Last month, conservative Christian leaders demanded that Richard Cizik be silenced or removed from his post. They charged that his concerns about climate change and torture have shifted attention away from moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion. But for Cizik, poverty, war, and the environment are moral issues too. We revisit Krista's 2006 conversation with Cizik that took many listeners by surprise.

This is very much worth listening to.

Rev. Cizik seems to be a reasonable and thoughtful Christian. He elucidates a number of things I've said many times about what it means to be able to call yourself a Christian. At the time of his interview, he expressed a faith that the public perception of evangelical Christianity was skewed and that most follow the sort of rational, informed, compassionate Christianity he espouses.

Sadly, this latest revelation somewhat confirms my cynicism.

At one point in the interview, Krista Tippet reads a letter from a woman who describes personal harassment by the kind of abusive "hellfire" evangelicals we perhaps have come to expect. This woman describes how this kind of experience leads many otherwise practicing christians to try and distance themselves from the religion.

This has been my situation, for some years. I came to find not only that my own beliefs have diminished my tolerance for Faith, but also that what interest I might have had in maintaining ties to the Christian church and the community thereof was absolutely destroyed by my desire not to be conflated with such animals. I have come to believe that so many people have misused the term "Christian" that it has quite literally lost all meaning. And I'm not devout enough to want to fight to take the name back.

I'm not saying I agree with all of Rev. Cizik's beliefs -- in fact, I stridently disagree with the NAE on the matters of gay rights and abortion (opposition to which they, of course, call "Protection of the Family" and "Sanctity of Life"). Nonetheless there are points in the interview seemed to me to reveal an encouraging side of Christianity. That is, one that supports environmentalism, trusts science, discourages war and works to eliminate poverty.

I still think the majority of people who call themselves Christian are total frauds, but maybe it's not as overwhelmingly so as I'd thought.