I dismissed an article at Alternet as "garbage" because I found it to be shallow, without any reference to any actual thought by actual people, a parody of criticism of serious thought. I continue to be amazed, years after the fact, that the rules of serious intellectual engagement and criticism can be suspended if one is attacking "religion" or "Christianity". The fact that allegedly "serious" writers like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins can use these two words as synonyms without being called on it, even by reviewers in reputable publications, makes me wonder what's wrong with people who claim that the threat to intellectual life is one of their beefs with religious beliefs. If that is so, I respond, show it by being more vigorous and knowledgeable about the subject matter you are criticizing. In the case of both Harris and Dawkins, they are so woefully ignorant of even the most basic facts concerning Christianity - for example, it is only one expression of religious belief, and in both its theoretical and practiced forms is so diverse as to evade a single-word appellation; it is far more correct to talk about "Christianities" - that anything else they write about the subject becomes tainted by their ignorance.
A similar ignorance pervades journalistic discussions of religious life and belief as well. Many religious critics of mainstream religious journalism set that down to a lack of religious belief among journalists; in other words, they are operating out of ignorance. Yet, most journalists are ignorant of any subject they cover because they aren't zoning-law experts, criminal attorneys, or politicians, but journalists. They are trained not as these and other professionals, but as writers about a topic. As such, it would seem they have a duty to inform themselves about their subject matter, at least insofar as they are presenting a particular story to the public. Yet, one finds (for example) the Washington Post/Newsweek online "On Faith" Forum to be so poorly researched, I for one wonder why it attracts readers at all. Many of the regular, featured, writers - Eboo Patel and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in particular - are both gifted writers and present their ideas with a deep understanding of their faith, and a deep faith as well; for the most part, though, the stuff there can be ignored out of hand.
We are in the midst of two wars in lands soaked in a religious tradition foreign to our own, largely Christian, heritage; yet most commentary on both Christianity and Islam is ignorant of some of the most basic facts of either religious belief, and how even in an increasingly secularizing atmosphere religious belief still shapes who we are as a people. A doctor working at a health clinic for women is murdered, and people claim to support him and his act of premeditated homicide as a religiously-inspired moral act. One cannot dismiss such a claim out of hand without an understanding that there are serious precedents for such a claim. Among the fastest growing branches of Christianity are the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; there are many mainstream Christians who consider both of these outside the communion of Christianity (especially the LDS Church because of its additional, Third Testament of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon). Yet, how do we in the mainstream communicate with these branches of the faith if we are unwilling to grant that they, too, have something to offer people?
This little rant really comes down to this simple point: I am quite exhausted by the ignorance that pervades our talk about "religion" and "Christianity". Whether in criticisms of it that are void of any serious intellectual merit, yet sell hundreds of thousands of copies, making their authors notorious overnight without any justification of which I am aware; or in our public discourse that ignores the reality that we are currently occupying two countries that exist within far different faith traditions than our own, faith traditions of which we know next to nothing. The simple reality is, despite the insistence for over a century that religion is less and less important in our collective lives, it continues to be a major driving force and underlying current in our public events. That we cannot discuss it with even a modicum of intellectual honesty, or even accept the simple factual nature of the assertion, troubles me deeply.
Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about it.
