Holly Berman: The New York Times‘ David D. Kirkpatrick has been covering evangelicals and politics long enough that we can only guess his story in today’s paper is such a useless mess because of a clumsy editor. A wan profile of Mara Vanderslice, an evangelical who helps Democratic candidates win Christian conservative votes, the story fails to answer the most obvious question: What does Vanderslice believe? We find out that she “struggles” with her thinking about abortion and homosexuality, but not where she’s coming from or where she’s leaning or what scripture she draws from. Any other details that’d help us locate this rising star of Democratic religiosity on the theological spectrum must have been cut — how else to explain this meaningless story?