<p>John Edwards dispatches Rosencrantz and Guildenstern </p>
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Heavens, it’s getting crowded in the pews these days–at least with Democratic presidential candidates. Here is Sen. Barack Obama in California’s Saddleback pulpit at the invitation of mega-selling pastor Rick Warren. There is Sen. Hillary Clinton with downcast eyes in Newsweek, praying before the cameras in New York’s Riverside Church. And there preaches John Edwards, also in Riverside Church, weaving his personal faith into everything from AIDS to the minimum wage. Clearly the push is on to show that, for now anyway, the Democratic hopefuls are just plain folks in the religion department.</p>
<p>All the more reason to plumb the curious episode of Amanda Marcotte, that blogger for the Edwards campaign who resigned on Monday and was followed out the door Tuesday by another technical consultant, Melissa McEwan…That is to say, in Ms. Marcotte’s case especially: scatological Catholic-baiting rants about “theocracy” marked by leering references to the pope and liberal use of the F-word.</p>
<p>…Just being a bilious feminist with a potty mouth doesn’t much distinguish one in the blogosphere these days. What does matter is something else: We have here a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern moment, in which the fate of bit players becomes emblematic of a larger drama.</p>
<p>For what the blogger tempest really illuminates is a fact that could come to haunt the Democrats as they vie for national office: namely, that their past few wilderness years have also been boom years for the church-loathing liberal/left punditry
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<p><a href=“http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110009678[/url] ”>http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110009678</a></p> ;
<p>I read that this morning (day off!). Great piece.</p>
<p>Riverside Church hasn’t been the same since Rev. William Sloan Coffin retired. God rest his soul.</p>
JHS
February 16, 2007, 7:39pm
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<p>I don’t know much about Edwards or Obama in this department, but Hilary Clinton has been an involved churchgoer all of her life, and maintained Methodist (?) church membership separate from Bill’s Baptist-ism throughout all those years in Arkansas. It’s one of the fascinating little elements of her personality (said with half-, but only half-sarcasm). She was a Christian when George Bush worshipped only Columbian Marching Powder. I honestly believe – with some ambivalence – that in some ways she is as much a true believer as the current crowd, maybe more. (More true, at least.)</p>