A VFR reader attacks the Christian right
Ed writes:
You recently wrote:
“I have no problem with atheists as human beings, so long as they do not show hostility toward religion, specifically Christianity. …But an atheist who shows contempt for religion or God or Christianity is unacceptable to me.”
I think that there are two altogether different aspects of this issue; it is vital that we distinguish clearly between them.
On the one hand, there’s the gratuitous leftist slap at religion (meaning principally Christianity). It is pitched not as a rational critique of the Christian Right in America but, rather, as a broad indictment of the entire West. For the most part, it is nothing but a cynical ploy to deflect and discredit any sustained focus on Islam by Western observers. Despite all the comments that follow, there is no interchangeability or equivalence at all between Christianity and Islam; the latter is an altogether different animal.
On the flip side, there are numerous aspects of contemporary religiosity in America that do legitimately merit opprobrium. I refer specifically to the outward behavior and attitudes of people who, to varying degrees, identify ideologically, emotionally, and politically with the Christian Right. Primary examples include:
(1) Behavioral mannerisms that come across as vulgarian and mawkish. For example, the story of the valedictorian who thanked Jesus for her good grades. The young woman’s statement was ostensibly pretentious, arrogant, and illogical: why should Jesus have been looking after her any more than any of the other students? Such smarminess understandably turns many people off.
(2) Anti-scientific, anti-cosmopolitan positions of religious conservatives. Notably, doctrinaire opposition to stem cell research and evolutionary theory (which conceptually is certainly no more of a mess than quantum mechanics). Such retrograde ideology does not help the reputation of Christian conservatives.
(3) Hard-line positions on a wide range of issues relating to sexual behavior. Most appalling in this regard are opposition to contraception and family planning, irrespective of economic considerations. Even more morally excrementitious is the opposition by some religious conservatives to an emerging HPV vaccine. Such positions—especially when conservatives push hard to translate them into hard policy—understandably invite visceral contempt and unfriendly reactions from others.
(4) The supremacist edge that many Christian conservatives exude in their attitude toward nonbelievers and secular society generally. Push too hard and liberals might just wake up and recognize it as an existential threat to their well-being. Of course, it’s nothing compared to Islamic wrath, but it’s nonetheless deeply offensive and unpleasant. An example that comes to mind was when Grover Norquist once said that Democrats will be tamable like domesticated animals, once the GOP consolidates its one-party grip on the country. That understandably invites resentment from non-fundies.
In short, your statement above appears to lack any sense of cause and effect, since you fail to consider that contempt for Christianity might just have something to do with the way that Christians themselves behave.
LA replies:
While Ed makes a couple of reasonable points, all in all his comment is way off base. First, he seems to believe that the modernist campaign against Christianity is merely an understandable response to the excesses of the Christian right, when in fact the Christian right arose as a reaction against the extreme inroads of virulent secularism such as Roe v. Wade, the banning of school prayer, the progressive removal of all religious expressions from public society, and the extreme coarseness of our sexually liberated culture and entertainments. For him to blame this conflict on the Christian right, rather than on militant secularism, would be like treating the First Crusade as an unprovoked attack on Islam. Second, he characterizes as evidence of extremism and irrationality certain Christian right positions that happen to be entirely reasonable, such as opposition to the Darwinian theory of evolution. That alone gives him away as someone with his own set of irrational prejudices.
As one who espouses the secular hard-line view of man as a material being, naturally Ed is going to perceive as a threat any Christianity other than liberal, secularized, toothless Christianity.
Also, his example of Grover Norquist is silly. Are we really supposed to accept that a single obnoxious and self-important lobbyist (who happens to be more closely associated with Islam than Christianity) is representative of the “supremacism” of the Christian right?
Having said all that, I will add that I am not a fan of the Christian right per se. There is much that is crude and stupid about it. But Ed’s attack is not limited to such evident flaws; he is going after the Christian essence of the thing.
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Ben writes:
I don’t recognize the left’s attacks on Christianity to be legitimate because they are irrational and vicious in nature. Christianity is on the defense big time not the other way around.
Gintas writes:
Notice how many people see this huge threat from Chistianity? As Ben said, Christianity is on the defense now, and the Fundamentalists are a small fringe group with no great influence. There is a Proverb (28:1): “The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” The liberal view, which encompasses all sorts of evil, will never rest comfortably, no matter how victorious. Because even with one man resisting liberalism, that one man with God make a majority (to speak in preaching style). It’s as if liberals have this irrepressible sneaking suspicion and fear that, if that one man is right about God, they are all toast.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 24, 2006 06:27 PM | Send