Driving around town today, I found myself listening to Christian radio. I was bored. It was on. The subject for Talk of the Nation was interest rates. So, I flip over to hear Chuck Colson casually lay the blame for the French riots on the fact that the European union has excluded Christianity from its constitution. Well, to be fair, he says that Europe is post-Christian and therefore lacks any moral fiber. In fact, he said that Europe was experiencing a "moral and spiritual crisis."
Don't get me wrong, I see much wrong with Europe. As a French national admitted recently, their social welfare system may well discourage people from pursuing meaningful work. As international partners, they neglected ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and have been slow to respond to some of the threats in the Middle East.
But that doesn't mean that some nitwit like Colson is correct to belittle Europe for their moral values. They have lower rates of many of the social ills that we lament. Remember this little study? "“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies."
But more important, at least for me, their government leadership has not been accused (credibly) of distorting evidence and intelligence to justify war. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan and others noted that we have discovered electronic evidence of Iran's nuclear (sorry, "nukular") program only to find that our European allies are not convinced that it hasn't been faked.
And of course, remember that our supposed Christian President has defended torture. Given the religious right's nod for power and own problem with moral relativism, I think it is ridiculous to claim the moral high ground. We lost that the moment we reelected George W. Bush.
Ok, no more Christian radio for me. Promise.
3 comments:
I'm going to hold you to that promise.
It is depressing to see how the listeners of "Christian" radio are manipulated
and how that affects the rest of the country
Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze
In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.
"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."
If democracy isn't restored, at least evidence of how it died is in the Senate record.
Streak
Thanks for pointing this out. Here I was thinking that the problems in France could be attributed to a complex combination of many factors such as a history of colonialization, segregation in society, hiring practices, close juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, loss of hope, and other factors. It's good to know now that it's just the absence of the word "christianity" in some documents. Interestingly, a quick search of the US constitution shows that our fine document does not mention Christ or Christianity either. In fact, the only mention of religion is the first ammendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Of course, Colson could be right. Maybe having the the word "Christian" in our constitution could have averted some ills here at home. Let's see, slavery, genocide, segregation, Jim Crow, imperialism, sexism, racism, etc.... However, in looking at the words of christianity's founder, it seems to me that he was pretty harsh on those who tried to sell us Colson's brand of religiosity: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." For me Christ isn't about having his name put into some document that will in turn magically change a society's behavior. He's about transformation of lives from the inside out that in turns transforms the way we relate to God, each other and the world in which we live. The "outside-in" method that Colson is advocating hasn't worked since the Cain and Abel incident. Pretty cheap tactics to simplify a society's crisis like this, but I'm sure Colson has learned well that this drivel is what his audience wants to hear.
Streak, I hate to hear you make a promise that you know you can't keep. It's like driving past a bad wreck- no matter how hard you try to keep eyes ahead, you know you'll look!
Later
BB
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