Yesterday's New York Times magazine article about the fissures and shifts in evangelical Christians' political and theological orientation set off a blizzard of blogging. I saw great posts all over the blogscape, and after reading around ten lengthy posts, I fear I'd meld them together if I tried to comment on all the commentary. (Besides, blog roundups are Alex's specialty.)

So I'll just stick with an out-of-the-way response in traditional media: the editorial in today's Wichita Eagle, whose namesake city David Kirkpatrick used as the anecdotal frame for his NYT story. (You might've seen the Eagle editorial in FPL's daily newsreel today.)

Called "No 'evangelical crackup' in Wichita," it didn't take as much issue with Kirkpatrick's story as the title suggests:

To assess the state of the religious right, the New York Times Magazine came to the right state -- Kansas, and specifically Wichita. The resulting cover story Sunday oversold the idea of an "evangelical crackup," but there is no question that in Wichita and far beyond, Christians are rethinking how and how much to bring their Bible-based values to bear in the public square.

However, they do (vaguely) point out local trends that don't quite jibe with Kirkpatrick's central argument:

Some evangelicals in Wichita and elsewhere in Kansas have not extinguished their agendas, only refocused them locally. Look at the proliferating petition drives to call grand juries to investigate sexually oriented businesses and abortion provider George Tiller.

And the mission work going on among local churches across the ideological and denominational spectrum remains strong and inspiring, meeting needs and lifting up the downtrodden in Wichita and far beyond.

The Eagle also regurgitates some of Kirkpatrick's point about evangelicals' political dissatisfaction and shifting priorities. All told, it's not a very striking response content-wise, but it's always useful to look at local responses to national media attention they receive. Wichita's hometown newspaper's reaction seemed to be that Kirkpatrick got it mostly right, but with a couple of notable (yet small) exceptions.