Religion is much on the brain these days. As some of you know, a while ago I started editing the "Faith Walk" column that appears every Saturday in our pages. My predecessor, Bill Norton, did an all-call every year and selected 12 people from the community to write about what their belief system means to them in their everyday lives.
The group I inherited included a scientist named Chuck Lunney, who proudly identifies himself as an atheist. This weekend was his turn, and he used the occasion to declare the National Day of Prayer, coming up later this week, as essentially an exercise in futility. He went on to encourage non-believers and freethinkers everywhere to donate blood instead. I guess that's become the official anti-Day of Prayer activity. Lunney's piece stirred up a small hornet's nest among readers, including this letter that I loved for its proudly self-contradictory logic:
As a Christian, my complaint is not that Mr. Lunney, as an atheist, is given space in The Star; it’s where his column is placed that offends me. If I am reading the Business section, I’m not likely to find a featured column ranting on the failures and fallacies of American capitalism. When I read the Sports section, I’m probably not going to see a piece that suggests that sports fans, in general, have lower IQs than, say, musicians. By placing this column in the Faith section, The Star is essentially saying, “here’s your religious section, believers, and oh, by the way, none of it’s true.”I’ve visited with atheists numerous times and have found that they can be every bit as “evangelical” in their “non-belief” as the most conservative Christian. It’s certainly Mr. Lunney’s right to believe as he does, and I wouldn’t begin to try to denigrate him for it (although I suspect he may not know as much about us as he thinks he does). And I’d also have to question the thinking behind putting an atheist on a 12-member “Faith Walk” group.
Where to start? First off, last I checked, Paul Krugman's views appear in the Business section, or used to, and he's delighted to puncture pro-business myths to an extent that some readers think he's a socialist who hates capitalism. The Sports analogy doesn't quite work, since there are people of many, many different faiths who read that section, including people who believe only one sport is deserving of the name "football."
But you can't both A, argue that people who are atheists "are every bit as evangelical in their nonbelief" ... and then B, deny them entry into a section called Faith, since even you are admitting that's what they have: a belief called Unbelief.
Anyway, this is leading into a video clip that the leftie watchdog group Media Matters just posted of Fox News Channel's Major Garrett, trying to give Sen. Barack Obama a Scripture lesson.
The Golden Rule is "not exactly rooted in Scripture but in the ballpark," Garrett asserts. Actually, it's more rooted in Scripture than a lot of things that so-called "values voters" hold dear. Perhaps Garrett is confusing this with the old Ben Franklin aphorism, "God helps those who help themselves," which is not in the Good Word but often gets cited as though it is. (Which is funny, because most of the New Testament, not to mention the history of Protestantism, is rooted in a firm rejection of the Help Yourself message.)
What carries over Garrett's error from Unfortunate Goof to Appalling Misstatement is the fact that Obama's response is exactly the one I would make if I had an embarrassing mentor or brother (Roger Clinton, Neil Bush) whose exploits were in the news.
Plus, what the heck church was Major Garrett brought up in that didn't teach that the Golden Rule were the words of Jesus?
