What spiritual leaders look like when they’re getting it from both sides.Lefties have been taking shots at Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll, the church’s faux-hawked spiritual leader, for years–us included. But now the church has raised the ire of at least one right-leaning commentator.Last week, Ingrid Schuelter of the arch-conservative CrossTalk blog ran a piece blasting Mars Hill and its founder for having a tangential connection to the Council On American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that Shuelter describes as being a front for Hamas. In late March, the Harambee church in Renton, a one-time Mars Hill satellite, held a meet-up inviting Christians and Muslims, including local CAIR members, to attend a discussion on Jesus’ role in their respective faiths. Schuelter eventually caught wind and promptly went bat-shit with indignation, raging at both Driscoll and Mars Hill for their connection to a church that allowed “pagans to pray in their facilities and sitting around sharing about who THEY think Jesus is.””Mark Driscoll needs to make a clear statement regarding his position on Interfaith cooperation with CAIR,” wrote Schuelter. Reached by phone, Mars Hill spokesperson Nick Bogardus stresses that the church no longer has any official ties to Harambee or Acts 29, the program under which Harambee was originally founded. However, as Schuelter correctly points out, the Acts 29 website still lists Mark Driscoll as its founder and visionary leader. In any case, Bogardus then breaks ranks, calling Schuelter an “extremely anti-muslim right-wing fanatic with a bone to pick with Mars Hill.” Interfaith dialogue between Muslims and evangelical Christians is a good thing, he adds. As for CAIR’s alleged ties to Hamas, Bogardus says he doesn’t know enough to say. Mars Hill, he says, “doesn’t currently keep up with extremist groups and their ties.”As the Washington Post

pointed out last year, CAIR’s ties to terror groups were tenuous at best. Calls to CAIR’s Seattle affiliate went unreturned. So, to recap: Right leaning Mars Hill church applauds the promotion of good relations between Islam and Christianity. But there remain some religious groups for which it will never be right-leaning enough.