Newsweek‘s Lisa Miller on Obama’s longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright (5/19/08) …

“For now, Wright is lying low—”resting” at home, Hopkins says, but controversy continues to swirl around him. Northwestern University has announced it will not give him an honorary degree as planned. Right-wing blogs are busy painting Moss as a kind of junior Wright, which will doubtless cause future trouble for Obama. In the meantime, the only image most people have of Trinity is its incomprehensible senior pastor. Those who imagine that the Democratic nominee was converted to Christ by a left-wing hatemonger need to paint in their minds a fuller picture: a young man, intellectual and searching, in prayer at Trinity and awash in the music.”

Newsweek‘s Lisa Miller on Palin’s senior pastor (9/6/08) …

“The senior pastor of that church, in sermons that circulated online before they were taken down last week, preaches hell for anyone who isn’t saved by Jesus. America does not know enough yet about what Palin personally believes, but her church background—she now worships at a nondenominational Bible church—puts her squarely in the tradition of the old-school religious right.”

Does anyone else see a problem here? (1) Obama is given a pass to transcend his religious background while Palin is stereotyped and then defined by hers. And (2) notice how Miller speaks of a pastor preaching the truth about the doctrine and reality of hell.

Al Mohler today …

“So we find in Sarah Palin’s pastor an evangelical who believes in hell and preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means of escaping hell. In other words, he is an evangelical preaching like an evangelical. Alert the media.”