Christian Chronicle....Fair and Balanced.

It is safe to say that the church I grew up in is pretty conservative. Ok, it's very conservative, but before you think this is a post slamming my Christian heritage I will tell you that it is not. I would actually like to give a shout out to The Christian Chronicle, which accurately bills itself as an "International newspaper for members of Churches of Christ."

The lead story for this months paper is "Presidential Race Engages Students" written by Bobby Ross Jr. I was curious how this Presidential race would be characterized by the Chronicle whose audience is a pretty religiously and politically conservative one. I found the article to be refreshingly fair and open to both McCain and Obama supporters. It dealt fairly and graciously with the reasons why both candidates found strong support among young people in the Churches of Christ and that those reasons come from sincere Christian beliefs.

This was an encouraging article for me because it gave a lot of credence to the fact that a person could have Christian values and principles that lead them to vote for a Democrat just as as those values lead a person to vote for a Republican. Critics might say that this reality has existed for a long time and the Chronicle, and by extension other members of the Churches of Christ, are late to that realization. This might be true, but I still think the thawing of the view that if you are believer and pro-life you must vote a certain way or you are not a true Christian is a really good development for people of faith on both sides of the aisle. This kind of fair and gracious reporting in such a heated political time should be applauded and encouraged.