Dean's World

Steven Waldman has a good piece on BeliefNet that more people should read: Perverted, God-Hating Frenchies vs. Inbred, Sex-Obsessed Yokels. It's pretty spot-on, in my experience.

There are a few nits I have to pick with it. A little known fact, for example, is that the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution was fought and argued for most passionately by southern Baptists, of the same basic background as guys like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Indeed, the southern Baptists responsible for that amendment, back in the 1700s, were a very great deal more conservative and "intolerant" than guys like Falwell. They argued passionately for the 1st amendment precisely because separation of church & state was so important to them--and the funny thing is that if you listen closely enough to guys like Falwell and Robertson, they're still concerned about keeping the 1st amendment's separation of church and state. They simply feel that things like school prayer and the 10 commandments on a courthouse wall simply do not qualify as "church" or as "establishment of a religion"; to them it feels more like these are innocuous, non-sectarian traditions and that expunging them (especially by the courts rather than by democratic action) are an assault on them and an effort to remove their very presence from the public square. They often ask fair questions, such as, "Why was it okay for religious people to use their faith to oppose slavery, to oppose child labor practices, to oppose segregation--but if we oppose abortion we're endangering the Constitution?"

On the other hand, the conservative belief that people on the left instinctively reject morality is often off-base. Yes, there is a hedonist side to modern day leftists, no question about it, just as there is a rigid intolerance to some religious conservatives. But I'm often moved by just how concerned with private morality many people on the left really are, and how important raising good kids is to many of them.

Another nit: Waldman seems to join in the "kick Zell Miller" games that are so popular on the left these days. He ought to stop it. If I'd said that Ann Coulter has horns under her blonde hair no one would think me a religious zealot. Anyone who knows Zell Miller's record knows that he's a lifelong liberal on most social issues and not a conservative by most measures at all.

I think the #1 thing that really contributes to the left/right divide, at least on matters of faith, is that conservatives tend to feel they are completely ganged up on by the popular culture. It recently occurred to me that this is pretty much what a lot of black people feel about white culture: that the majority people can't understand them because they didn't grow up exposed to minority culture except through the broad brush strokes of popular music and comedians--but black people can't help but understand white culture pretty well since they're so overwhelmed by it on television, in movies, and so on.

There's probably a great deal of truth to that. As someone who's spent a whole lot of time living and working among black people (which gets me in trouble sometimes since it's taught me to be blunt about race issues in a way that sometimes gives other people the willies), I've seen it in action. Although some black people take that "you can't undestand" stuff to a ridiculous level, there's some truth there. If you grow up talking a little different, dressing a little different, eating a little different, playing a little different from the dominant culture, it's easier for you to be stereotyped and misunderstood.

Similarly, the truth is that if you look at television, movies, what's found in most school textbooks, and certainly the dominant culture at most of our more prestigious universities, it's so far from what most religious conservatives grow up thinking and believing and sharing with each other it's almost like a different universe. The "Red Staters" understand the New York, Hollywood, and intellectual culture that dominates the television and movie industries quite well because they can't help but suck it in on a daily basis. Hollywood is dominated by Californians and people from the Boston-New York corridor, as are the upper echelons of the news industry. "Blue staters," however, are so underexposed to what people in the heartland think and feel they often stereotype them or make ridiculous assumptions about them. This is why, as paradoxical as it seems, many self-described conservatives feel that they are constantly fighting an uphill struggle politically even when they win victory after victory at the polls.

In recent years I've come to appreciate how and why my own values and viewpoints seem so odd to some people. I used to think it was because I was just naturally iconoclastic. Recently I've come to realize, though, that I had a rather schizoid upbringing. I grew up with one foot solidly in west Texas and another in urban Chicago. I grew up partly in rock-ribbed fundamentalism and partly in liberal protestantism, with a year in a Catholic school to round all that out--then turned atheist. All of these have come to inform my own political views.

I fancy that the red staters understand the blue staters better than the reverse. They really do seem to. But then they get some wild ideas about them and make some crazy generalizations that simply aren't so. On the other hand if I hear one more blue stater rant about how the Republicans are about to impose a radical theocracy on the nation I think my head will explode.

What the solution to all this is I don't know. I do know that more articles like Waldman's would be a start. I kind of liked this Max Lucado piece too, although I fancy a lot of people will look at it and not know what he's talking about.