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4. What's an evangelical?
The New York Times's Michael Luo turned in an Easter story familiar to evangelicals (and, by now, to readers of The New York Times, which has been doing variations on the theme for a few years): Evangelicals are not monolithic. "It seems that now, at a time of heightened power, old fissures are widening, and new theological and political splits are developing," writes Luo. John Green largely gets to frame the debate, distinguishing between "traditionalist, centrist, and modernist" evangelicals. For a 1,100-word story, it's not bad, but it could have used some notion of what traditionally has unified evangelicals, both in the 18th-century sense and in the post-war, Graham-era sense.

5. Christian Legal Society loses college funding case
UC Hastings College of the Law doesn't have to fund or recognize a chapter of the Christian Legal Society because the group's ban on non-Christian and homosexual members is a matter of conduct, not speech or religious belief, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled yesterday. The school's anti-discrimination policy "affects what [the society] must do if it wants to become a registered student organization—not engage in discrimination—not what [the society] may or may not say regarding its beliefs," he wrote. There's no response yet from CLS or from the Alliance Defense Fund, which publicized the case earlier. The decision doesn't seem to yet be online, but Weblog is eager to read it: Is White suggesting that the Constitution only protects religious assent to dogma, not actions that derive from belief?

Quote of the day:
"Moses stood there on top of a cliff, and as long as he held up his arms, the children of Israel won. Well, after a while he got tired, so there were two men that came and held up Moses' arms so they could win the battle. That's my job—to hold up the arms of the man of God, like Billy Graham or Rick Warren, in the media."

—Christian publicist Larry Ross, in a profile in this week's New York Times Magazine. Ross reluctantly admitted that he has also represented Benny Hinn, though he tried to keep "his distance for Billy Graham's sake."

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April (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50