{"id":11700,"date":"2012-11-21T09:03:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T14:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=11700"},"modified":"2012-11-21T01:10:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T06:10:58","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/21\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-73\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mary Beard: \u201cWhy the rich look down on the poor\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The other way in which the comfortably-off traditionally talk of those less fortunate than themselves is, of course, to divide them into the Good Poor and the Bad Poor.<\/p>\n

In fact, when Tacitus wrote of the plebs sordida<\/em> it was explicitly to contrast them with what he called \u201cthe respectable elements among the common people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Talking about the death of the monstrous emperor Nero, he claimed the \u201cfilthy poor\u201d, the squanderers and the racing addicts, lamented the death (for Nero had been an easy touch for entertainments and hand-outs).<\/p>\n

Predictably enough, the \u201crespectable elements\u201d were those who welcomed the new regime of austerity and cost-cutting under the in-coming emperor Galba.<\/p>\n

That division is still with us. The 19th Century notoriously had its \u201cdeserving\u201d and \u201cundeserving poor\u201d. Our own equivalent of the \u201cdeserving poor\u201d is \u201chard-working families.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rachel Held Evans: \u201cThe Real \u2018Evangelical Disaster'\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This, I believe, is the real evangelical disaster \u2014 not that Barack Obama is president and Mitt Romney is not, but that evangelicalism has gotten so enmeshed with politics, its success or failure can be gauged by an election.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this idea the \u201ccause of Christ\u201d is to vote against gay marriage and for tax cuts, and that the hope of evangelicals lies in election day returns. It\u2019s this idea that a Christian worldview is something we can vote for because it fits on a ballot.<\/p>\n

\u2026 The great evangelical disaster is that evangelicalism has become synonymous with Republicanism rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dianne E. Anderson: \u201cSlutty Sluts Vote Sluttily\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

But, as a woman with a lifetime of experience in the evangelical American church, [BSkillet\u2019s] views on women did not surprise me. His thoughts, indeed, resemble in a more bald-faced fashion, teachings I absorbed as a member of the church. Whether it is black or white women, sexual purity is the end-all-be-all, and women as a whole are not highly regarded even if they do remain pure (BSkillet proclaims as much when he opens by saying \u201cthis is why women shouldn\u2019t be in government\u201d before he ever reaches the \u201cslut vote\u201d point).<\/p>\n

BSkillet\u2019s extreme point is in fact symptomatic of a larger culture that thinks women\u2019s sexual choices and agencies are\/should be up for a popular vote. It is unsurprising, then, that a culture in which the purity of women is everything would give rise to a man and a movement (The Christian Men\u2019s Defense Network) in which women are discounted and even reviled for failing to live up to a man\u2019s definition of pure.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that BSkillet is not just one extreme outlier, but is actually part of a larger movement in society. His writing is shocking only in the baldness of the misogyny, not in its views. The larger evangelical culture as a whole does, in fact, believe that a woman\u2019s sexual activities are reason enough to discount her opinion in the public sphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Kelly: Statement at sentencing of Jared Lee Loughner, Nov. 8. 2012<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

We are a people who can watch a young man like you spiral into murderous rampage without choosing to intervene before it is too late.<\/p>\n

We have a political class that is afraid to do something as simple as have a meaningful debate about our gun laws and how they are being enforced. We have representatives who look at gun violence, not as a problem to solve, but as the white elephant in the room to ignore. As a nation we have repeatedly passed up the opportunity to address this issue. After Columbine; after Virginia Tech; after Tucson and after Aurora we have done nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Beard on dividing the plebs sordida from “the respectable elements among the common people;” Rachel Held Evans responds to Al Mohler; Dianna Anderson on The Christian Men\u2019s Defense Network; and Mark Kelly on our national failure to debate gun laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-11700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smart"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mary Beard on dividing the plebs sordida from "the respectable elements among the common people;" Rachel Held Evans responds to Al Mohler; Dianna Anderson on The Christian Men\u2019s Defense Network; and Mark Kelly on our national failure to debate gun laws.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/21\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-73\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smart people saying smart things\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mary Beard on dividing the plebs sordida from "the respectable elements among the common people;" Rachel Held Evans responds to Al Mohler; Dianna Anderson on The Christian Men\u2019s Defense Network; and Mark Kelly on our national failure to debate gun laws.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/21\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-73\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-11-21T14:03:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-11-21T06:10:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/21\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-73\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/11\/21\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-73\/\",\"name\":\"Smart people saying smart things\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-11-21T14:03:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-11-21T06:10:58+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Mary Beard on dividing the plebs sordida from \\\"the respectable elements among the common people;\\\" Rachel Held Evans responds to Al Mohler; 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}