Join me in calling on Christianity Today to retract its misleading and fear-mongering article about health care reform entitled Mandating Euthansia? by Rob Moll.

UPDATE: As a result of our petitions, CT has changed the title to “Will Section 1233 Hasten Patient Deaths?”—not as inflammatory, but the piece still gives credence to Sekulow’s dubious arguments (see below). Also, the editors censored my comments about the article below from their comment stream—so much for free discussion. Let’s tell them that a full retraction, and not simply a title change, is what truth-telling demands.

Two ways to act:

1. You can act by signing and retweeting our Twitter petition to your lists.
2. Add your comments on the Christianity Today site calling on the article to be fully retracted with an apology for the misleading information.

Here’s my comment about the article:

THE ONLY THING TO SAY ABOUT THIS PIECE IS THAT IT SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY RETRACTED. Although I don’t always agree with CT pieces, I’ve most often respected them as thoughtful, honest, trustworthy discussions of important issues of our day—until this. Since when did CT become the mouthpiece for Pat Robertson affiliated Jay Sekulow? Repeating Sekulow’s dubious arguments—“In the context of cutting costs, Section 1233 looks more like the government is asking doctors to do the dirty work of ‘bending the curve’ of health care costs by convincing the elderly to forego medical care”—is shameful.

As others have pointed out here, Rob Moll is either ignorant of basic facts on the subjects he’s writing about (e.g., hospice/palliative care does not equal euthanasia; hospice has Christian roots and is committed to neither hastening nor prolonging death) or he’s willfully obscurring distinctions for political purposes and headline grandstanding. Either way, it’s a culpable, deeply disappointing approach from a source I typically trust. The only way to honor basic truth-telling and journalistic integrity here would be to offer an apology and full retraction.

We have serious issues to discuss on health care, and we need to be able to rely on our religious leaders and leading religious magazines for truth-telling and integrity. Call on Christianity Today to restore integrity to its coverage of health care.

Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.
President, Public Religion Research
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