E.J. Dionne tells us that the hardliner in the recent Southern Baptist Convention election didn't win--which makes me wonder what kind of balloting technology they're using--and that means the evangelicals are mellowing:

When the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group's president at its meeting this week in Greensboro, N.C., the news appeared on the back pages of most secular newspapers -- or it didn't appear at all.

But Page's upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation's religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention's staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical Christian world.

"I believe in the word of God," Page said. "I'm just not mad about it."

The mellowing of evangelical Christianity may well be the big American religious story of this decade.

Among the most prominent advocates for a wider view of Christian obligation is Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of "The Purpose Driven Life."

Maybe. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this conclusion, since "mellow" Rick Warren's organization is mass-marketing a video game where Christianists convert or massacre unbelievers on the streets of Manhattan. That doesn't sound very mellow to me, but what do I know? And genocide is so very entertaining.

Dionne does make an interesting point lower down in the blogosphere. Real Christians--not Christianists--are crashing the gate at the SBC using blogs:

Over the past several years, an active network of Baptist bloggers has opened up discussion in the convention and given reformers and moderates avenues around what [Robert] Parham [of the Baptist Center for Ethics] called "the Baptist establishment papers" and other means of communication controlled by the convention's leadership. Thus may some of our oldest and most traditional institutions be transformed by new technologies.

Once again the blogosphere is a universal solvent. I wonder if there are winger Baptist so-called blogs out there that don't take comments too?

NOTE Isn't it funny how the Rush and the VRWC can seize on a remark by some dim bulb in a college nobody's heard of, then pump up the volume and smear all the non-wingers with it, and keep themselves in cocktail weinies and talking points for days on end? And then all the "liberal" reporters and journalists join the chorus and grab them some cocktail weinies too?

But then a Big Wheel Christianist puts out a genocidal video game--on the same streets where the twin towers fell, mind you--and what do we hear?

*** Crickets ***

Amazing. Or not.

UPDATE The brilliant Talk to Action has been all over this story. Now, apparently Warren's corporate empire has realized what a public relations nightmare genocide is (unless you entirely control the media, at least), so they're backtracking. We'll be waiting for the condemnation, and the apology.

Say, I wonder if WalMart is selling this one?