The Savage Republican

This article from today's Wall Street Journal did not surprise me in the least.

"When educated Americans heap scorn on Christian fundamentalism, they generally do so out of almost total ignorance, having not bothered to know any fundamentalists or put forth any serious effort to learn about their faith. So there is something refreshing about Christine Rosen's "My Fundamentalist Education." Ms. Rosen spent her elementary years in the Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, Fla.--a school, one assumes, fairly representative of the independent, nondenominational Bible-believing schools that seem to be everywhere these days--and knows whereof she speaks."

The "educated" class...the ones that think they know and are all that, love to tell the rest of us how we must be "tolerant" of others and that we should not "judge others by external appearances" and then they go and throw their hypocricy out for all to see!

"Keswick mothers, she writes, "were women with home permanents, not salon coiffures, and they wore vinyl mock-croc pumps and polyester-blend dresses from Sears." Teachers, both male and female, were also partial to polyester. The female musicians who performed at the school smelled of Aqua Net, and the missionaries who came to share their stories invariably had "out-of-date clothes" and "badly cut hair."

They are also the first one to lecture Christians on being non-judgemental of people whose lifestyle choices are different from their own...

"The "old, disheveled lady" who hosted the club "served stale cookies and tepid Juicy Juice." This woman also "had the sort of girlish crush on Jesus that only a disappointed spinster who'd spent too many years leading children's Bible studies could nourish." She read to the children with her Bible balanced on her knees and her "thick socks rolling down her legs."

The funny (ironic) thing is that Ms. Rosen claims that her Keswick experience gave her a "profound respect for my fellow human beings". I would hate to see what she was like if she was being disrespectful.

The sad thing is, you'll never see a piece like this written about a Buddhist school, or a Wahhibist school or a Shinto school or a Wiccan school. For you see, to people like Ms. Rosen, you are only allowed to disrespect Christians. Because after all, they aren't real people. If there were "real" people, they would think more along the lines of Ms. Rosen.

As a Christian, I should be upset, but I am not. I fully expect it.