Posted by
CRB on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:24:26 PM
Fred Clarkson finally gets it. He points out a very serious error of Michael Weinstein in describing much of evangelicalism and stated a proper conclusion:
As much as Weinstein is right about the principles he is upholding, and I am glad he is doing it, he is absurdly wrong in his description of the people who violate them.
fundamentalist Christianity--it's actually got a longer technical name, called pre-millennial dispensational re-constructionist Dominionist fundamentalist evangelical Christianity
There is, of course, no such thing. There are many groupings and belief sets under the wide category of evangelical Christianity; some of them disagree with one another quite strongly. Weinstein lumps them all together as though everyone believes in exactly the same things. This is a not uncommon error among people who come to be rightly concerned about the religious right. (That, along with unnecessarily inflammatory language.) Such errors undermine the credibility of all of our efforts, and often backfire as well.
Now I only hope that his future posts, and those of his counterparts, reflect the same accurate thinking. I will likely still disagree with him on many issues, but at least we now have a common definition that actually reflects reality. A good place to start might be with Rob Boston's insistance that disagreement with the homosexual agenda amounts to "hate". That is quite inflamatory and certainly an over-generalization. He might also look into the possibility of criticizing someone other than Christians on matters of faith in the public square.