Nicholas Kristof on God. Satan and the Media today takes time out to point out that educated Americans need to reach out to snake-handling, speaking-in-tongues, backwoods morons. Okay, maybe that's stretching the point a bit, but Kristof fails to convince me why I should respect the views of these people:
Evangelicals are increasingly important in every aspect of American culture. Among the best-selling books in America are Tim LaHaye's Christian "left behind" series about the apocalypse; about 50 million copies have been sold. One of America's most prominent television personalities is Benny Hinn, watched in 190 countries, but few of us have heard of him because he is an evangelist.
President Bush has said that he doesn't believe in evolution (he thinks the jury is still out). President Ronald Reagan felt the same way, and such views are typically American. A new Gallup poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe in creationism, and only 28 percent in evolution (most of the rest aren't sure or lean toward creationism). According to recent Gallup Tuesday briefings, Americans are more than twice as likely to believe in the devil (68 percent) as in evolution.
He then says this:
I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.
But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable.
Why is it inexcusable to point out the ridiculousness of those who seem hellbent on sending us back to the dark ages, who would let people die because of a misguided belief that sex and pleasure are sinful, who find evolution unbelievable yet unquestionably accept the notion of a unknown, unseen, cosmic producer/director who works in "mysterious ways", and who read crappy endtime pulp fiction written by a hack evangelist, but fear children's books written about a boy wizard? I was brought up to respect other people's religions (although nobody ever explained why...) but that was in a time when religion was a private matter, before evangelicals decided it was their mission to share their devotion to their god whether you wanted to hear it or not. Quite frankly, I don't find the god-smacked to be that interesting.
So sure that's sneering, but how should I approach the willfully ignorant who would dictate social policy? People's lives are at stake while they're playing theological Calvinball.
Kristof then writes:
Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening, like the religious revivals that have periodically swept America in the last 300 years
History is full of "Religious Awakenings" and, if I may be so humble to note, millions have died because of someone else's notion of "god" and what "he" wants. Quite simply, that joke's not funny anymore.
More on Kristof
There's a great discussion of Kristof's column over at Atrios, which contains this quote:
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H.L. Mencken
contributed by Tresy.
Then there is this email I received from Matt:
"I was brought up to respect other people's religions (although nobody ever explained why...)"
Here's why: "We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other." -- Jonathan Swift
Or, one could argue quite easily, if UBL and his crew had grown up respecting other people's religions, Al Qaeda would not exist.
The problem with Kristof's article is that he jumps from disdain for *evangelicals* to disdain for *Christianity*, in the same way that incautious warbloggers might jump from condemning Wahabbism to condemning Islam.
It's an uncommon lapse in Kristof's usually solid intellectual rigor; perhaps he still has mixed emotions about once dating a girl from a Pentecostal denomination, and isn't quite ready to say that, although she was bright, she was also a follower of a religion that makes no freaking sense.
At any rate, he's wrong, but not entirely so--and I respectfully submit that you are making the same error (failing to distinguish between radical and mainstream) in reverse, if not to quite the same degree.
Very good points.
One serious flaw, pointed out by many over at Atrios, is that Kristof fails to differentiate between "evangelicals" and "fundamentalists". This is a nuance I failed to account for. I'm sure someone's god will forgive me.
