Sunday, April 15, 2007

The Mischaracterization of American Evangelicals

Joe Carter links to this intersting comment about Christians made by Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life:

Christians are actually, to me, anyway, as a Jew, much more interesting in America. And weirdly, much more misunderstood. Evangelical Christians are the most incompetently portrayed group in America, in TV, in fiction, in the news. When Christians say that the media gets them wrong, Christians are absolutely right. Christian life in this country is really horribly documented, and way more interesting than is done. Generally, in the media, very religious Christians are portrayed as hardheaded doctrinaire knuckleheads. But in fact, from my experience, the most religious Christians I know tend to be incredibly thoughtful, complicated, generous to a fault, very principled and not knuckleheads. Actually, they’re sort of weirdly the opposite of the stereotype, and that includes people from the hardcore fundamentalist faiths.

Listen to this lecture by GMU's Professor Iannaccone on The Myth of the Religious Right for more.

1 comment:

Jason said...

Anecdote city. Ask yourself: Which evangelical Christians is a Northwestern- and Brown-educated NPR employee going to know? "Incredibly thoughtful" and "complicated" ones, for sure.