Newsweek names SBA List’s Dannenfelser as one of 10 new leaders of the Religious Right
That number is actually 9, since Newsweek inexplicably included Obama supporter Jim Wallis on the list, even while acknowledging he’s actually part of the “evangelical left.”
But whatever, congratulations to Marjorie Dannenfelser, founder and president of the Susan B. Anthony List, for receiving recognition she deserves, particularly after her group’s amazing success during the 2010 election season.
Also congratulations to 2 other pro-life luminaries Newsweek cited, whose names are familiar to this blog, Robert George and Tony Perkins.
But Marjorie stands out as being the only person listed whose total focus is the pro-life issue. Newsweek’s prelude to revealing the list:
Who speaks for the religious right? That used to be an easy question to answer… Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson….
[I]it’s harder to pinpoint a similar council for the 2nd generation of the movement, which is more strategically, denominationally, and ideologically diverse…. Many of the leaders are Catholics, reflecting the success of an effort beginning in the 1980s between Catholics and evangelicals to forge ties over shared priorities, like curtailing abortion rights….
The following list… [is] a snapshot of a movement that’s changing and growing more diffuse, even as it remains a potent force in American politics.
About Marjorie, Newsweek wrote:
… Dannenfelser leads an organization that isn’t explicitly religious but draws its support from many conservative Christians. Once a pro-choice, moderate Republican, Dannenfelser about-faced in college, becoming anti-abortion at the same time she left the Episcopal Church to become a Catholic.
Today, she heads the Susan B. Anthony List, which she founded out of her house in 1991. The political-action committee, which gives money to pro-life candidates, has quietly become one of the nation’s preeminent anti-abortion groups, making it the standard-bearer for one of the religious right’s central issues. And she has the ear of evangelical rock star and potential 2012 candidate Sarah Palin, who headlined an SBA List fundraiser in May 2010.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Family Research Council – homophobic hate group as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Congratulations indeed!
So the SBA List is a single-issue non-sectarian group, but its president is pegged as a leader of the “religious Right” anyway? I have nothing against Dannenfelser and don’t mean to take away from her award, but Newsweek is engaging in harmful stereotyping.
Kelsey
December 14th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Given that these guys seem to think that Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson were ever part of those “who speak for the religious right” I think it’s safe to conclude that they’ve relied on stereotypes all the way around. :(
I’ll take your word for it, Alice. At 22, I’m a little too young to remember.
newsweek’s editor declared obama a “god” on the world stage. they might be a little less tightly wound than the rest of us, on this whole religion thing.
Plus, let’s see, the editor’s grandfather ran on the socialist ticket for president. a real president comes along- Reagan- and the editor starts by calling him an idiot, and then spends eight years re-publishing soviet press releases as fact. That, that, that I am appalled at. I was in debate in the eighties, in high school. Newsweek was considered reliable, factual reporting.
I am glad the reporters, at least, are willing to print the occasional, verifiable, fact. And props to Dannenfelser.
DD, I am not crazy about the Family Research Council, but to put them in the same league as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations — true hate groups — is a bit much.
Not a very flattering pix of her is it.
Newsweek is a leftist rag owned by the husband of a California Democrat congress woman. They are engaging in a smear campaign with this piece.