NPR story on 133 C Street SE DC

As I mentioned the other day, a number of pastors have suggested that the C Street house used by the group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast should not be considered a church for tax purposes. This story surfaced on National Public Radio a couple of weeks ago.

The story repeats the inaccurate characterization of The Family as a fundamentalist group:

The three-story, brick townhouse at 133 C Street SE sits a half-block from the Cannon House Office Building, roughly three blocks from the Capitol — the home-away-from-home for a regular contingent of fundamentalist Christian members of Congress, who can pray in the living room and walk to work.

I have to include that either a) the term "fundamentalist Christian" doesn't mean anything, or b) it is misapplied here. There are four Senators mentioned in the piece: Tom Coburn, Mark Sanford, Chip Pickering, and John Ensign. Of these four, Coburn and Pickering are Baptists, Ensign is Foursquare Gospel, and Sanford is Episcopalian. They may be fundamentalists of some stripe, but they're not fundamentalist Christians; fundamentalism just isn't big enough a tent to accommodate both an Episcopalian and a charismatic.

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