Point & Counterpoint

[lsanderson]

Point:
Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

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.

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. And the Democratic presidential candidate (particularly if it’s Mr. Obama, to whom evangelicals have been startlingly receptive) has a real chance this year of winning large numbers of evangelical voters. More

Counterpoint:
Dear Nick Kristof

by tristero

Dear Nick Kristof,

You write:

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.

Sir, let's not talk hypotheticals. I have discussed Michael Huckabee several times at New York parties. And I have derided Michael Huckabee at these events. I plan to do so again. And again. And again. Until Huckabee is pushed back to the margins of American discourse where he belongs. More

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes. There is a difference between deriding someone's faith and deriding the actions a person takes, even if the person claims that the actions are taken based on his/her faith.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

And there is a big difference between deriding someone for the gender or race they were born, something they cannot control, and being down on a person for their association with racist, sexist groups, which they can control. Most fundamentalists, and many evangelicals are very sexist and racist, thus making this whole discussion illogical, IMHO.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

You said what I was going to say.

Not to mention that Obama and Clinton likely have no desire to force everyone to become black and female.

[pameladean]

Oh, that's masterful. The rhythms are very like those in Twain's "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper."

And of course, tristero's point is completely valid. I will also add that I feel quite free to deride people who do sincerely live their faith, if they want me to live it too when I don't share it, especially when I think it actively harmful. This doesn't arise with Huckabee, but it does with others.

P.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

I don't care about someone's beliefs. I do care about hypocrisy (e.g. Huckabee's attitude (based on his actions) that only Christians deserve to live).

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

I think the folks that Kristof is referring to are being called leftwing evangelicals. And most people slamming evans generally specify that they mean the rightwing ones. And rightwing evans crying bigotry is too funny to take seriously.