Monday 9 January 2012

Stupid, Crazy, Ignorant and Dangerous

No Surprises

Secularism represents the most intolerant bigotry in the West.  Its megaphone is the media.  It consistently casts its opponents--religious believers, usually Christians--as ignorant and dangerous.  But that is its only consistency.  In all other ways it is hypocritical. 

Rodney Stark describes the syndrome:

Recently, the local media expressed approval when the chief of police of Seattle prohibited his officers from wearing their uniforms to take part in a "March for Jesus."  The media were equally agreeable when, the next day, the chief wore his uniform to march in the "Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Parade." In similar fashion, protest vigils against capital punishment held outside prisons when an execution is schedules are invariably treated with respect, but vigils outside abortion clinics are not.  When animal rights activists berate and abuse women in public for wearing furs, their media treatment is favorable in comparison to that given demonstrations against clubs featuring women wearing nothing.  When 1960's leftists are caught after years of living underground in order to avoid punishment for planting bombs or killing policemen, the press encourages and  condones very mild or even suspended sentences for such "youthful idealism." But there is no hint of sympathy for those who have bombed an abortion clinic or short and abortionist. . . . The clear standard used by most of the media is that moral engagement is wonderful so long as it is entirely secular.  As for religious morality, or indeed any deeply felt religious expressing, nothing could be more misguided or even dangerous.  Indeed, the media could not even report the death of Mother Teresa without providing "balance" by soliciting nasty attacks on her sincerity and merit from professional atheists. (Rodney Stark, One True God [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001], p. 251f)

Stark points out that the worst attacks come from modern deists in churches--those whom we call liberals--whose professional lives have been devoted to denying the authority of the Scriptures and extolling the virtues of disbelief in Christian doctrine.  They consistently frame fundamentalists as morons, ignoramuses, rednecks, uneducated, crude and fanatical.  They are accused of being hostile to modern values and thought--that is, tending towards a socio-pathic disorder. 

These libels are readily picked up and re-broadcast by the media. 
Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Weisskopf characterized evangelical Protestants as "poor, uneducated and easy to command."  "Fashionable" opinion "knows" that traditional believers, and especially those who conceive of God as an active, all-seeing being who actually hears prayers, are stupid, crazy, ignorant, and dangerous. Ibid., p. 254.
Yup.  Stupid, crazy, ignorant and dangerous.  That about sums up the attitude and prevailing paradigm of the Commentariat and the media--its easy tool--with respect to conscientious Christians and faithful churches.  No surprises there.

2 comments:

ZenTiger said...

Just read an extremely biased and factually incorrect attack article on Rick Santorum that fits your profile above. No balancing article in sight.

Yesterday, had to endure a critique of the Tea Party movement on the radio from a liberal progressive that ignored the central messages of the Tea Party to complain about trivial things, and then go on to gush at the OWS protest movement.

It's an epidemic of bias and misinformation.

Blair D said...

The old Palace Hotel in Auckland to be replaced by a 15 story brothel. The main story on National Radio gave some air time to the nearby Catholic Church and their concerns. What really struck me was the spokesperson for the local architects: he wasn't going to comment on the morality of the intended purpose of the building, "let's not get into that" as if this was a ridiculous cause. Instead he went on to bemoan the lack of aesthetic sympathy of the new design, given what it was replacing, as a greater moral outrage. Signs of the times!

Your post reminded me of the following:
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." ESV