Evangelicals, Bleeding-Heart Conservatives, and Israel
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Two interesting articles today about evangelicals. I'll reprint the opening paragraphs of each below.
Writing in the NYT, Nicholas Kristof looks at Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love:
Writing in the NYT, Nicholas Kristof looks at Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love:
At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.Writing in the City Journal, James Q. Wilson asks, Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.
Scorning people for their faith is intrinsically repugnant, and in this case it also betrays a profound misunderstanding of how far evangelicals have moved over the last decade. Today, conservative Christian churches do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur.
Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives.
In the United States, the two groups that most ardently support Israel are Jews and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Jewish support is easy to explain, but why should certain Christians, most of them politically quite conservative, be so devoted to Israel? There is a second puzzle: despite their support for a Jewish state, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are disliked by many Jews. And a third: a large fraction of African-Americans are hostile to Israel and critical of Jews, yet Jewish voters regard blacks as their natural allies.
posted by JT at Monday, February 04, 2008
4 Comments:
The only way these paradoxes can be understood is theologically. It makes no sense to dislike the people who show you kindness, unless there is pre-existing prejudice. Some of that prejudice may be historically rooted, but when counter-evidence is so clear, it really is nearly inexplicable without a strong doctrine of sin.
Not to mention John 15:18, "“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."
"Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives."
The common cause, should be the Gospel.
But what aspects of Huckabee's faith get criticized?
Its not that he believes in the resurrection or forgiveness of sins.
Its his belief that women should be submissive, in creationism, and that government shouldn't promote or condone deviant sexuality.
Which are 1) social positions 2) rejections of consensus on things people feel are non-religious (science, women's status, etc)
The word "stupid" is politically incorrect.
But if I may be honest, I think there is some stupidity here.
I become puzzled when pre-existing prejudice or paradox is trotted out as an acceptable cover or as a rationale for Emperor-has-no-clothes stupidity.
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