Ryan Lizza may be a good reporter, but he is decidedly left of center. Formerly of the New Republic, Lizza now writes for the New Yorker. This past week, Lizza did the American public a great service — he helped Americans see both how ignorant many reporters are about Christianity and how much of an echo chamber exists in the media. In his article, “Leap of Faith,” Lizza grossly mischaracterized Protestant theologian Francis Schaeffer and used Schaeffer’s son Frank to explain some of what Francis Schaeffer meant.
Lizza fails to disclose, though he surely knows, that Frank Schaeffer has not just left the evangelical movement, but has largely rejected Christianity. Frank routinely serves as the “useful idiot” Christian for MSNBC to trot out and offer wholesale rebukes and denials of mainstream Christian thought, relying on his last name for street cred.
As an actual theologian, unlike either Lizza or Schaeffer the Younger, Douglas Groothius of the Denver Seminary wrote a critique of Lizza’s article assigning him an “F.”
Wrote Groothuis:
“Lizza notes that [Rep. Michele] Bachmann was influenced by the writings of Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-84), an evangelical minister, theologian, and philosopher. Schaeffer, along with the contemporary writer Nancy Pearcey and others, are ‘dominionists.’
“That is, they believe that ‘Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy secular institutions until Christ returns.’ Worse yet, Schaeffer, in “A Christian Manifesto” (1981), supposedly ‘argued for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe vs. Wade isn’t reversed.’
“Lizza also writes of the influence of the prolific author Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), who advocated ‘a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law … would be instituted.’ Bachmann is allegedly thick as thieves with all these ‘exotic’ subversives — and should be exposed as such.”
As Groothuis points out, Bachmann was not influenced by Rushdoony, but, even if she were, Lizza completely misinterpreted what Rushdoony suggested. Schaeffer, who did influence Bachmann, contradicted Rushdoony and really cannot be reconciled with his line of thinking.
Lizza also confused and conflated “dominionism” with “reconstructionism,” made claims about Schaeffer that are demonstrably false, and otherwise so distorted and confused the complex theological issues he delved into as to render any and all readers more ignorant for having read Lizza’s piece.
Additionally, though Francis Schaeffer is dead, Pearcey is very much living and took to the Internet to note she had never heard of “dominionism” and had to Google it.
Enter, stage left, Bill Keller. Keller, the New York Times editor whom religion writer Mollie Hemingway notes has a “well-known bias against Catholics.” Keller decided to write a series of questions about religion and theology he would like each Republican presidential candidate to answer.
Keller admits he “learned” from Ryan Lizza’s “enlightening” article about Bachmann and premised some of his questions based on Lizza’s reporting. Keller went on to be-clown, himself confusing Protestant theology with Catholic theology, mixing up basic theological concepts, and otherwise trying to ask “gotcha” questions of the politicians unrelated to either their domestic or foreign policies.
Had any conservative asked Barack Obama these questions in relation to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s theology, Keller would have roundly condemned them as racist. In fact, Keller and the New York Times have a history of condemning anyone who raises important questions about Islam and its growing encroachment on a society that Keller views as justifiably secular.
The final coup de grace was Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post, who wrote that Rick Perry’s belief in “creationism” meant by default he believed God created the world 6,500 years ago — a small minority opinion even among creationists.
In this past week, relying on one article that managed to get absurd amounts of basic Protestant theology wrong, national reporters across America proved just how out of touch they are with the religion shared by a majority of Americans.
Perhaps instead of urging politicians to be quiet about religion, the national press corps should itself shut up on the subject.
Erick Erickson is founder of RedState.com and a political analyst for CNN.
