I discovered on Derick Dickens blog today that Beliefnet has partnered with Time Magazine to bring us the God-o-Meter. I think Derick sums it up nicely, when he says:
I do not know if I am disgusted or just curious. Yet, in th election race, beliefnet.com has a “God-o-Meter” to rank the Presidential Candidates on their religous [sic] talk. I am not necessary [sic] endorsing the meter and believe it to only be using “God talk” as a litmus and not true solid theology in those talks. Therefore, someone like Obama could talk a lot about God but the theology is purely Post-Modern and he gets the same ranking than [sic] Mike Huckabee who has better theology.
Derick has hit the nail right on the head here. There are some accompanying articles that help to clarify the specific views of a few of the candidates, but the only way one can get a true sense of where each one comes down on crucial issues (such as abortion and gay marriage) is to visit each person’s site and wade through all the double-speak (with a few exceptions).
It looks to me as though the God-o-Meter may actually be an attempt to blur the distinctions between men such as Huckabee and Obama in order to dupe less knowledgeable or less discerning Evangelicals into thinking that they are relatively equal choices. One wonders if a political liberal didn’t come up with this thing just for this purpose.
Do I sound too cynical? Well, remember that Time magazine isn’t exactly a bastion of conservatism. Anyway, thanks Derick for pointing it out.
