Astounding Ignorance

You may want to read Alex McFarland’s opinion piece before you read my comments. His ignorance of history, language, and logic astounds me.

Ignorant people lack knowledge or awareness of specific topics. They do not know because they have not studied or learned what they can. That’s how I use the word here. We sometimes use the word pejoratively to mean someone is stupid, unintelligent, even “pig-headed,” but it can simply be descriptive of someone’s lack of knowledge. Some people, it seems, choose to remain ignorant.

I was ignorant of Mr. McFarland until this morning because I had never heard of him when I read his opinion column in The Christian Post. His accolades come from well-known people in the conservative evangelical Christian world, including Charles Colson, James Dobson, and Lee Strobel. People hear his daily broadcasts on 200 stations through the American Family Radio Network. He has published 20 books and speaks to audiences globally. Knowing this about him confirms my stunned reaction to his column because of all the people who believe what he says, and he is only one of many in that subculture.

In the first paragraph alone, he combines Democrats, Marxists, Communists, Socialists, and Nazis all in one group – as if there are no fundamental, even opposing, differences among them - and accuses them of demonizing and silencing conservatives and Christians. How can anyone with knowledge of history, language, and logic say such things? And he’s just getting started. Without any regard for basic definition, let alone nuance, he pulls into the mix “the woke left,” “woke activists,” “the DEI/woke/Marxist globalists.”

Astounded, amazed, shocked, stunned – I’m not sure what adjectives to use for my reaction as I continued to read his thoughts. He claims that “the left” despise and hate people who are “Conservative,” “Constitutionalist,” and “Christian,” [his emphasis] claiming support for what he says from a diverse group of “patriotic advocates,” including William F. Buckley, Jr., Rush Limbaugh, Alveda King, and Franklin Graham, some of whom I assume would be surprised to find themselves linked together in this way. He even claims that “the Democrat party, tirelessly fighting for decades to obliterate the ‘three C’s,’ has morphed into a regime enforcing things I am convinced would horrify FDR, JFK, and LBJ.” I, of course, am not all convinced that would be true. In fact, I find it all quite ignorant of history, language, and logic.

Then he says that “essentially all progress on behalf of human rights and the spread of moral truth have depended on Christian involvement, [with] some of history’s most fortuitous moments resulting in the betterment of the human condition hav[ing] come about when followers of Christ inserted themselves into governmental and cultural affairs.” In support of that bold claim, he names William Wilberforce, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King., Jr., which astonishes me even more.

Some of us know enough history to remember that such “progress” through the centuries has too often been offset – even negated - by the tragic realities of the Crusades, the Inquisition, chattel slavery and genocide of indigenous people in the U.S. – all promulgated by people who claimed the name of Christ.

He returns at the end to his startling attempt to equate “the Dems” of 2024 to how Hitler’s regime “labeled” the Jews in order to “target for elimination those whom the Nazis found so undesirable. ... In trying to demonize Constitutionalist conservatives as evil ‘Christian nationalists,’ the woke Dems of today are doing the same thing,” he says.

In fact, those of us who oppose Christian Nationalism – perhaps especially those of us who are Christian ourselves – do not want to eliminate people in the movement. With some exceptions, we do not demonize people, nor do we use the same abusive, deceptive language to categorize them. Rather, speaking for myself at least, I abhor the way people like McFarland present and defend a version of Christianity that looks and sounds nothing like the way of life Jesus taught and demonstrated in his life. Perhaps they might renew their studies with that story at the foundation of our faith.