Am I a Bigot?

Explanations, Christians, Etc.
By Daniel G. Jennings
I recently had an interesting and disturbing experience I was informed that the President of a conservative think tank in Washington I admire and have written for was circulating an e-mail that accused me of being an anti-Christian bigot. Now this caught me by surprise, no I’m not a Christian and I have been critical of Christianity as a belief system and of churches and said in so my writings but I wasn’t aware that I was a bigot.
I haven’t for example dismissed all evangelical and Bible believing Christians as ignorant barbarians as Bill Moyers, himself an ordained Baptist minister, keeps doing on a regular basis. Nor have I said that Bible Believing Christians are no better than Al Qaeda something that liberal columnists for the major news media do on an almost daily basis. I might also add that I have never professed the idiotic belief that Conservative Christians are maniacs who believe that Jesus will return waving the flag next week as Bill Moyers keeps telling paying audiences.
In fact I’ve defended Christians on a number of occasions and made a number of liberal secularists mad by pointing out the very obvious and transparent fact that George W. Bush is not an evangelical or born again Christian. Bush is a Methodist who attends a very liberal I think it’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC. Were Bush really a Bible thumping evangelical he’d be attending a Bible Thumping evangelical church. Oddly enough, the liberal media which is hostile to both Bush and evangelicals, has enhanced Bush’s reputation among evangelicals by branding him as one of them.
Now I suppose that I am a conservative secularist, that is I’m an agnostic who doesn’t go to church or espouse any set religious beliefs yet most of my political beliefs are quite conservative, as are most of my social values. I’m very critical of Christianity and the Church, but I’m also critical of other religions such as Islam, Marxism (which is a religion), secular humanism, Mormonism, racism, organized Atheism and the New Age.
Yes, I don’t have much love or respect for the collection of Evangelical, Pentecostal, fundamentalist and Charismatic churches lumped together as the Religious Right. Yet, I’m just as critical of the Religious Left, which is worse than the Religious Right in almost conceivable way. One of my pet peeves is the way in which the media broadcasts every misdeed of Conservative Christians real or imagined but completely ignores worse behavior on the Religious Left. Pat Robertson, whose charities actually do a lot of good and are funded by donations, is attacked for making one silly remark on TV. Bill Moyers, whose network is funded by our tax dollars, is allowed to spew out reprehensible bigotry and demonize vast numbers of good people in the process.
Those on the Religious Right at least seem to honestly believe in their faith. Much of the clergy of the Religious Left, (the establishment of the mainline Episcopal, Methodist, Pentecostal, Northern Baptist, and related churches) no longer believes in God, basic Christian theology or the Bible. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about mainline clergy who don’t believe in God or the divinity of Jesus anymore, some of them even say so in their sermons. Where are the Sixty Minutes exposes and news articles exposing these pious frauds?
Many of these religious frauds try to express their lack of faith through such acts as ordaining gay clergymen. Yet, I have never once heard of a liberal clergyman who doesn’t believe in God not handing out the collection plate or refusing a donation to the church. Or turning down the large salaries and excellent benefits many clergymen get these days. How are clergymen who preach a faith they don’t believe in but still pass out the collection plate every Sunday any better than TV preachers who rip off little old ladies? After all much of the liberal clergyman’s income comes from the donations of elderly women in the pews, many of whom are believers living on fixed incomes. How is Mr. Spong, the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, who doesn’t believe in Christianity any less of a charlatan than Benny Hinn or John Averzini (who promises to make the faithful rich if they send in a donation)? Like Hinn and Averzini, Spong travels the world peddling books and cashing in.
The hypocrisy of the Religious Left isn’t just confined to a lack of faith but to behavior that is well Unchristian in any sense of the word? How are Bill Moyers’ ignorant diatribes against Bible Believing Christians to be reconciled with the Religious Left’s hollow claims of tolerance or the Sermon on the Mount? Or the many liberal clergy who participate in the Peace movement which is awash in Anti-Semitism, Anti-Americanism and other gutter level bigotries? The religious liberals make common cause with political liberals whose attacks on our president and political leaders are filled with childish insults To the liberal Christian “love thy neighbor” only seems to apply if thy neighbor shares thy political beliefs.
The Religious Left seems as willing to force its beliefs on others as the Religious Right. Last year in Denver New Agers put a measure to force citizens to meditate for peace on the city ballot. That of course is atypical of the Religious Left, their real threat is to economic freedom.
Yes, some members of the Religious Right want to reach into my home and control my sex life. But the Religious Left would reach out into my wallet, seize what little income I have left in the form of taxes and waste it on all matter of nutty social programs and foreign aid. If I would try to increase my income by starting a business, the Religious Leftist will surely try to regulate it out of existence. Which is the greater threat to my individual freedom a Religious Conservative telling me sex outside of marriage is evil or a Religious Leftist stealing my money and my financial freedom and labeling it progress?
Why is the Religious Left so in love with the idea of taxation? Could it be that they think that higher taxes means more tax deductible donations for their churches?
Then there’s the way in which the Religious Left is constantly trashing my country, which I love, or if not empowering people who do. Religious Leftists are constantly calling the government, the military and the people who serve in them evil. They label America as imperialistic and fascist. Religious leftists also proclaim their love of peace by making common cause with Marxists who believe in violent revolution and terrorism.
Okay, I could go on ranting and raving about the Religious Left all day and God knows those people deserve far worse criticism than I could dish out, but I won’t. Instead I’ll knock my fellow secularists.
I can understand why the head of that Washington think tank would be angry at secularists. Virtually all of the secularist argument and literature these days is little more than cheap anti-religious bigotry. Much of it crude and quite ignorant. And much of it as nutty as anything people of faith produce.
For example we constantly hear conservative American Christians compared to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The comparison is ludicrous and ignorant as a few questions quickly reveal. Are people being beheaded in Alabama? Are American Muslims and Jews being executed for refusing to convert to Christianity? Are American Christian suicide bombers attacking mosques or Hindu temples? The answer to these questions is no. The argument is one of bigotry.
It is also one of hypocrisy secularists constantly rant and rave about the moronic beliefs of some evangelicals, the silly and I might point out un-Biblical rapture story for example. Yet they ignore equally silly beliefs on the Religious Left, the New Agers some of them Christian clergy who try to talk to angels and spirits for example. Or Oprah Winfrey and her course of miracles. Or the idiotic belief that the Earth is a living being with a soul.
Secularists gripe constantly about “The Left Behind Novels,” which are moronic and comic bookish, but the Left Behind Novels are no worse than “The De Vinci Code,” clearly a work of the religious left, which combines gutter level anti Catholic bigotry with New Age ideas about Christ in a cheap pulp novel. Yet we never hear secularists griping about the Code.
Nor do people of faith have any monopoly on nutty ideas. The truth of course is that many of the secularist arguments and causes are nutty.
I can’t for the life of me see how posting the Ten Commandments on the Court House Wall, having children say the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance or for that matter school prayer threatens the Constitution. The Ten Commandments are posted on the walls of the US Supreme Court which conservatives blast as a notorious bastion of secularism so posting them on the wall is a meaningless act. “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is just a hollow and meaningless phrase having kids say it won’t make them grow up to be Bible Thumpers (I said it every day for twelve years in school). As for School Prayer, would the watered down, inoffensive, politically correct prayer public school teachers would have to administer mean anything or have any influence on kids?
I might also add that secularists atheists in particular can be every bit as smug, holier than thou and arrogant as any person of faith. The presumption of moral superiority because they believe or don’t believe in something is arrogant and offensive. It’s this kind of nonsense that made me give up on religion or at least Christianity in the first place. So I have to wonder how I could be labeled a bigot? I suppose I’m a bigot because I’m not an Ivy League educated Baptist minister who used to run public television a job he got by kissing Lyndon Johnson’s ass for a few years. Not because I’m a secularist.