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  • I THINK WE’VE BEEN INSULTED

    Filed at 7:24 am under by dcobranchi

    Evidently the intersection of the sets “progressives” and “homeschoolers” is assumed to be the null set:

    Now there is a fertile new middle ground to be plowed in churches such as Saddleback, whose leaders like Warren eschew divisive partisan talk and political wedge issues. Instead, they “emphasize much less the notion of a vengeful, judgmental God,” said Mathew Schmalz, professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

    The approach has proved successful in appealing to millions who want religious experiences that “emphasize the Bible and teachings of Jesus as a blueprint for living, a guide for living a full and healthy life,” he said. That has forged a new evangelical profile which “is becoming more diverse … interested in more socially progressive issues” such as poverty, illiteracy, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the violence in Darfur.

    Churches such as Saddleback now offer Christian families “a sense of community and Bible-based truth, but they apply it more flexibly,” Schmalz said. “They are people who are more upwardly mobile, urban professional types who don’t necessarily live within a traditional evangelical homeschooling world.”

    It never ceases to amaze me how ingrained is that homeschooling=wingnut meme. HSLDA has done its work well.

    3 Responses to “I THINK WE’VE BEEN INSULTED”


    Comment by
    Anonymous
    November 30th, 2007
    at 12:31 pm

    Since when has fighting illiteracy, poverty or disease been labelled as “socially progressive, anyway”? Is that not as traditional as mom’s apple pie?

    Here is my favorite line: “a sense of community and Bible-based truth, but they apply it more flexibly,” … more flexibly??? I’d love to hear what they mean by that.

    As for homeschooling, progressive HSers have been much too easily cast as black sheep…. something that seems to be slow in changing.


    Comment by
    Darren
    November 30th, 2007
    at 12:50 pm

    Thanks for the compliment 😉

    I agree with Anonymous’ comments. As a homeschool graduate, I was working on fighting violence in southern Sudan in the mid-90s under a guy who homeschooled his kids and whose political views make me look postitively left-wing. We didn’t see it as some betrayal of our conservative or Christian views; in fact, it was a logical outgrowth of them.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    November 30th, 2007
    at 12:59 pm

    The ’90s was a century ago. This was written yesterday.

    [Joe Klein] attended Frank Luntz’s dial group of 30 undecided–or sort of undecided–Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night…and it was a fairly astonishing evening…

    In the next segment–the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee’s college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants–I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, “After all, these are children of God,” the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). These Republicans were hard.

    But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture–specifically, about waterboarding–the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. “I don’t have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,” said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.

    They also hated anything that Ron Paul said (high 30s to low 20s), especially on the war in Iraq.

    Compassion and conservatism seem to be mortal enemies at this point.