Leftist bloggers call the brand-new Washington Independent a “progressive Politico,” but from day one (or month one, anyway; the site’s been live for awhile) it’s already more interesting than that. Why? Because along with “Politics” “Money” and “Science,” the Independent includes “Religion” as a main category on its banner. The Independent‘s editor, Allison Silver (formerly an editor at the NYT’s “Week in Review”) has hired six reporters, one of whom, Holly Yeager, will be full-time on the religion and politics beat. Yeager, a former Financial Times writer, debuts with two counterintuitive pieces: one on how Huckabee, as Arkansas governor, didn’t push religion as much as expected, and another on Bush’s lack of funding for faith-based initiatives. Yeager writes in a blog entry that working for the British Financial Times taught her that “attitude’s allowed” in journalism. That’s a great indicator of strong reporting ahead. Both of these initial pieces ask questions most journalists ignore. The Independent and Yeager are good news.

But both stories also accept the frames provided by Yeager’s subjects, evaluating the role played by religion in politics in the conventional terms of funding and programs. Why measure the power of an immaterial force strictly by its material results? For now, that’s a quibble. The Independent looks like it’ll follow the money and also the ideas, the ideologies, and the theologies. Along with Yeager’s two solid reports, the launch edition features an essay from Michael Kazin, a biographer of William Jennings Bryan who demolishes the mainstream media notion that Huckabee is the second coming of the “Great Commoner.”

–Jeff Sharlet