In my post earlier today, I link to this post that KI found via Jesus Politics, and I received a comment from the author of that post, to which I offered a reply. I just went back and re-read that post of his, and felt compelled to coment on this:

GetReligion: And the healing has begun

From a comment on this post by Dan
Keillor especially speaks to those who, like himself and many of his characters, grew up with some form of traditional religion and then, in the tumult and angst of the 60s, lost or rejected their faith. GK may ridicule his generation for filling the blanks with unitarianism, buddhism-lite, and ketchup, but that’s where he and his target audience finds itself. They are perpetually drawn to world-weary now nostalgic, now hostile remembrances of the town or neighborhood where everyone went to church together.

I’m not so sure that Keillor has REJECTED his faith, but “dissents” from the usual conclusions drawn by those who shaped him, or sought to shape him. I find in his account of the present political scene, nothing to dissuade me from the sense I had of him PREVIOUSLY of an insightful teller of stories who has a keen sense for the fabric of people’s lives. Sadly, much of the tone of the Religious Right seems to attack the “humanist leanings” and declare anythign not overtly religious and religious in THEIR sense, as some kind of monstrous evil attached to some evil liberal plot.

It may well be seen by the Religious Right as “an attack on Christians and Christianity” , but I think it’s appropriate to sound voices of dissent that say instead, “there are some very clear mandates of the Gospel” which are being thouroughly ignored and downplayed by the distortions (and for me, the “compromising hersies”) of the Religious Right. For them, they seem more upset at challenges of Bush than “challenges” to Scripture — but of course, they don’t see any conflict with Bush and Scripture— they assign him propehtic status.