Same Old Disdain, Great New Flavor
We’ve been arguing with Caleb Stegall, an editor of our favorite small-o orthodox Christian website that likes to bash us, about how to write these little blurbs below the fold of The Revealer. Caleb charges us with using the cover of press criticism to throw elbows at religious ideas we don’t like, such as Christian conservatism. We’re hurt […]
We’ve been arguing with Caleb Stegall, an editor of our favorite small-o orthodox Christian website that likes to bash us, about how to write these little blurbs below the fold of The Revealer. Caleb charges us with using the cover of press criticism to throw elbows at religious ideas we don’t like, such as Christian conservatism. We’re hurt that Caleb lacks confidence in our ability to badmouth religous ideas we don’t like and secular coverage of said ideas, at the same time. Check this out: Today’s NYT features one of the dumbest religion articles we’ve seen since the last time they ran what was essentially the same article, maybe a month ago. It’s the ol’, “Christianity’s getting hip marketing” story. Heard it too many times to count just since we started The Revealer a year-and-a-half ago. But we put fresh zing into our disdain by a)trashing the Times for publishing the most ignorant and inane religion journalism sentence of the week — “Fashions with spiritual messages are just the latest expression of religion as a pop phenomenon, one that has steadily gained ground with consumers since the best-selling ‘Left Behind’ series of novels…” — and b) subliminally poisoning your minds against our nemesis, Christianity, by pointing out that the faith has ever been rife with shallowness. Today’s “Jesus is My Homeboy” t-shirt is yesterday’s crusader armor for guys who never left Rome. (Disclaimer: Christianity is not, in fact, our nemesis. Really. It’s mostly fine by us. Even the t-shirts. But we’re serious about calling the Times dumb.)