Five months after the news fad of God Gap articles that contrasted blue- and red-state households, and all the earnest, post-election attempts to understand evangelical America, The Boston Globe’s Brian MacQuarrie has found a Christian Family from the Heartland to profile at length. Though the article discusses them for nearly 2,500 words, the Wilkersons don’t seem particularly newsworthy, except, perhaps, for their pitch-perfect rendition of the mythical Republican family ideal: from Dad’s Lawrence Welk-watching childhood to Big Sis’s balking at Darwin in her 7th grade science class; from Mom’s submission to her husband’s guidance, to Kid Sis’s “Jesus is My Homeboy” T-shirt; from thrice-weekly meals at Skyline Chili to the bathroom book of inspirational quotes on Freedom from George Washington to George W. Bush. These are the kind of details that one might expect to show up as mocking asides written by the famously “anti-Christian” media — a charge the Wilkersons duly repeat as they work their way through the issues talking points — but MacQuarrie delivers them sans sneer or, apparently, any critical thought. As little questioning goes into reporting the family’s rote repetition of the conservative party line; their assertion that Christian conservatism, and not an income of $120,000 in a city where the mean income is $81,000, is responsible for their excellent quality of life; the Wilkersons’ offering themselves — in so many words — as the family model the country ought to follow; or even, at a much snarkier level, Mr. Wilkersons’ simultaneous claims that he renewed his faith after a “near-fatal bar fight” and that he’s never had a beer in his life. There are conclusions to be made from these claims, arguments and situational facts, or at the very least, questions to be asked, but rather than provide either, MacQuarrie lets the Wilkersons deliver the moral of their own story: “‘If you want to call us do-gooders, so be it,'” they say, and that closes the article, leaving the reader to wonder why it was written. Back around the election, when these stories were a dime a dozen, they weren’t necessarily any better, but the reasons for their publication — investigating the God gap; the press gets religion — were easier to understand. The only thing illustrated by this story is that, what the press still doesn’t get can’t always be blamed on hostility to religion.