Books and Media Misperceptions

I have worked with Evangelical Pastors, Denominational Leaders and Elders for the past forty years but I am nearly always amazed at how we are perceived by many people. A book was written recently by a well known reporter from the New York Times, one of the most highly regarded newspapers in the world. I read a review of that book in the Wall Street Journal and am shocked by its distortions.

Here is part of what the reviewers said about it.

Christopher Hedges, the former Times reporter,... has a new book out with the hauntingly ambivalent title, "American Fascists -- The Christian Right and the War on America." Contributor Rick Perlstein reviews it in Sunday's book section and finds it unconvincing:

"Hedges was a longtime foreign correspondent, for The New York Times and other publications. But he writes on this subject as a neophyte, and pads out his dispatches with ungrounded theorizing, unconvincing speculation and examples that fall far short of bearing out his thesis."

By not quoting from Hedges book, Perlstein was kind. The Los Angeles Times assigned its review to professor Jon Wiener, who delves deeper into Hedges' text and unearths disturbing quotations suggesting the "liberal" Hedges has an authoritarian intolerance for opinions he disagrees with.

Here's an excerpt from Wiener's unfavorable review of "American Fascists.""Nevertheless, Hedges concludes that the Christian right 'should no longer be tolerated,' because it 'would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible.' What does he think should be done? He endorses the view that 'any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law,' and therefore we should treat 'incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal.'

Thus he rejects the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech and religion, and court rulings that permit prosecution for speech only if there is an imminent threat to particular individuals."Hedges advocates passage of federal hate-crimes legislation prohibiting intolerance, but he doesn't really explain how it would work. But does this mean that Hedges favors prosecuting Christian fundamentalists for declaring, for example, that abortion providers are murderers or that secular humanists are agents of Satan? He doesn't say."

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As I work with Evangelicals it never occurs to me that we are a threat to any body's freedom. We can barely round up ten ministers to attend a free lunch to discuss evangelism let alone enough "Right Wing Nuts" that could take over the country. But Mr. Hedges is absolutely sure we have great power to coerce the government. He thinks that George W. Bush is in our pocket.

I am not sure if you all see those fears as ludicrous as I do, but these kinds of people need to see a professional therapist for their paranoia. Take your medication, sir. We who "Run Evangelical Christianity" cannot even make our own members obey us let alone the President and Dick Cheney.

For thousands of years anxious people have found reasons to fear harmless individuals and groups. The Jews in Europe were murdered by paranoid people who placed all kinds of weird behaviors onto God's Chosen People. Are the media moguls similar in their suspicions? I don't know about the big guys but Mr. Hedges and some other reporters sound like they would certainly take away our freedom of speech and assembly.