Glenn Beck may be unlikely leader for conservative Christians

Glenn Beck may be unlikely leader for conservative Christians: In a matter of hours, Beck went from a hugely popular media figure - a Gallup poll last year listed him as the fourth-most-admired living man in the country - to a spiritual player, embracing a new and overtly religious rhetoric that made him sound like an evangelist. Yet the Mormon convert seems an unlikely leader for conservative Christians, many of whom don't regard Mormonism as part of their faith.

Beck was interviewed after the rally characterizing Obama's faith as being dominated by an "oppressor-victim" paradigm. "People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck said on Fox News Sunday. [Editor: Is Beck's version of Christianity recognizable either?]

To some, Beck's show of his faith was a calculated political effort to unite religious and social conservatives as the midterm elections approach. "No Republican is going to win the White House if those two aren't united," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies evangelical Protestant leaders. "Here's a chance to infuse the tea party with religious rhetoric, and extend an olive branch to those not as engaged with financial issues."

Editor: For the record, Glenn Beck is not my leader. I'm spooked by Beck's references to God speaking to him. He used a lot of religious lingo, but not with coherency. For more on this, see Should we join Glenn Beck in prayer?