The media often treat the leaders of the religious right as the defining voices on matters of morality and faith. In recent decades, it has often been difficult to find voices other than the religious right in mainstream or even alternative press coverage of the major issues of the day.

What's more, the media have often looked to leaders of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, (a Washington, DC-based agency, backed by top leaders and financiers of the religious and politial right,) for the narrative explaining the role, the perspectives and the status of the mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S.  (Unfortunately, the media have turned a blind eye to the breadth and depth of its agenda for the mainline churches -- which is to neutralize and dismember the historic communions of mainline Protestantism -- because they politically and theologically disagree.)

This is changing a bit. One bellwether might be a recent Boston Globe discussion of prochoice religious perspectives on abortion.