Jon Fortt|W|P|freethinker,Thanks for all the time and thought you obviously put into that post. A few reactions:
1. I'll have to take issue with your suggestion that a journalist's Christianity trumps his fairness. Sure, I'm a Christian first and foremost. But I challenge you to find any story I've written that takes a Christian slant. I don't personally know McCandlish Phillips's work, but I'm told he's had a stellar reputation for fairness.
2. I think you're confusing the volume of religion-tinged political coverage with accurate and useful coverage. By way of parallel, there are lots of TV shows with black people in them, but are there many shows that portray black life accurately? I'd say no.
3. I think you're also confusing "evangelical Christians" and "right-wing conservatives." The fact that you find it so hard to distinguish between the two reinforces my point. From the sound of it, you assume that every evangelical wants to rewrite the Bill of Rights, keep Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube, push evolution out of schools and force kids to pray. Not the case.
You seem to be assuming that because I'm an evangelical Christian, you can assume my political views and biases. You can't. You can assume only my religious beliefs.
|W|P|I think a large portion of the problem here ties into the general increase in extreme rhetoric, on all sides of the political divide.What has happened is that the Evangelical Christian Right has become very active politically, as a unit. Evangelicals and Catholics from the political left and center, meanwhile, have tended to voice their political positions in non-religious language--thus diminishing their impact as diverse Christian voices.
As a result, Christians as a whole have become identified by outsiders with the one group that loudly identifies themselves as being Christian--the religious Right.
And, since the political discourse today is so greatly soured and polarized, well, that attitude then fills the commentary about the Religious Right, the same as it does just about all other political commentary.
It wasn't always this way. Even beyond the coarsening of public discourse, the "Religious Left" was once as much an entity as their opposition; the black civil rights movement, in particular, was virtually forged in black churches around the country, and they weren't shy about declaring that their views stemmed, in large part, from their understanding of God's will.
Sadly, a few specific issues drove a wedge between the political left and the religious left--most notably gay civil rights and the growing demand by atheists, pagans and other non-Christians to not have monotheistic credos forced upon them.
This break resulted in the religious left being diffused; they couldn't bring themselves to side with groups who practiced lifestyles their faith told them was wrong--at the same time, they could hardly find common cause with the mostly white religious right that had, in recent memory, still declared that miscegenation was a sin against God.
And so the Christian Left fell largely silent. And silent, they became invisible to the Political Left. And so the Left's commentary began to assume that anyone who self-identifies as a Christian is also a far-Right politico, and fair game for all the venom they can spew.
And, of course, the media is guilty of one thing, more than any other: We like it simple. Two sides, no more. The notion of a third group that has a set of views that agrees with the Right on some issues, and the Left on others, simply is too difficult to work into a 3-minute newsspot.
|W|P|with all due respect, as a non christian myself, (even with my religious history) i have to say that we all talk too much. and the subject although impelling enough to make me write this is really boring. politics and religion have held hands in opposition since before time and always will. if the heads of nations bore the names of conciencious individuals such as mark twain, henrey david thoreau, bertrand russell, thomas paine and even ambrose bierce....... they could put the world in true spin. along with ghandi, and the rest..... why argue about "paid" public servants who give nothing but their time for tenure? Brad Huston|W|P|Jon, I thought this quote was most telling about the WaPo story you linked..."When the Times put me on its reporting staff, I was the only evangelical Christian among some 275 news and editorial employees, and certainly the only one who kept a leather-bound Bible on his desk."
Clearly, one out of 275 isn’t exactly proportional to American culture, and “culture” has certainly been a criticism from the right as to why MSM papers are out of touch. Is this merely anecdotal evidence? Sure. But it is no secret that the press overall has an axe to grind against Christianity just as its no secret that we evangelicals would rather share our politics than our faith. That said, your candid views from and honesty from the “inside” are deeply appreciated.
Brad
|W|P|Sir:While I understand the impulse to credit survival of horrific occurances to a "higher power", I've become disenchanted with such claims.
The problem with them is much like the classic Christian Scientist argument that if you have enough faith, God will heal your terminal illness--and if you die waiting for God to heal that illness, the remaining CS'ers will say that it happened because you didn't have enough faith!
God doesn't pick and choose who will survive catastrophe and who does not. To claim that God spared the lives of these two boys is to declare [silently] that God decided that everyone who DID die during storms at sea SHOULD die.
True faith in God isn't, "He will get me out of this." It is, "Whatever happens, I am loved by Him, and if I die, I will be brought into His Kingdom."
This isn't to say that faith has no power over our mortal lives. Rather, it gives us the facility to meet the suffering we face with peace in our hearts.
Jon Fortt|W|P|I repect that point of view. However, the Bible is filled with examples of God actually sparing the lives of believers. Think of Daniel in the lion's den, or manna from Heaven, or Peter in prison.The fact that God allowed John the Baptist to be beheaded when he was (for His own reasons that you and I can't fully fathom) doesn't mean that God didn't spare the lives of those others.
That said, I agree that it's wrong for Christians to suppose that if we have enough faith, we can make God do whatever we want. God's not a genie. We have to submit to His perfect will.