Many on the Left don’t understand religion — for a peculiar reason
We see that time and again many on the Left are confused about religion. We’ll cite a couple of examples and offer an explanation.
Example I: The NYT makes an amazing find in the Foley matter, in the course of discovering that evangelicals “all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote”:
As far as culpability in the Foley case, Mr. Dunn [a dean at a Christian university] said, House Republicans may benefit from the evangelical conception of sin. Where liberals tend to think of collective responsibility, conservative Christians focus on personal morality. “The conservative Christian audience or base has this acute moral lens through which they look at this, and it is very personal,” Mr. Dunn said. “This is Foley’s personal sin.”
Those darned “conservative Christians” with their crazy focus on personal morality. Why can’t they get with the program and “think of collective responsibility?” We note with great interest the term “collective.”
Example II: David Warren pointed out another misunderstanding of religion in his discussion of the Foreign Affairs article, France and Its Muslims by Stephanie Giry:
In the writer’s own words: “Some French and foreign observers have interpreted last November’s riots in poor, largely Muslim neighbourhoods throughout the country as a skirmish in a broader clash of civilizations. Yet the strife had little to do with yearnings for a worldwide caliphate and much to do with domestic socioeconomic problems.”
It would be hard to put the politically-correct position more succinctly. Ms Giry faithfully echoes all the old quasi-Marxist thought clichés about the oppression of an urban proletariat — producing a class war having little or nothing to do with religion. The solution thus presents itself: more sensitivity, more public spending, and would all those ham-headed rightwing people please shut up….
That the politically-correct account is a lie, is demonstrated by one large fact. When the rioting in France’s Muslim ghettoes increased last year — to the point where Muslim gangs were leaving their own neighbourhoods and torching cars and other property belonging to nice gliberal people — the French state finally quelled it. How? By calling in imams from the Muslim Brotherhood to talk the rioters down. What possible use could radical imams be, in a class war? And why hadn’t the incessant promises of “more sensitivity, more public spending” from Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin stopped all the chanting of “Allahu Akhbar!” as the flames went up?
It seems so obvious to say, but it is apparently not: religion makes claims that are not reducible to other categories. Religion must be understood on its own terms, or it will not be understood at all. The failure of many on the Left to understand this is ironically the result of their own deep faith in their materialist religion of Marxism.
UPDATE
Both Shrinkwrapped and Dr Sanity have very interesting commentaries on this subject.