Jimmy Carter is not a saint. If you doubt that, read Steven Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter. But The New York Times never noticed that book. Last Sunday, they boosted Randall Balmer’s Carter book Redeemer, which pitches Carter metaphorically as...Christ-like.
It’s bad enough that Balmer uses his book to claim nastily that the Religious Right was organized by the late Paul Weyrich around segregationism. Reviewer Molly Worthen began by claiming “Jimmy Carter may be the most pious man ever to have occupied the White House. He was ‘born again’ at age 11 and has taught Sunday school for decades.”
Molly Worthen
By Tim Graham | June 14, 2014 | 7:25 AM EDT
By Ken Shepherd | August 19, 2011 | 4:07 PM EDT
It's not just conservative evangelicals like me who think liberals like Daily Beast/Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg are whipped into a paranoid frenzy over Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann's supposed ties to Christian "dominionism."
Washington Post religion writer Lisa Miller -- no stranger to criticism from NewsBusters -- took to the "On Faith" blog yesterday to tell readers to "Beware false prophets who fear evangelicals."
I've included some excerpts of her piece after the page break (my emphasis in bold italics):
By Ken Shepherd | January 12, 2009 | 3:25 PM EST
Perhaps the New York Times is just predestined not to get religion.
Taking on Calvinistic preacher Mark Driscoll's brand of Reformed theology, writer Molly Worthen -- herself a graduate of a formerly Puritan university -- gave readers of the New York Times magazine a skewed picture of what exactly the evangelical pastor's theology teaches about sin and redemption.
In her January 6 article, "Who Would Jesus Smack Down," Worthen -- who studied American religious history at Yale University-- portrayed the founding pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church as an edgy hipster "cussing" pastor who chagrins religious conservatives and liberals alike, all while confounding evangelicals with his Calvinistic take on biblical theology.
While there is a grain of truth to the characterization of Driscoll* having critics to his left and right, Worthen betrays her ignorance about Calvinism, starting in the third paragraph of her article (emphasis mine):