The New York Times asked a group of five persons to comment on "God and Mark Sanford." The five persons were Chuck Colson (convicted Watergate felon turned Jesus promoter), Shmuley Boteach (orthodox Jewish rabbi), LaShawn Barber (right-wing blogger); Steven Waldman (editor of Beliefnet) and Colleen Carroll Campbell (a woman who has written about young people going back to orthodox religion and who has appeared on the Catholic cable network EWTN).

I found that to be an extraordinarily limited crowd, so I posted the following in comments:

All the people that the New York Times asked to comment on this are conservative religious people. Does the Times think there are no liberal religious people, or even those of us in the middle of the road?

For the record, I think Mark Sanford has shown a lot of really bad character traits that disqualify him from public office. That would start with his breach of private trust with his wife, continue through his breach of public trust with the citizens of South Carolina by simply disappearing and end up with possible misuse of public funds. Then there’s the whole bizarre business of discussing his matters of the heart with the Associated Press.

One does not need to be a conservative religious person to make observations about that, even to make obseervations involving God. I sincerely hope that the next time something like this happens (and it will), the Times will see fit to invite more than the right end of the right wing of the religious spectrum to comment.

(I left in the spelling and grammar errors.)