From the March 22, 2003 issue of World Magazine, discussing a column that appeared in The New York Times called "God, Satan, and the Media":
Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof takes his colleagues in the elite media to the woodshed in his March 4 column, accusing "nearly all of us" in the news business of being "completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans." That group is America's evangelical Christians, and Mr. Kristof calls upon journalists to understand evangelicals' growing clout and stop sneering at conservative Christians...
...And that's not all. Mr. Kristof goes on to castigate journalists for mocking the faith of conservative Christians, accusing liberal journalists of showing "more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation."
Don't get the wrong idea. Mr. Kristof is not happy to see evangelicals grow in influence. "I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything," he insists, "and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence." He just wants his liberal colleagues to discard their "sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself." It's completely understandable to Mr. Kristof that journalists would be "filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies," but mockery is unacceptable.
Gee, thanks...
...Mr. Kristof, a Phi Beta Kappa Harvard graduate, also earned a law degree at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and has spent his professional career at the Times. He suggests that since the national news media "are generally reflective of the intellectual elite," their dismissal of evangelicals is understandable. While warning his colleagues not to sneer, Mr. Kristof casually explains that they should not expect to find evangelicals among the educated elite.
[execerpt of "Well-intended failure" by R. Albert Mohler Jr.]
