How one views the world depends on the set of filters screening information, emotion, education, and the imagination. Some of us are better than others at recognizing the filters we use and can, for moments, remove a filter to allow the light of Truth into the mind.  That is what I like about John Stewart.  His show has evolved into a filter removal system for the country through the use of humor the same way Cronkite’s twenty-two minutes did with the actual reporting of facts which is what the “news” once was.

My filter on the “news” is MSNBC.  More often than not they get it, mostly, down the middle with the hard news and their “opinion” shows do a better job with the facts than does Fox news.  (My opinion of course).  One of my brother-in-laws is on the other side of the political divide from me.  His filter on the “news” is Fox News.  I think Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, the morning Fox show, and most of what they do at Fox News is designed to keep working class to poor white people anxious and angry.  I think my brother-in-law would characterize MSNBC as elite, politically correct, overly educated people that have never had to do a hard day’s work in their lives.  And so goes the divide in this country as well as the governor’s race here in Virginia that will mercifully end tomorrow.

Enter my favorite filter removing device, The Daily Show.  (A side note that Fake Sharon on twitter was a filter removing device at General Assembly.)  Though John’s people manipulated construction of the clip, they did take Fox News at face-value and reported the news “fair and balanced” so the viewer could decide.  Click here to enjoy the bit titled, For Fox Sake.

I read Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times.  This week’s thoughts were on education in America.  One of the changes in our culture, during my lifetime, is the notion that education leads to better opportunities.  I was an average student.  Some days I applied myself and could score A’s on assignments, but other days sports or social life lured me away from the books or library.  Short-term memory work is not my strength, but I do remember what I take the time to read.  I would call my learning style a blend of visual and auditory.  If history lessons would have been movies without author bias, I would probably know a lot more.  Education provided me the critical thinking skills to recognize that no history is without bias.  This is what I think young people are missing in education today: critical thinking skills.

My companion teaches at Lynchburg College.  Before that she taught aspiring ministers at Lexington Theological Seminary.  Her common complaint about both settings is that students could not think critically or write more than simple sentences.  Do quality teachers still exist in primary and secondary schools?  I am sure they must.  But, curriculum changes and social pressure have pushed critical thinking skills aside for short term immersion in information so that students can score well on standardized tests.  Did I mention I was a “B” student?  When I listen to my companion, other professors, and teachers in public and private schools it is clear to me that fifteen years of “teaching to the test” has caused more harm than helped students learn the skills needed to succeed.  That is harsh, but busy does not mean successful, nor does multitasking mean the ability to do quality work.  If you can only be successful by someone giving you a study guide, then there is a problem.  Is it no surprise that we continue in an age of anti-intellectualism in society and that it has seeped into the Church.  This is a sweeping generalization but currently acceptable given our educational system and examples from our politicians that are supposed to be critically thinking about issues that benefit us all.

So, Krugman’s article was interesting as he reflects on, “The Uneducated American.”

“Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.”

I grew up in the central time zone (God’s time as I like to call it).  Why God’s time?  I could watch all of David Letterman and still get seven hours of sleep.  For the past fourteen years I’ve lived in the eastern time zone which makes watching The Daily Show, some of Colbert, and Letterman a bit much with the alarm going off at 6 a.m.  The internet to the rescue!  On Friday mornings I like to catch up on the bits I missed from Colbert and the Daily Show.  Here are my favorite two from this week.

A bit called, Playing the Race Card, from the Daily Show.  Colbert does a bit called, Tip of the Hat / Wag of the Finger and the current installment had me laughing as Colbert talks about the Conservapedia.  Discipledom needs this kind of cleverness.

I saw a reference to this online community, Conservapedia, in a Time article, and kept reading a blog on Beliefnet written by Rod Dreher called, The Crunchy Con.  It can be argued that our country, and some corners of Discipledom, have become hyper partisan.  This web community, Conservapedia, is an example of the lengths some will go to discredit rather than seek truth.  You have to read this to believe it.  The blog post is called, “Conservatizing the Bible.”

Conservatizing the Bible

“The eager young men at Conservapedia are p.o.’d that the Bible might be seen as too liberal. So they’ve come up with the Wiki-style Conservative Bible Project, to make sure the Lord doesn’t go all wobbly on us.”  Click here to read more.

I subscribe to “Sightings” a weekly email from the Marty Center.  If you don’t subscribe I recommend it.  This morning Martin Marty authored the sighting, “Evangelicaldom.”  It is, from my perspective, the best description of what our culture is experiencing in the form of shout-fests called town hall meetings.  Moreover, it provides a lens which focuses on the endgame of the “Armageddonist absolutism of the “religified Right.”

“Sightings” 10/05/09

Evangelicaldom
– Martin E. Marty

Take one day, say Friday, October 2, in the life of what we should start calling “Evangelicaldom.”  One-fourth to one-third of Americans consider themselves “Evangelicals.”  Many are exemplary citizens and, let us say, exemplary Christians.  Somewhere along the way millions among them, however, sought what they would call “earthly power,” and won enough of it to dream of and work for “Evangelicaldom.”  That “-dom” signals “domain,” as in old “Christendom” and modern “Islamdom.”  In it, any hints of traditional “otherworldliness” were forgotten, and the once least-worldly sector among us came to be among the most driven by commerce, markets, media, and politics.

Regular readers know that Sightings does not target or heap on evangelicals.  But several media sightings on October 2 prompted and merit response.  The main story in the New York Times had to do with one of the several fallen born-again “Christian Right” valiants of the season, Senator John Ensign, adulterer and now alleged criminal in use of funds and power.  Atop a full-page story is a picture of the Senator and the cuckolded husband of Ensign’s mistress, autographed by Ensign to his “friend and brother, in Christ.”  The sinning senator issued the standard more-or-less apology with the more-and-more frequent substitute for reference to “sin:”  He made a “mistake.”  Enough.

The same day the Los Angeles Times published Neal Gabler’s absolutely pessimistic but relatively accurate assessment of the way the absolutist style of religious fundamentalism has found its place among the shouting populists who, while not necessarily always bannering “in Christ” – most of the signs at the shout-out rallies are quite secular – are always sure that they have no need for civility and thus for politics.  Gabler: “Those who oppose the religification of politics may think all they have to do is change tactics, but they are sadly, tragically mistaken. They can never win, because for the political fundamentalists, this isn’t political jousting, this is Armageddon.  With stakes like that, they will not lose, and there is nothing democrats – small ‘d’ and capital ‘D’ – can do about it.”  For the sake of the future, any kind of future, they have to try.

Fortunately for civil readers’ sanity, there was a relatively calm assessment in David Brooks’ same-day New York Times column in which he notices and reports on the political limits of those who goad and inspire the religified political troops, people named Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and O’Reilly.  They boast hugely huge audiences.  But, as Brooks chronicles, they have not converted those in their seething niche into real electoral dominance of the sort Evangelicaldom once had hoped it could produce.

Fortunately for Christian readers’ sanity, there is also a cover story in the October issue of Christianity Today, a magazine which represents evangelicalism when it was evangelical.  Its headline: “Evangelicals desperately need moral and spiritual renewal – on that everyone agrees. But what do we do about it?” Editor Mark Galli at length concentrates on evangelicals’ spiritual sins – not “mistakes” – in an analysis of the sort Catholics, Mainline Protestants, the Orthodox and others need to and often do make.

Until evangelicals can find ways to make clear to themselves, politicians, media, and publics that they are distancing themselves from the Armageddonist absolutism of the “religified Right,” they are more likely to look like and will be in danger of becoming like “the children of the world” against whom their spiritual forefathers creatively and courageously railed as they offered alternatives, not carbon copies.

References:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler2-2009oct02,0,7817347.story

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/opinion/02brooks.html

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/october/13.23.html