janelle
04-20-2005, 09:43 PM
• April 14, 2005 | 3:02 p.m. ET
Revelations regarding the Left (Joe Scarborough)
A few days back I chronicled the left’s heated attacks on men and women of faith.
I noted how op-ed writers for the New York Times and other media elites bashed evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
You’ve read it before—Garry Wills comparing Christians to Osama Bin Laden and Maureen Dowd predicting the next dark ages because evangelicals voted for George Bush.
The Schiavo case and the death of Pope John Paul II only intensified the chattering class’s bigoted rhetoric.
Christopher Hitches, Air America, and a collection of “Moveon.org” types blamed the late Pope for Aids in Africa, genocide in Rwanda, and the oppression of millions in the Middle East.
Terri Schiavo, on the other hand, simply shouldered the blame for Barry Bonds, chicken weed and Michael Eisner.
This week has brought a new round of angry attacks centered upon—I kid you not—a fictional NBC miniseries called Revelations.
As usual, The New York Times’ Frank Rich weighed in with his Pavlovian response to the mere mentioning of the words “Jesus Christ’ thirty paces beyond a place of worship.
The talented New York Times Arts editor blasted the Christian-themed fictional series as anti-Semitic.
What an original charge.
Not to be outdone, Salon.com called the Christian series “the latest nugget in a hailstorm of fundamentalist invective.”
Maybe I am missing something but it seems that all the invective is coming from the left.
For a political set that has long preached tolerance and diversity, modern American liberals have neither for Christians who follow 2,000 years of teachings from the church.
As I explained in an earlier column, I suspect much of the anger is rooted in the mistaken belief that God died sometime after the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan and before Wavy Gravy took the stage at Woodstock.
From the end of Woodstock to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, most conservative Christians kept their mouths shut and surrendered politics and pop culture to the New Left.
That deafening silence began to break after the 1992 election of Bill Clinton. By 1994, Christians were actively demanding a say in their government.
The election of George W. Bush in 2000 further emboldened them.
With Washington under control, evangelicals and conservative Catholics set their sights on changing popular culture.
With the enormous success of the “Left Behind” book series and “The Passion of the Christ,” mainstream media outlets like NBC and CBS began looking for religious material to place in their prime time schedules.
But for many, the ascendancy of Orthodox Christianity is simply too much to take.
Like Christian activists before them, these left wing talking heads spend their days searching for every possible slight that will give them an opportunity to cry foul and launch a new blistering attack against the theocratic nut bar of the week.
This is all because many opinion leaders still cannot accept the fact that they had God buried in the 1960s, and somehow, someway, the Heavenly Houdini escaped his grave.
Now they are forced to endure an unenlightened age where rednecks and hayseeds like you and I believe that God is in his heaven.
I don’t know about you, but I am not trying to convert people by shoving them in my church. You won’t hear the next pope cite this doctrine but I often chant Saint John Lennon’s hymn “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”
I have enough spiritual challenges of my own. I don’t need to tell you about yours.
However, after years of digesting mindless sitcoms and shallow plot lines on TV, my family and I should be able to sit back and watch a miniseries without being the target of childish insults from the mainstream media types.
Andrew Sullivan attacked me on his website today for explaining how the ascendancy of evangelical Christians was pushing elites into a mouth-foaming state. Sullivan accuses yours truly of saying Jesus was an anti-gay, pro-life Republican who supported George Bush.
I was also quoted under the subhead “Theocratic Watch.”
While the attack centered on the gay issue, and it always does with Sullivan, his snippy jab was, at the very least, intellectually dishonest.
Sullivan knows that most evangelicals read the teachings of Christ to promote life, discourage abortion, oppose gay marriage, and in America at least, vote Republican.
Democratic leaders like Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton have even begun admitting that their party has become too secularized and, in some cases, hostile to religion.
As one who blasts the GOP with the same frequency as I do the Democratic Party, I will not follow Andrew Sullivan’s rabbit trail. Though a discussion on why I believe Christ’s teachings lean Democratic in key areas will make an interesting column some day soon.
But for now, I will focus on what Sullivan always focuses on: gay marriage.
He is accurate to say that Jesus Christ never attacked gay relationships in the Gospels. That is left to Paul in Romans and to several Old Testament writers.
Christ instead spends much more of his energy attacking sinners like myself who went through a divorce and yes, Jimmy Carter, once looked upon women with lust in their eyes.
Why does Jesus similarly attack gossipers while remaining silent on gays?
No idea.
But Sullivan’s suggestion that the same Jesus who preached that lusting after a woman is a damning offense would give gay sex a free pass seems suspect at best.
Still, as St. John sang, “Whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright.”
God will have the final word.
Until then, we will all have to endure bloggers.
E-mail: [email protected]
If you want to read more from Joe Scarborough, check out 'Rome Wasn't Burnt In a Day'. See Joe each weeknight on MSNBC TV 10 p.m. ET.
Revelations regarding the Left (Joe Scarborough)
A few days back I chronicled the left’s heated attacks on men and women of faith.
I noted how op-ed writers for the New York Times and other media elites bashed evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
You’ve read it before—Garry Wills comparing Christians to Osama Bin Laden and Maureen Dowd predicting the next dark ages because evangelicals voted for George Bush.
The Schiavo case and the death of Pope John Paul II only intensified the chattering class’s bigoted rhetoric.
Christopher Hitches, Air America, and a collection of “Moveon.org” types blamed the late Pope for Aids in Africa, genocide in Rwanda, and the oppression of millions in the Middle East.
Terri Schiavo, on the other hand, simply shouldered the blame for Barry Bonds, chicken weed and Michael Eisner.
This week has brought a new round of angry attacks centered upon—I kid you not—a fictional NBC miniseries called Revelations.
As usual, The New York Times’ Frank Rich weighed in with his Pavlovian response to the mere mentioning of the words “Jesus Christ’ thirty paces beyond a place of worship.
The talented New York Times Arts editor blasted the Christian-themed fictional series as anti-Semitic.
What an original charge.
Not to be outdone, Salon.com called the Christian series “the latest nugget in a hailstorm of fundamentalist invective.”
Maybe I am missing something but it seems that all the invective is coming from the left.
For a political set that has long preached tolerance and diversity, modern American liberals have neither for Christians who follow 2,000 years of teachings from the church.
As I explained in an earlier column, I suspect much of the anger is rooted in the mistaken belief that God died sometime after the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan and before Wavy Gravy took the stage at Woodstock.
From the end of Woodstock to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, most conservative Christians kept their mouths shut and surrendered politics and pop culture to the New Left.
That deafening silence began to break after the 1992 election of Bill Clinton. By 1994, Christians were actively demanding a say in their government.
The election of George W. Bush in 2000 further emboldened them.
With Washington under control, evangelicals and conservative Catholics set their sights on changing popular culture.
With the enormous success of the “Left Behind” book series and “The Passion of the Christ,” mainstream media outlets like NBC and CBS began looking for religious material to place in their prime time schedules.
But for many, the ascendancy of Orthodox Christianity is simply too much to take.
Like Christian activists before them, these left wing talking heads spend their days searching for every possible slight that will give them an opportunity to cry foul and launch a new blistering attack against the theocratic nut bar of the week.
This is all because many opinion leaders still cannot accept the fact that they had God buried in the 1960s, and somehow, someway, the Heavenly Houdini escaped his grave.
Now they are forced to endure an unenlightened age where rednecks and hayseeds like you and I believe that God is in his heaven.
I don’t know about you, but I am not trying to convert people by shoving them in my church. You won’t hear the next pope cite this doctrine but I often chant Saint John Lennon’s hymn “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”
I have enough spiritual challenges of my own. I don’t need to tell you about yours.
However, after years of digesting mindless sitcoms and shallow plot lines on TV, my family and I should be able to sit back and watch a miniseries without being the target of childish insults from the mainstream media types.
Andrew Sullivan attacked me on his website today for explaining how the ascendancy of evangelical Christians was pushing elites into a mouth-foaming state. Sullivan accuses yours truly of saying Jesus was an anti-gay, pro-life Republican who supported George Bush.
I was also quoted under the subhead “Theocratic Watch.”
While the attack centered on the gay issue, and it always does with Sullivan, his snippy jab was, at the very least, intellectually dishonest.
Sullivan knows that most evangelicals read the teachings of Christ to promote life, discourage abortion, oppose gay marriage, and in America at least, vote Republican.
Democratic leaders like Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton have even begun admitting that their party has become too secularized and, in some cases, hostile to religion.
As one who blasts the GOP with the same frequency as I do the Democratic Party, I will not follow Andrew Sullivan’s rabbit trail. Though a discussion on why I believe Christ’s teachings lean Democratic in key areas will make an interesting column some day soon.
But for now, I will focus on what Sullivan always focuses on: gay marriage.
He is accurate to say that Jesus Christ never attacked gay relationships in the Gospels. That is left to Paul in Romans and to several Old Testament writers.
Christ instead spends much more of his energy attacking sinners like myself who went through a divorce and yes, Jimmy Carter, once looked upon women with lust in their eyes.
Why does Jesus similarly attack gossipers while remaining silent on gays?
No idea.
But Sullivan’s suggestion that the same Jesus who preached that lusting after a woman is a damning offense would give gay sex a free pass seems suspect at best.
Still, as St. John sang, “Whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright.”
God will have the final word.
Until then, we will all have to endure bloggers.
E-mail: [email protected]
If you want to read more from Joe Scarborough, check out 'Rome Wasn't Burnt In a Day'. See Joe each weeknight on MSNBC TV 10 p.m. ET.