Visionaries,
I sent this response to Vera’s weekend piece to The Daily News this morning. FYI.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
Response to Vera
Vera White laments the fact that Moscowans are becoming less civil to one another (July 19/20, 2003), and in the course of her discussion she locates the source of the contagion–Christ Church. As the minister of Christ Church, I do not ask Vera to get the facts right–believing as I do that the age of miracles is past–but I would like the opportunity to respond if I may.
Progressives love to celebrate diversity, until they actually start getting some. And when they do start hearing opinions not in line with their idea of what ought to be the consensus, they start getting Concerned. And one of the first responses is that the purveyors of heterodoxy (i.e. stuff progressives never heard on NPR) get themselves misrepresented. Like in Vera’s column, for instance.
First she identified Christ Church as part of the Religious Right, and that we identify ourselves as the one true religion. These claims are, reading from left to right, false and false. For many years, in sermons, magazines and books, our church has been sharply critical of the Religious Right. This could have been verified by means of an arcane technique called “reporting.” And we do not believe that our church has a monopoly on truth. We are Christians, and this means that we believe the Christian faith to be true, good and lovely, but we happily share this view with many other Christian churches–Evangelical Free, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, and more. We repudiate the religious individualism that restricts the faithful to “thee and me, and I have my doubts about thee.”
Then Vera mentioned the current debate over the state of the government school system–as though the debate created guilt in parents who keep their kids enrolled, and presumably created the exodus of parents leaving those schools. But this is the reverse of what happened. The debate did not create any exodus; the exodus created the debate. The population of school-aged children in our area was rising, the population of students in the government school system was falling, and local solons were publicly scratching their noggins. Where could the kids be? The answer was that they were heading into the private education sector, which is thriving. This was pointed out, and a debate started. But the heart of this issue was not civil discourse or the lack of it, but rather the comparative performance of the schools.
Third, Vera says that the welcome mat for gays and lesbians “isn’t out” at several downtown church-run businesses. Church-run businesses? Name one. It is true that members of Christ Church have businesses and jobs, but I believe this is also true of other churches. And with regard to lack of welcome, this was not reported on the basis of any policies, any signs in any windows, or anything else of the kind. Rather, this particular breaking story is mentioned on the basis of how several members of the gay and lesbian axis said they felt. What is this? Given my “orientation,” if I were to enter a tattoo emporium, I would hardly expect applause to break out. And it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if it didn’t. This is an area were some folks need to grow up just a little bit.
And fourth, she notes (through more cracker-jack shoe leather reporting) that in this new climate woe shall betide the hapless idiot who fails to support President Bush. But that would include me. Now what? I don’t support Bush. Didn’t vote for him. Neither did a whole bunch of my friends at Christ Church.
In short, Vera undertook to discuss incivility, on a mission to locate where all this bad karma was coming from. In the course of her representation of Christ Church, she got every salient fact wrong. Perhaps this is why some are tempted to be uncivil. When the people who buy ink by the barrel do not care enough about the facts to check with those they so glibly misrepresent, the reactions can be bad. I do not say this in defense of any incivility, which is wrong regardless. But the people who have expressed concern about all this incivility need to learn how to blame their own astounding provincialism. Diversity in propaganda puff pieces is quite different from true diversity on the street.
Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.