Excerpts from Bennett letter to Speaker of the House Volume 33, Number 3 Posted May 22, 2000 The following comments are excerpted from a letter written by William J. Bennett Jr. and Michael Novak to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. “We think it very odd that evangelicals are sometimes accused of being exclusionary, when in our experience they have gone out of their way to include other Americans of many different faiths in their public meetings and their public efforts. “We have noted with admiration that they have often supported political candidates who do not support their entire agenda, but who are willing to go along with them on at least some of those points – regarding the pro-life cause, for example. “In fact, evangelicals have often been more open-minded and more inclusionary than those on the other side, who demand uncritical adherence to their total agenda, including even support for the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. It seems to us that the absolutism is all on the other side, and that a sense of compromise and realism is well-practiced by our evangelical friends, who are so unfairly maligned. “We regret very much that expressing contumely and disdain for evangelical Christians is the last permissible bigotry in American public life. People who would be ashamed to utter anti-Semitic comments, and mortified to be found guilty of anti-Catholic expressions, seem to think nothing at all of casting insults at evangelical Christians. Every form of bigotry is deplorable, but especially those forms which still bask in the glow of public approval.”

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