The Christian right is changing. James Dobson, Pat Robertson and others are fading into the sunset, while new ones are taking their places with a tweaked message that is generally softer, gentler, more rational.
Jim Daly
From Newsweek:
Jim Daly leads Focus on the Family, the immensely powerful evangelical organization founded by James Dobson that runs magazines and radio programs, serves as a clearinghouse for Christian education, and offers counseling. In addition, Dobson, who remains Focus on the Family’s most public face, offers political endorsements generally seen as extensions of the group. Handpicked by Dobson in 2005 to be the group’s second-ever president, Daly is a surprisingly different leader from his firebrand predecessor. Not that he’s softened the organization’s advocacy on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage—he hasn’t. It’s the emphasis that’s changed. “Focus on the Family has become less and less intentionally political,” says Michael Cromartie, vice president at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Jim Daly wants the focus to be the family, not politics.” (The recalibration hasn’t sat well with some hardliners, who see it as capitulation to liberal secularism.) But observers say that with Focus on the Family’s bedrock conservative beliefs and massive reach, it will remain a crucial force in politics for the foreseeable future.”
The surprise on the list is Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, which in January will be listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Perkins has been ridiculed in the media about his forceful comments, particularly on gays. Perkins is more of a throwback to Dobson. He’s not a voice of the new evangelicals.
See the Newsweek list of the top new evangelicals here.
Focus leader Jim Daly makes Newsweek’s top Christian-right leader list is a post from: The Pulpit