Tuesday, May 31, 2016

"A Confession of Liberal Intolerance" - and reactions against his wanting to hear all voices - NYT

On May 7, 2016, Nicholas Kristof wrote a critique of the prejudice that Liberals on universities have towards "conservative thinking".

Read it all.

What Kristof wasn't prepared for was the immense push-back received for his attempts to show the "blind spot" that exists: "I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point."

And another quote from the NYT article: "Yancey, the black sociologist, who now teaches at the University of North Texas,  conducted a survey in which up to 30 percent of academics said that they would be less likely to support a job seeker if they knew that the person was a Republican.
The discrimination becomes worse if the applicant is an evangelical Christian. According to Yancey’s study, 59 percent of anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors would be less likely to hire someone they found out was an evangelical.

“Of course there are biases against evangelicals on campuses,” notes Jonathan L. Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard. Walton, a black evangelical, adds that the condescension toward evangelicals echoes the patronizing attitude toward racial minorities: “The same arguments I hear people make about evangelicals sound so familiar to the ways people often describe folk of color, i.e. politically unsophisticated, lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor.”




Thursday, May 26, 2016

What is the connection between Canada's Universal Health Care system and the Evangelical church?

Perhaps people are surprised at this, but there is a close connection between Canada's Universal Health Care system and the evangelical churches of the 1930's. What kind of philosophical foundation lay beneath the rise of a medical system that is today one of the country's most fundamental values?

This is spelled out in this article: Read it all.

Friday, May 6, 2016

"The Kasich Conundrum" - Christianity Today

Christianity Today examines a real Conundrum. Of the three last Republicans running, Kasich was the one most evangelicals admired, on one poll at least, yet because of these characteristics he was left out in the cold. Why?

Here's one quote from the article. "At a time when incivility is perceived as courage, and a lack of anger equated to a lack of understanding, Kasich is the odd man out."

Read it all.