And I still want to know how you need to be a member of a group in order to speak with any authority on said group. You speak about groups all the time that you are not part of – do you not have any authority to speak on such matters?

He has zero authority upon which to speak.

Huh? So you must be part of a group of have “authority” to speak on the group?

I don’t necessarily agree with Balmer here, but to claim that an academic must be part of a group in order to have “authority upon which to speak” about the group is just absurd.

Also, where has Balmer claimed to be an Evangelical?

The people who see Balmer as an “historian of Evangelicalism” are the same ones that accept Jim Wallis as representing “evangelical clergy,” and Tony Campolo as representing “evangelical academics.”

The sad thing is that assuming this terrible trio is actually as serious about being evangelical as being “progressive” (meaning, of course, very Left), they don’t seem to realize that they are the “token Christians” in the circles in which they like to run, acceptable to the secular Left only because they are in agreement on the matters the Left cares about the most. If Jim Wallis had a sudden attack of conscience and began campaigning for a human life amendment, his access to friendly major media would disappear over night, and he knows it.

The same is true for Balmer, of course.