Memoir, from just outside the box

DECONSTRUCTING CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA

DECONSTRUCTING CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA

DECONSTRUCTION (1973) is a method of critical analysis of a text. It can be an examination of that text in order to reveal its inadequacy.

Am I intellectually equipped to deconstruct an essay written by a conservative college professor? The answer to that question is a big fat NO. But, eleven years ago, I tried anyway.

OCTOBER 10, 2014

In Nashville, the age-old truth is that every other person you meet is a songwriter. It was the byproduct of my three dozen trips to Nashville over sixty years that I learned some of the tricks of the songwriter's trade. One of the tricks is… the hook. The hook is the phrase that is the song's bottom line, maybe the title of the album, often part of a repeated refrain. The hook, the ear worm, draws the listener to the song and then keeps the song playing on a loop in the brain. Many songwriters sit down to a blank sheet of paper and begin with the hook. The hook is their muse.

"get off of my cloud"

"it's my party"

"tangled up in blue"

“under pressure”

“one step up and two steps back”

“I walk the line”

Damon Linker is an American journalist and author. He is currently a senior lecturer in the Political Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught political philosophy at Brigham Young University.

I read Damon Linker’s opinion piece as if I were reading the lyrics of a song, and I asked myself… What is his hook?

“Why Do So Many Liberals Despise Christianity?”

From the get-go, this is a hit piece. Damon controls the narrative by setting up Liberals to take the fall by tagging them with the sin of despising his religion. How many is “so many”? Seventeen? Five hundred? Ten thousand? Twenty million? Why did he use the word despise when there is no way for him to know the nature of the attitude about Christianity that dwells in so many Liberal hearts. The use of the word despise is a tell and obvious overkill. It calls into question all that follows. An honest effort might have been titled, “Why Do the Three Liberals I Interviewed Have a Negative View of Christianity?”

“Liberals increasingly want to enforce a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. They see alternative visions of the good as increasingly intolerable.”

The First Amendment protects the fundamental rights to freedom of religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This amendment prevents Congress from establishing an official religion, restricting the free exercise of religion or infringing upon freedoms of expression, assembly and petition.

Regarding Damon’s alternative visions of the good, in the United States, the practice of polygamy is illegal and not protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. According to the Supreme Court’s 1879 ruling in Reynolds v. United States, and despite the religious objections of the LDS church, the Court established a crucial distinction between religious beliefs, which are protected, and actions, which can be regulated by the government. This means that, while individuals are free to believe in polygamy, they cannot legally practice it, as the government can prohibit actions that violate social duties or undermine the law, even if those actions are religiously motivated.

“Liberalism seems to have an irrational animus against Christianity."

With the use of seems to, Damon pulls his punch. He fails to own his schoolyard taunt. He projects his own irrational ill will onto rational liberals. We wave him off as if he were a pesky gnat.

I am not an atheist. I am not an agnostic. I am not a true believer, a worshiper. It is the nefarious deeds of any organized church, from its inception to present day, that creep me out. I am all-in with the idea of the larger circle of meaning. I have zero interest in the placement of the organized church between myself and the All-That-Is.

I thank Damon for reminding me that Christians have an aggravating tendency to attempt to impose their beliefs upon others. Is it the proselytizing that fuels my rational animus toward Christians? All the major religions have recruiting techniques, mixed with elaborate ongoing rituals to seal the deal, and keep it sealed.

"What has Gordon College done to jeopardize its accreditation? It has chosen to enforce a 'life and conduct statement' that forbids 'homosexual practice' on campus."

When Damon accuses Liberals of attempting to enforce a uniformly secular vision of the human good, Damon asserts that this is a bad thing. When the Christians at Gordon College attempt to enforce a life conduct statement, Damon asserts that this is a good thing, an alternative vision of the good.

"Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of human good."

This is what passes for right-wing stand-up comedy, Christian propaganda that oozes snark and sends his increasingly brainwashed audience into a swoon.

I thank Damon for reminding us that we Liberals are resting on a foundation of tolerance and social justice. He unknowingly acknowledges our tradition of rejecting irrational animus and embracing acceptance. Damon derails when he hints that, because the Left is the standard bearer for acceptance, the Left cannot reject the actions of Christians. Having a tendency toward acceptance doesn't mean Liberals have to accept polygamy. Nice try, Damon.

Christians would move increasingly closer to righteousness if they would reject all proselytizing and money-grubbing and embrace good works and good works only.

Earth 1 and Earth 2

There are two main strains of human essence, Earth 1 and Earth 2, the Left and the Right, the tolerant and the intolerant, the creative and the stagnant, the community and the patriarchy, the forward-thinking and the backward-thinking.

Damon Linker thinks there are conflicting notions of the highest good. “But, Grasshopper, the highest good is the highest good.” The highest good lives above and beyond all religions. If Christians actually embraced the highest good, the manipulative dark side of the organized church would quickly become obsolete.

Damon Linker wants us to believe that all Liberals hold exactly the same views. This is called "painting with a broad brush," Propaganda 101. He suggests that Liberals fear and hate Christians. As individuals, Liberals don't necessarily fear or hate Christians. Liberals understand the importance of the role the churches play in crowd control and the transference of grief, fear and bewilderment. What we reject is the patriarchy, the narrow, artless intolerance, the “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

“What matters is that we Christians acknowledge that something in the Liberal mind has changed, and that we must act to recover what has been lost.”

With his essay, Damon Linker attempts to write the song that will neutralize Earth 1. His hook, his muse, his essence and his album’s working title is… ANIMUS.

The Liberal mind has not changed. Earth 1 has always been the home of the arts, the exercise of freedom, unfettered wisdom, the Enlightenment, camaraderie, the tree-huggers, the nudists, the inscrutable Cheshire cat smile.