The following comment under the GetReligion: And the healing has begun post, puts rather bluntly and may well be counted in the “not conducive to healing” category. But this is where it gets sticky. Is “healing” a matter of muting dissent and “playing nice?” While there is certainly sound advice in truly desiring to approach this in a reconciliatory fashion, at what point do we “close the conversation”? In the Church, I contend, we CANNOT. If it is to be a finally decisive point, and I think that must lie in the rejection of the “love of violence” and “attachment to war” by the ones who would follow Christ. I don’t mean , neccessarily, to adopt a pacifist position (although I tend to do that), but AT LEAST, to LEAN also in that direction. Sadly, the Church as a whole today is failing to say that. It is not sounding concern over the propensity and tendency and “desirability” of war as are the Nati onalistic Christians who seem more attuned to Bush and politics than the Jesus whom they claim to follow.

This is certainly repititious , but it is also to be seen as a litany tied to the gospel; an attempt to live a mythos that is an opertaing principle (see earlier Hauerwas quotes on this)

As a lifelong Christian, a descendant of many preachers and a former religion journalist, I didn’t find a thing wrong with Keillor’s introduction, nor did I feel any dissonance between it and his gospel singing.
The fact of the matter is that some so-called Christians who are among George W. Bush’s strongest supporters also are exactly the kind of so-called Christians who give Christianity a bad name. They need to come to Jesus, and I mean that literally.