We know that liberals try to offer the cartoonish argument that conservatives should not be granted positions in government because they don’t believe in goverment. By that statement, why would you offer the job of Dean of Washington’s stately National Cathedral to a minister who believes the church as an institution is obsolete?
Washington Post “On Faith” founder Sally Quinn interviewed Rev. Gary Hall at Pub Theology Night in the cellar of the Bier Baron in downtown Washington. Hall told Quinn a big old church was no place to evangelize the people:
Gary Hall
By Tim Graham | November 10, 2013 | 7:01 PM EST
By Ken Shepherd | August 2, 2013 | 1:36 PM EDT
The call of the minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a popular gig with the world. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you," Jesus taught his disciples (John 15:18-19, ESV).
So when I saw that the Washington National Cathedral's dean the Rev. Gary Hall was the subject of a puffy 29-paragraph profile by the Washington Post's Sally Quinn -- "A clergyman intent on engaging the masses"* -- it was safe to assume that Hall's views by heavily accommodating to the wider culture while throwing historic Christian teaching under the bus. Hall failed to disappoint, nor did Quinn, who naturally presented Hall as an engaging, thoughtful, and cool cleric who was a religious leader in tune with liberal urban Washingtonians.
By Ken Shepherd | January 28, 2013 | 1:10 PM EST
The Washington Post's religion writers have been hard at work of late to boost the religious left's push for more stringent gun control legislation. On Thursday, for example, Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein treated readers of the paper's Metro section with a puffy front-page item celebrating the pulpit-pounding for gun control from the likes of the dean of the Episcopal Church's National Cathedral, Rev. Gary Hall, a self-described "left-wing Democrat." Hall has cravenly lumped gun control in with the message of the Christian gospel, using liberal applause lines like "I believe the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby."
Two days later, the Post's Lisa Miller -- most famous for arguing that Christian Scripture is pro-same-sex marriage -- devoted a column to attacking Christians who are pro-gun rights, headlined, "The link between gun rights and the Gospels? It's still missing." The online edition is headlined "Is gun ownership Christian?" Miller began thusly:
WashPost Religion Reporter Notes National Cathedral to Allow Same-sex Weddings, Fails to Include Critics in Story
By Ken Shepherd | January 9, 2013 | 11:52 AM EST She had 12 paragraphs to play with, but in none of them did Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein find any space for a conservative Episcopalian or Anglican to voice objection to the decision by Episcopal authorities to permit same-sex wedding ceremonies in the historic Washington National Cathedral in Northwest Washington, D.C.
"In some ways, the announcement that is expected Wednesday morning is unsurprising for a denomination and a diocese that long ago took up the cause of marriage equality," Boorstein noted in the second paragraph of her January 9 story, but added that "the cathedral's stature and the image of same-sex couples exchanging vows in the soaring Gothic structure... is symbolically powerful."
By Ken Shepherd | December 17, 2012 | 5:25 PM EST
An old journalistic saw about what's newsworthy goes a little something like this: "When a dog bites man, that's not a new story. Now a man bites a dog, that's a story." The idea is simple: News is something that is unusual, out of the ordinary, has a twist that makes it unexpected and shocking.
There's nothing unexpected or shocking about a preacher in a mainline liberal Protestant church preaching a pro-gun control sermon after a shooting tragedy, and yet CNN, the Washington Post, and NPR's All Things Considered have all hyped Dean Gary Hall's December 16 sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. For her part, Dean's boss, Washington Episcopal Archdiocese Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, also leveled a similar call at a confirmation service on Sunday at St. Alban's Church in Washington, D.C.