Has Lear jumped on the bandwagon of progressives whove “gotten religion” in recent years?
Not exactly. I found a Washington Post article describing People for the American Way’s 1980 founding, and it turns out that Lear has long used religion to battle the religious right: Two organizations, one made up entirely of mainline religious leaders and the other with them predominating, have sprung up in recent weeks to fight the evangelists of the Christian right. One group, People for the American Way, will be launched formally today by a coalition that includes television producer Norman Lear, former senator Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee and Dr. William Howard and Dr. William P. Thompson, the current and past presidents of the National Council of Churches. Their plans call for distributing five 60-second TV spots, already produced by Lear, dealing with the Christian right. “We are trying to communicate to the American people that the Christian community understands that people must make up
