"CHRISTIANPHOBIA"?

From Talking Points Memo:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson decried the "educated" people who perpetuate "Christianphobia" -- the fear of Christians -- during Sunday's "Fox & Friends."
 
"It's appalling and it's, it's super common among educated people," Carlson said. "The people I live around, they all kind of have contempt for Christianity."

More here, with video!

Tucker Carlson is a great big idiot, but this is definitely worth a response, especially because I'm educated, myself, in and out of academia a few times, and have definite and clear attitudes about Christianity in America.

So here's the deal.  Christianity is so vast, so multifaceted, so diverse, that it's really a sort of absurd statement to say "I have disdain for Christianity."  I mean, who are we talking about here?  Catholics?  Orthodox?  Protestants?  And when we talk about Protestants, are we talking about the Southern Baptists?  Methodists? Presbyterians?  The so-called "Bible churches"?  Lutherans?  And even then, we're still talking about fairly well segregated congregations in terms of ethnicity.  Are we talking about charismatic Hispanic churches?  Black Protestant churches?  White Episcopalian churches?

Christianity means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  It's simply not reasonable to lump it all together for the purposes of condemnation.  And frankly, I seriously doubt this actually happens in the way these Fox Newsers describe.  I mean, okay, there are probably a handful of proselytizing atheist professors and grad students out there who, in fact, do lump all of Christianity together in this way, but even these types are pretty rare relative to all of academia.

And where the hell do Unitarians fit into this?

Here's where I stand.  I'm extraordinarily fond of the varieties of Christianity strongly emphasizing that you ought to "love your neighbor as yourself."  On the other hand, I have, to use the word from the Fox and Friends piece, disdain for the varieties of Christianity which only give lip service to the second greatest commandment.

And that's that.  Pretty easy stuff.  And I imagine most of academia is in agreement with me.  Why not?

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