From Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer:
The truth is that [Democratic presidential candidate Barak] Obama's faith -- and his pastor -- are more conservative than the press understands, and [Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's] religion isn't as hick as the hacks covering the campaign imagine.
Huck sounds like William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner; Obama, with a better claim to almost all of Bryan's positions, sounds like Norman Vincent Peale, the conservative "apostle of posititive thinking." Were Peale alive to today, he'd likely hold his nose and vote for low-class Huck, fried squirrels and all. (Were Bryan alive, he'd run away with the nomination.) Both candidates look like they might represent the "third way" more and more rank-and-file evangelical haqve been waiting for. Such Christians are conservative on sex, paternalistic on poverty, and more inclined to support missionaries than militarism. They're big on government and big on God, which means the results on Iowa portend a big year for faith in the main event of American civil religion.
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