems unsupported. Never mind that a majority of American’s claim to be Christians. I don’t think that “most Americans” are as scared of pro-life Christians as Ryan Lizza is.

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