No Slap for Cizik

Richard Cizik, policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, received an understated nod of confidence from the NAE during the organization's meetings this weekend, in the wake of criticism from conservative evangelicals like Focus on the Family's James Dobson.

Dobson and other conservatives took issue with Cizik's outspoken emphasis on the environment, saying Cizik's views didn't necessarily represent the view of all or even most evangelicals. These conservatives wrote a letter to the NAE, criticizing Cizik. I talked about the issue earlier here.

"If he cannot be trusted to articulate the view of American evangelicals on environmental issues," reads the letter, "then we respectfully suggest that he be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE."

But according to a news story by the New York Times, the NAE never considered censoring Cizik.

“There’s one Lord, but not just one issue,” one board member, the Rev. Paul de Vries, president of the New York Divinity School, told the Times. “I am as much against abortion as Jim Dobson and the others, but I want that baby to live in a healthful environment, inside the womb as well as outside of the womb.”