Obama's Five Pastors and ARIS's Surveys

Paul Harvey

Laurie Goodstein, "Without a Pastor of His Own, Obama Turns to Five," discusses what happened when Obama, unlike our own Jon Pahl, was no longer jammin' with Jeremiah Wright. My favorite passage:

None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming.

Heavens, wouldn't want to be talking about that there global warming thing.

On another note: Gary Laderman takes aim at the ARIS study (reported on here a couple of days ago), in "Sacred and PRofane: ARIS Survey Gets Religion, Misses Boat." Then, Mark Silk responds to him here. The exchange shows both the limitations as well as the utility of religious adherence surveys.