News and commentary on Religion, especially Southern religion.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Focus on the Family dumps Beck interview because he's a Mormon

For passing Proposition 8, tolerance of Mormons is fine, says the behavior of Focus on the Family chairman & founder Dr. James Dobson.

He signed the AboveTheHate.com letter which opens with:

We write firstly to express our deep gratitude to you and the entire LDS community for the large and impressive contributions of your church and its members in protecting marriage in California and Arizona.

When Underground Apologetics objected to Mormon author Glenn Beck's interview promoting his book "The Christmas Sweater," though, Focus caved. They pulled it off the Focus on the Family's CitizenLink site.

The Focus explanation to Joel Campbell of The Mormon Times:

You are correct to note that Mr. Beck is a member of the Mormon church, and that we did not make mention of this fact in our interview with him. We do recognize the deep theological difference between evangelical theology and Mormon theology, and it would have been prudent for us at least to have pointed out these differences. Because of the confusion, we have removed the interview from CitizenLink.

Bruce Tomaso wrote for the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog:

Focus on the Family represents itself as promoting Christian values. Many -- but clearly not all -- Christians believe that one of those values is tolerance.

1 comment:

  1. Beck bites back:

    "Whatever your beliefs about my religion, the concept of religious tolerance is too important to be sacrificed in response to pressure from special interest groups, especially when it means bowing to censorship."

    Glenn doesn't sound too happy about the situation. I wonder if Dr. Dobson intends to defend himself against Glenn's charge of censorship? Not to mention Glenn's accusation that the article was pulled due to pressure from "special interest groups" ... that doesn't sound like a very friendly description of the folks who persuaded Dr. Dobson to pull Beck off the CitizenLink site.

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