Post Conversion
Sally Quinn Gets Religion, Sort Of
by Mark Tooley
Washington Post journalist and Washington social doyenne Sally Quinn, whose poison-pen personality profiles in the Post’s Style section of the 1970s and 1980s once terrified, and titillated, official Washington, is on a spiritual journey. And the effect, chronicled in “On Faith,” a new religion weblog on washingtonpost.com, hosted with Time magazine editor Jon Meacham, is not altogether unpleasant.
Quinn’s marriage to Washington Post editor and Watergate hero Ben Bradlee, twenty years her senior, made her part of an unparalleled journalistic and social power couple. (She describes him as a believing but non-churchgoing Episcopalian.) Her novels and Washington social histories kept her profile high, even as she retreated somewhat from journalism in favor of motherhood.
Left on Faith
“On Faith” features several dozen prominent religionists giving their views on issues spiritual and temporal. The list is slanted to the left. Meacham is Episcopalian, and Quinn was, in part, raised Episcopalian.
Perhaps this explains why liberal Episcopalians are disproportionately represented: There’s Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Schori; radical Jesus Seminar revisionists Bishop John Shelby Spong and Marcus Borg; the current bishop of Washington, D.C., John Chane; the former bishop of Washington, D.C., Jane Dixon; Columbia University professor Randall Balmer; and labyrinth popularizer Lauren Artress. Inevitably, there is also South Africa’s Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Also on the left are radical Benedictine nun Joan Chittister; History of God author Karen Armstrong; Catholic revisionist John Dominic Crossan; British biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins; the Pluralism Project’s Diane Eck; Catholic ethicist Bryan Hehir; “emerging church” leader Brian McLaren; Gnostic enthusiast Elaine Pagels; Wiccan priestess Starhawk; and Sojourners leader Jim Wallis.
Conservative religious voices, mostly Evangelical, include Southern Baptist leader Richard Land; columnist Cal Thomas; evangelist Luis Palau; megachurch pastor Rick Warren; prison ministry leader Chuck Colson; and Texas pastor T. D. Jakes. Conservative Catholics, with the exception of papal biographer George Weigel and a few others, are largely absent.
There are also Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel; Madeline Albright (still another liberal Episcopalian); and former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami, who is, among so much else, a Muslim cleric.
Though not particularly known, at least publicly, for her religious interests, Quinn is by far the most intriguing of the panelists. She recalls that she was once a Christian, raised in Protestant military chapels, later became an atheist, and is now a spiritual seeker. She is writing a book on religion in Washington. Becoming a mother for the first time at age 41, her now 25-year-old son has needed lifelong care because of a heart defect.
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
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more on conversion from the online archives
more from the online archives
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