“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either. But that’s an —” Miller said.

“You don’t know whether or not that would be an appropriate question to ask an applicant?” Schock interrupted Miller.

“Speaking outside of this case, which I don’t know anything about, it would surprise me that that question was asked,” Miller said.

Note that Miller cannot bring himself simply to say that such a thing would be wrong. Perhaps it did not occur to him. Or if it did, he considered it too dangerous a thing to say. This is the Alice in Wonderland world in which we find ourselves when under rule by socialist-progressive statists.

This incident was just another in a series of appalling revelations of the Obama administration’s IRS targeting harassment against groups and individuals believed to be unfriendly toward the president’s political programs. Like the Benghazi cover-up and the illegal prying into business and personal communications of people employed by the Associated Press (done, according to reports, because the White House was incensed by the timing of an AP story), this record of government intimidation is simply corrupt Chicago politics on a national scale.

The essence of Chicago machine politics is simple: give plenty of taxpayer-extracted gifts to your friends (Wall Street, Hollywood, medical providers, Silicon Valley, auto unions, wind and solar power developers, teachers unions, etc., etc., etc., in the current president’s case) and punish your enemies ruthlessly, with your enemies defined as anyone who stands in the way of your agenda, in any way, regardless of any other considerations such as their innocence of actual wrongdoing.

Thus the IRS’s Chicago-style outrages: “Nice little nonprofit organization you got there, buddy. It would be a shame if . . . something happened to it” . . .

That is statism in a nutshell.

Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it.

When I finished reading Ralph Peters’ Civil War novel Cain at Gettysburg, I almost checked my clothing for blood spatter.

Up until now Michael Shaara’s epic novel The Killer Angels has been considered not only the best Gettysburg novel ever written, but the best possible Gettysburg novel.

It’s been a long time since I read Shaara’s book, but I’m fairly certain that, for all its virtues, it didn’t have anything like the impact on me that Cain at Gettysburg did.

Cain at Gettysburg is a tactile book. It’s written at eye level – sometimes ground level – and leaves a powerful – occasionally sickening – impression of the actual experience of the men involved, generals and common soldiers alike. We are never far from the smells of gunpowder and dysentery and decomposing bodies. We feel the itch of the uniforms, the burning heat of the July sun, and the thirst and hunger of men who can never get sufficient clean water or food.

The characters, most of them real historical characters, come vividly and cantankerously alive. If the book has a villain, it’s probably Gen. Daniel Sickles, the New York politician soldier who nearly loses the battle singlehanded on the second day through blatant disregard of orders. But another villain – in the sense of being responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths, is Gen. Robert E. Lee, out of sorts and short on sleep, and suffering from loose bowels. For all his genius and virtue, which are never denied, the man does not see the world as it is. Southrons must always defeat northerners, he is certain, because they’re simply superior, and Virginians are the pinnacle of all. That naïve faith leads him into disastrous decisions.

The hero must be Gen. George Gordon Meade, the dour, detail-oriented northern commander, an engineer who’d rather be building lighthouses. Meade sees everything in terms of numbers and angles of elevation, which allows him to choose his fighting ground effectively and make the most of his superior resources. The denial of his genius on the part of subordinates and historians is, in Peters’ estimation, “the worst injustice ever done to an American general.”

But we also spend plenty of time with common soldiers – a German brigade from Milwaukee saddled with an unjust reputation for cowardice. A platoon from North Carolina led by a sergeant embittered by betrayed love, whose story is raised to the level of metaphor through the persistent existential pestering of a cynical, syphilitic comrade. A company of Irishmen from Pennsylvania led by a sergeant who is nothing less than a sociopath, and all the more valuable for it.

All in all, Ralph Peters’ assessment of the battle is not greatly different from Michael Shaara’s. But the approach is far more visceral.

Cain at Gettysburg is not light reading, and it’s not for the weak of stomach. But if you’re a Civil War buff, eager to re-live the experience of the war from your armchair, you could hardly do better than this.

Cautions for all sorts of stuff.

Lars Walkaer is the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Hailstone Mountain.

Leave it to President Obama’s Chicago pal and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to put it in its most deliciously post-modern form:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics…. [that] provide[s] an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families.”

Ah yes, inclusive. So important that we get rid of gender lest we come across as exclusive; can’t have that. And of course we must have diversity, lest we imply the world is still like 1950s conformity, that mother and father and kids stuff. Ain’t progress grand.

Both series began in the late 1920s and lasted for several decades. Both still have very enthusiastic followings (and somewhat separate ones) among current-day aficionados of mystery and suspense fiction. Exemplifying this continuing interest, a new TV series based on the Saint character is in production, which may have contributed to Amazon’s decision to reprint. Adam Rayner will play the title character, Eliza Dushku will appear as his love interest (and presumably be involved in his schemes), and Roger Moore will co-produce. Moore and fellow former TV Saint Ian Ogilvy also will have on-screen roles in the series.

The numbers: 49 titles in the Saint series, 65 Mrs. Bradley books, and 6 other books by Mitchell will be reprinted.

The books will be published under Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint beginning toward the end of this year.

h/t Mystery Fanfare

These professions have been dominated by left-liberals for decades, so what makes 2013 so different? Re-defining marriage has become the cause célèbre of our cultural elites, that’s what. The vehicle of redefining marriage has finally given these elites what they’ve always known and wanted to permeate into the general culture: Christians are bigots! They are narrow minded, hate filled, hypocritical, self-righteous bigots! See, Christians want to keep homosexuals from being happy, from having the same rights as everyone else. Now everyone can see what we’ve always known about these irrational religious fanatics.

I’m not sure when this became the agenda of the radicals that want to redefine marriage, or if it was always such. But at some point along the way in the last several years the redefine marriage PR project came up with the incredibly absurd term “marriage equality.” That pretty much gave the game away: how can any reasonably intelligent well meaning person be against equality! And for quite a few years, not sure exactly how many, before this became about “equality,” the redfiners have been comparing the poor homosexual souls who don’t have a “right” to marriage to blacks who suffered real discrimination and bigotry in America for over 200 years. Most blacks who are not knee jerk liberals take offense at such a specious comparison, but that hasn’t stopped liberals from using it.

The article I linked to above about Tim Tebow is what prompted this little blog post, because I read it right after I read the Wall Street Journal article about the military, and had recently read Hillsdale College’s latest Imprimis piece by R.R. Reno on religious liberty in America. We are coming to a point in American culture where the hatred of Christians by our cultural elites is going to start having real consequences. The vast majority of Americans do not buy into this perversion that Christians are evil bigots, but they are mostly powerless and too busy with their lives to worry much about it. And many of them buy into the business about redefining marriage being the only fair thing to do, ignorant of the heart of the radicals’ real agenda.

What’s amazing about how easily hoodwinked well-intentioned Americans have become on this, is that it is all based on an easily disprovable assertion: that homosexuality, or same-sex attraction is genetically no different than skin color (these people are an inconvenient fact for the ideologues). Think about the implications: I can’t help it, therefore it must be good and right and true, and the entire country must not only accommodate me, it must change to affirm me unequivocally. I can’t help it, therefore it must be hard wired into my genes from conception. I can’t help it, so you’d better accept me, celebrate me, or we will have you banished from polite society; we will bully you until you shut the hell up!

At some point this bizarre chapter in American history will be seen for what it is, and it won’t be the inevitable march of history toward enlightenment because, well, all these young people think it’s just a peachy idea. No, I’m convinced the truth can only be distorted and suppressed for so long, then reality will reassert itself. Much of Western cultural elite at one time thought communism was the inevitable march of history, and now there are only, sadly, a few pathetic outposts of communism left in the world.

Until then, my friends, I proudly wear the Scarlet “C” and the mockery and scorn of the “enlightened” of our time.

At present the market does not provide this option, the Wrap report notes, because the providers of popular content (such as ESPN, the Discovery Channel, and the like) force the cable and satellite distributors to take less-popular channels along with the more desirable ones. This raises prices for everybody. The Wrap’s wording implies that cable companies like this arrangement, though I greatly doubt that they do:

Under the current system, cable companies charge customers for bundles of channels. In turn, media companies package their content to cable providers so that they are forced to pay for  less popular channels in order to get access to more desirable ones like ESPN or AMC.

Instead of letting the market sort this out—which technological change is making inevitable as people’s TV viewing increasingly is done via the Internet instead of or in addition to cable, satellite, and/or broadcast services—McCain wants to put the burden mainly on one party, the cable and satellite providers:

The Arizona Republican is preparing legislation that would let cable customers buy channels individually, according to a report in The Hill.

That phrase “would let cable customers buy channels individually” is both telling and inaccurate. It’s revealing in the use of attractive wording to describe a government mandate, and it’s false in the implication that government can “let” cable customers do this. It cannot; it can only force cable companies to let cable customers buy the channels individually. That is a very different thing altogether, and it will have additional consequences, as we shall see.

McCain’s bill would put some pressure on some programming providers. It would forbid broadcast networks from forcing cable operators to buy the broadcasters’ non-broadcast cable channels in order to get the broadcast channels, thus making it easier to sell them separately. It would also end the sports blackout rule and pull the licenses of broadcasters who remove their programming from broadcast airwaves in order to avoid it being picked up for free by Internet redistributors, which some are considering doing.

McCain’s plan is certainly well-intended, but it would just be more clumsy government intrusion in things that don’t respond well to brute force. Requiring cable operators to offer channels individually, without also requiring all content providers (not just broadcast networks) to unbundle their programs will at best have no effect on prices and at worst will drive up prices and reduce access to programming. In fact, forcing unbundling will almost certainly reduce cable consumers’ access to programming.

Consider the microeconomics of the matter: the cable operator will have to offer the channels individually, but it will still have to pay for many channels en bloc, which means that someone will still have to eat the cost of the unpopular channels. That unlucky party will be the consumer, because what the cable operator will have to do is price the individually offered channels and/or customized tiers at a level that will ensure a profit or go out of business.

That means the customers will still end up paying for the unpopular programs, or the cable companies will shut down, reducing availability of the services. And to the extent that the scheme is successful in forcing unbundling, it will certainly reduce access to programming because the less popular channels will have much less appeal for the cable provider. That consequence, you may be sure, will result in further government intervention to force cable operators to provide the less-popular channels. Prices will “necessarily skyrocket,” in then-Sen. Obama’s famous words, or cable operators will have to leave the business altogether.

A more sensible approach would be for Congress to remove broadcast exclusivity, must-carry, and other such market-distorting laws and regulations and allow the providers and customers to determine what is offered and at what price points. That would provide the best services, lowest prices, and broadest access to programming, but it would require lawmakers to acknowledge that they’re not smarter than the cumulative choices of nearly 300 million people. Hence, it’s exceedingly unlikely.

Certainly a large majority of people who embrace traditional morality based on revealed religion do not accept the notion that marriage is a malleable social construct that can be willy-nilly defined any which way we choose. But redefining marriage is such a bad idea, and as importantly is being done in such a tyrannical way, that some nonreligious people are beginning to sound the alarm.

One such voice comes from Britain and the editor of an online magazine called Spiked, Brendan O’Neill. His piece and subtitle are as follows: “Gay marriage: a case study in conformism: Anyone who values diversity of thought and tolerance of dissent should find the sweeping consensus on gay marriage terrifying.” And he comes from, as he says, a “liberal, secular perspective.”

This is a unique position for a modern liberal to take: He actually is a liberal! How refreshing. Most modern liberals are a stultifyingly conservative lot whose worldview borders on the totalitarian (and I’m being nice). Dissent from the party line is not only frowned upon, but is simply not tolerated. What true liberal wouldn’t be horrified by such a state of affairs? Unfortunately, modern liberals are anything but.

It’s definitely worth reading the entire piece, but a couple paragraphs will give you a good sense of Mr. O’Neill’s perspicacity:

How do we account for this extraordinary consensus, for what is tellingly referred to as the ‘surrender’ to gay marriage by just about everyone in public life? And is it a good thing, evidence that we had a heated debate on a new civil right and the civil rightsy side won? I don’t think so. I don’t think we can even call this a ‘consensus’, since that would imply the voluntaristic coming together of different elements in concord. It’s better described as conformism, the slow but sure sacrifice of critical thinking and dissenting opinion under pressure to accept that which has been defined as a good by the upper echelons of society: gay marriage. Indeed, the gay-marriage campaign provides a case study in conformism, a searing insight into how soft authoritarianism and peer pressure are applied in the modern age to sideline and eventually do away with any view considered overly judgmental, outdated, discriminatory, ‘phobic’, or otherwise beyond the pale. . . .

[T]he extraordinary rise of gay marriage speaks, not to a new spirit of liberty or equality on a par with the civil-rights movements of the 1960s, but rather to the political and moral conformism of our age; to the weirdly judgmental non-judgmentalism of our PC times; to the way in which, in an uncritical era such as ours, ideas can become dogma with alarming ease and speed; to the difficulty of speaking one’s mind or sticking with one’s beliefs at a time when doubt and disagreement are pathologised. Gay marriage brilliantly shows how political narratives are forged these days, and how people are made to accept them. This is a campaign that is elitist in nature, in the sense that, in direct contrast to those civil-rights agitators of old, it came from the top of society down; and it is a campaign which is extremely unforgiving of dissent or disagreement, implicitly, softly demanding acquiescence to its agenda.

Season 1, Episode 37 (37th of 85 total).

First broadcast: 13 June 1952.

Cast: Esther Ralston (The Collector), Don Hanmer (Henry Judson), Jack Warden (Steve), Lewis Charles
(Tony), Sam Locante (Bartender), Bob Williams (Narrator).

Writer: Arthur C. Clarke (story, 1951). Director: Don Medford.

“No criminal in the history of the world had ever possessed such power. It was intoxicating…” — From the original short story.

In his stuffy office Henry Judson does no apparent work — which is understandable, since Henry is a
mid-level criminal sometimes referred to as a fixer. Like middle management in legitimate business, Henry
arranges for things to be done, usually without much personal involvement on his part. Whenever he sees an opportunity for criminal “enterprise,” he fixes things with still lower-level thugs who then do the dirty work.

But on this hot afternoon, he gets very personally involved with a strange but beautiful woman who is willing to give him a hundred thousand dollars to do a job, with another hundred thousand when he completes it.

The job? She gives him a laundry list of things to steal, which includes not only rare books but also some of
the most valuable paintings in the world. Just walk in, pick them up, and walk right out. Piece of cake.

Henry’s skepticism is understandable, of course — until the woman, who insists on being called “The
Collector,” shows him how it’s done.

When Henry woke up that morning he never remotely suspected that before the day was through he would
be using a bracelet to break into a museum and — even more importantly — agonizing over how to spend
the last few precious moments of his life.

Along the way, this story quietly raises a question: Can it be regarded as a crime if someone steals
something in order to save it?

Retrovision has “All the Time in the World” archived here.

Arthur C. Clarke’s original story is online here.

IMDb listing for “All the Time in the World.”

In his book, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, he writes: “This was my first story ever to be
adapted for TV — ABC, 13 June 1952. Although I worked on the script, I have absolutely no recollection
of the programme, and can’t imagine how it was produced in pre-video-tape days!”

——————————

Note: This article first appeared on Steve Lewis‘s Mystery*File weblog.

August 2012 Edinburgh production of 'David et Jonathas'

A recent review in the New York Times makes a bizarre claim about a baroque opera by a 17th century composer known for his religious music: the opera, the review states, is really an ancient entry in a “gay civil rights movement.” And you thought it was all about a Bible story.

The Times review concerns David et Jonathas,  by the French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier with libretto by François Bretonneau, in a recent performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Times reviewer, Anthony Tommasini, describes the opera as “beautiful and courageous.”

The beauty, Tommasini avers, is evident in the music and libretto, and the courage is in two men in 1688 writing an opera celebrating homosexuality: “Historians of the gay civil rights movement will now have to add two unlikely names to their list of pioneers.”

Really? A 17th century composer known particularly for his sacred vocal and choral music wrote a peaen to homosexuality?

Well, not exactly. Here’s how Tommasini describes it:

The opera, first performed at a Jesuit college in Paris in 1688, is based on the biblical relationship between the young David, the future king of Israel, and Jonathas (Jonathan), the Israelite prince and son of King Saul. In the Books of Samuel the bond between these young men is never made explicit. But in the opera David and Jonathas are clearly in love, however chaste their relationship may be. This comes through in the humane and powerful performance by the acclaimed Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants, splendidly conducted by William Christie.

Objections become apparent almost immediately. Tommasini claims that “the bond between these two young men is never made explicit” in the Bible. But that’s silly: the Bible makes it perfectly clear that they’re very close friends. That is enough to explain their relationship. No implication of homosexuality is made in the biblical account, and it is rather ludicrous to think that the writer of Samuel would not see the breaking of one of God’s laws, as given in Deuteronomy and elsewhere, as important enough to mention explicitly. It is not as if the Bible were generally reticent about mentioning such lawbreaking; quite the contrary, in fact.

That David and Jonathan were close in the Bible is evident. But it is quite telling that in the account in the Second Book of Samuel, upon hearing of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan in battle, David always mentions both together, and always mentions Saul first:

1:5 David said to the young man who told him, “How do you know that Saul and Jonathan his son are dead?”

and

1:17 David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son

If David were romantically in love with Jonathan, certainly Jonathan would rate some sort of separate comment by David in this crucial exchange. Imagine, if you will, that a man’s wife and father-in-law are killed at the same time. Would the man mention the father-in-law first and in the same tones as his wife? Not hardly. He’d say something on the order of, “What? My wife is dead?”, not, “What, my father-in-law and wife are dead?”

David’s lamentation over the two men’s deaths likewise mentions Saul first and is of particular interest regarding the claim of homosexuality:

“Your glory, Israel, is slain on your high places! How the mighty have fallen! . . . The shield of Saul was not anointed with oil. 1:22 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, Jonathan’s bow didn’t turn back. Saul’s sword didn’t return empty. 1:23 Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives. In their death, they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. 1:24 You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,who clothed you in scarlet delicately,who put ornaments of gold on your clothing. 1:25 How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. 1:26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. 1:27 How are the mighty fallen,and the weapons of war perished!”

Now a love that “passes” (meaning, surpasses) “the love of women” is clearly a love that is not the same as the love of women. Something that is greater than something else is not equal it. Hence the Biblical text is clearly stating that the love between David and Jonathan is not romantic or erotic. Quite the contrary, it is stating that the love they shared was greater than those loves. It is in fact agape love, the highest of all loves as described by C. S. Lewis in his classic book The Four Loves. (For an introduction to Lewis’s idea, see the Wikipedia entry on The Four Loves, but by all means read Lewis’s book for its own great merits.)

I have not seen or heard David et Jonathas, so I cannot judge what kind of bond between the two men is suggested in the opera’s libretto, but Tommasini’s description that the two men are “clearly in love” is telling: it may be an accurate description of this staging of the opera, but as a description of the original authors’ intent it strikes me as contentious at best. After all, he notes, the relationship between David and Jonathatn is “chaste.” Which means that the text of the opera, like the Bible itself, makes no suggestion that the two ever engaged in homosexual behavior.

That all-important contradiction notwithstanding, Tommasini forges ahead, analyzing the two men’s relationship and concluding that they have a homosexual passion for each other but fail to act on it:

The bass Neal Davies portrays [King Saul, Jonathas's father] as an overbearing patriarch, worried whether his son is manly enough to rule and suspicious about David’s influence. David wonders whether it is a crime to feel such joy in his love for his friend, while Jonathas is torn between appeasing his father and following David. You almost wish these characters could call a gay hot line.

Tommasini is effusive in his praise of the production (which includes a female playing the part of Jonathas), but his real interest seems to be in sexual politics. He concludes with the following, after recounting the opera’s depiction of Jonathan dying, in David’s arms, of injuries suffered in battle:

Any doubt that Charpentier’s opera is a love story is banished by the end. David is proclaimed the new king of Israel, but in his final words, the shaken young man can only say that he has lost all that he loves.

That David says that he has lost all that he loves after Jonathan’s death (which coincides with King Saul’s death, we must note) may be an accurate reference to a line in the libretto (and one that is sufficiently important that Tommasini ought to have quoted it directly), but that is quite consonant with the Biblical passage quoted above, which clearly has no homosexual overtones whatsoever. This appears to be no smoking gun at all.

Instead of all this being what Charpentier and Bretonneau wrote and intended, it seems far more likely that the opera’s director, Andreas Homoki, is putting a twenty-first century gloss on the story, creating the homosexuality angle to garner publicity and political-acceptance points. A Buenos Aires Herald review of a 2010 production in Buenos Aires suggests conventional stagings of David and Jonathan don’t cause an unbiased observer to think of the central relationship as romantic or erotic:

As usual in this kind of opera one gets the impression that the singers react to events that happen offstage. This, and Charpentier’s music, are David and Johnathan’s most remarkable features, as well as the absence of a romantic interest: the only love here is that felt by the two leading characters for each other.

Tommasini’s description of Homoki’s staging of the opera as “a love story” may well be accurate, but the notion that either the Baroque composer and librettist or the author of the Books of Samuel meant the relationship between David and Jonathan to be a homosexual one is quite unfounded on the evidence in Tommasini’s review.

It seems to me rather a pity that a strong bond of love between two people of the same sex should automatically be seen as a sexual matter. When love is degraded into a bodily urge, no one is well served by the result. But that’s politics for you.

It must be said that Barna is not staffed by a bunch of fundamentalist atheists, but from what I can tell by well-meaning Christians. I first heard of them a few years ago when they did a survey of how young people in America perceive Christians. Of course all the words you might guess came up, including judgmental, self-righteous, hypocritical, and the worst of all, homophobic. I’m sure the study itself can be found on their website, but my reaction when I heard about that was that it was a bunch of garbage, and was in fact not at all what most people experience of Christians. The secular media jumped all over it: see, we told you, Christians are rotten people. In fact, I would argue those responding to such a survey are responding to a cultural caricature of Christians, not real flesh and blood people of faith.

This is not to say that such Christians don’t exist, only that they are far from typical. When I speak of cultural caricatures I’m speaking mostly of popular culture, movies, TV, literature, etc., and America’s broad media elite, which is staffed almost uniformly by people who are not religious, plus our educational establishments that promote secularism as an antidote to the narrow minded conformity supposedly promoted by religious belief and religious believers.

Before I get to the latest example of a distorted message masquerading as disinterested research, let me give you an example of the kind of cultural hostility shown toward Christianity from a popular movie of 37 years ago. I saw the 1976 movie “Carrie” when I was a teenager, and remember being especially creeped out by Carrie’s mother portrayed in the film. Check out this Wikipedia entry about the movie: “Carrie White is a shy, friendless teenage girl abused by her unstable Christian fundamentalist mother Margaret.” I mean, are there any other kind of Christian fundamentalists than “unstable” ones? The caricature has been going on so long and in so many ways that for people who don’t know any Christians it is easy to believe that Christians are the caricature.

I learned of Barna’s latest survey from a piece in World magazine with the title, “We are hypocrites.” No offense to author Amy Henry, who is no doubt well intentioned, but it never seems to occur to her that perceptions are not always reality. I think I may dislike this study even more than the previous one I mentioned, because it assumes something not empirically verifiable:

One of the common critiques leveled at present-day Christianity is that it’s a religion full of hypocritical people. A new Barna Group study examines the degree to which this perception may be accurate. The study explores how well Christians seem to emulate the actions and attitudes of Jesus in their interactions with others.

Their first mistake is legitimizing “common critiques.” Who exactly is making these “common critiques”? If we identify who these people are, we then have to ask why they think these things, and thus is there any validity to such critiques. Without doing this, they’ve already stacked the deck against Christians by uncritically accepting a perception of Christians that possibly has no basis in reality. If this is the case, not only would such a study have no value, it would most likely play into the “common critique” of Christian critics, which is exactly what it does.

The study asked a representative sample of Christians 20 questions, 10 to assess so called Christ-likeness, 10 to assess self-righteousness. You won’t be surprised to find that “this study points out a sobering possibility: that the perception so many young people have of Christians contains more than a kernel of truth.” Yep, we’re all a bunch of judgmental hypocrites, which is amazingly enough the exact caricature of Christians as portrayed and believed by American cultural elites. I don’t think that is a coincidence.

One other thing I noticed about the study is how sloppy the statements are that are used to asses self-righteousness, both in attitude and actions. For instance, all of these statements can be applied to self-righteous judgmental modern liberals. Why target Christians with such questions? Because of some alleged “common critique”? Common to whom?

One especially ridiculous statement: “I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly gay or lesbian.” Just imagine this question to a modern proud progressive: “I try to avoid spending time with people who are openly Christian.” Is it not human nature to avoid people who are not like us, who do not embrace our values, our worldview? Is that right or wrong? That’s not the point, human nature is, and it isn’t only Christians who are susceptible to being human! Or take this statement: “I like to point out those who do not have the right theology or doctrine.” You can go all over the internet to fevered left –wing blogs and publications to find plenty of progressives who like to point out those who do not think correctly about the environment or homosexuality or Medicare or “reproductive rights” or whatever.

You know, after writing a couple pages here about the Barna Group’s new study, I think I’m even less of a fan than I was back in the first paragraph. And it is absolutely pathetic that good hearted Christians like Amy Henry, and I’m sure many others would buy into the facile and flawed conclusions of a myopic study that ignores the power of culture to create perceptions, and also the bend of human nature that applies to every human being regardless of their faith commitments.