This is my second post dealing with the myths surrounding Christianophobia. In my last blog, I dealt with the myth that Christianophobia does not exist and/or has no impact on American Christians. The next myth I will tackle may be a natural outcome of researching the problem of Christianophobia. Whenever we start exploring attitudes of bigotry and bias there is the possibility of individuals reading more into the work than it is intended. Some people have taken my research and... Read more
This post will start a series concerning the topic I have been studying the last few years – Christianophobia. I have watched the reaction to the concept and seen major criticisms that laypeople have of it. So I am going to tackle the different myths that have developed as it concerns Christianophobia. I am not going to address the methodological questions from my research since this is not the proper forum for that discussion. But rather I will deal with... Read more
A couple of years ago I was approached with an opportunity to collect some data on college teachers in the United States. I was quite busy and the project took more of my time and energy than I thought it would. But in the end, we finished the project, and now the paper has been accepted in a peer review journal. The paper is now online and so I decided to talk about it and some of the implications that... Read more
I am a fortunate man to be married to a woman with whom I am highly compatible. We share the same Christian values, and by that I do not merely mean that we are both Christians but also the way we interpret our faith on a variety of issues is very similar. Our child rearing philosophies nearly match. We have a great deal of agreement on our financial goals. I do not agree with her on every political issue, but... Read more
This morning I woke up to the news of the horrible shooting in South Carolina. Given my recent research I pondered for a second if we had another Floyd Corkin situation. But once I found out it was an historical black church, I was 90 percent sure it was racial. Once they caught him and reported on his facebook page, that went up to 100 percent. Given that reality, it was dismaying to hear a few Christians suggest that this... Read more
I tend to take people at their word. I also make what I see as logical connections from what they say to how they feel about others. Thus, given what we know about favoring in-groups, when someone says he is a Christian then I assume that he likes Christians. Yet President Obama, who proclaims himself to be a Christian, has sometimes been accused of not liking Christians. This makes me wonder if progressive, or liberal, Christians do have some degree... Read more
Over the past few years I have realized an unspoken challenge to being an academic and social critic. Perhaps it is unspoken because many have not engaged in the introspection to see this dilemma, or perhaps academics do not like to talk about it because there are no easy solutions. I have personally found a way to deal with this challenge but my solution will not be easily adopted by many other academics. Indeed what works for me may well... Read more
Dogma is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted.” Interestingly, the second definition provided by Merriam-Webster as “a belief or set of beliefs that is taught by a religious organization.” Of course these two different definitions are not meant to be read together but it as does seem that Merriam-Webster assumes that religious beliefs, and only religious beliefs, are accepted without question or... Read more
I am still deciding what to think about the Indiana RFRA law. But one of the opponents of the law recently made a disturbing comment. He chose to use the comment “Bible-Thumpers” and talked about “thumping the Bible-Thumpers.” Regardless of the arguments the speaker was making, he lost me once he said “Bible-Thumper.” Bible-Thumper is a religious epithet on par with the term “raghead” for Muslims. It is a term that should be retired in polite company and should not... Read more
In a recent study, researchers found that both conservatives and progressives tend to have less faith in scientific findings that go against their political presuppositions. This comes as no surprise to me. I was always suspicious of arguments that appreciation of science is tied to a given political perspective. In fact, scholarship that reinforces the idea that individuals of a certain political ideology are superior to others always seemed self-serving to me. Perhaps that is why I never bought into... Read more
Black, White and Gray
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