The Washington Post announced yesterday that it has retained Michael Gerson, a former G. W. Bush speech writer, as a regular columnist.

Gerson has been a member of the Falls Church Episcopal since 2000 and joined that church’s defectors that left the Episcopal Church last December. But there was no mention of that fact in the column he wrote in yesterday’s edition defending the split in the denomination, except for a vague reference to “the church I attend.” Gerson attributed the split not to reaction against the elevation of an openly-gay priest as a bishop or against progressive trends generally, but to the vibrancy of the “church in the global south.” He failed to mention that Nigerian Bishop Peter Akinola, the new head of the defectors’ so-called “Council of Anglicans in North America,” received his theological training in Virginia and did post-graduate training at the Truro Church in Fairfax. Gerson, as a Bush speechwriter, was known for coining the phrase, “axis of evil.” He is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the Post, he will be writing a twice-weekly column.