Ryan T. Anderson writes in First Things about another attack by a self-proclaimed Christian on the religious right with the subtle title American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. You can read the article for yourselves, but two incongruous phrases were rather intriguing to me.
The key, Hedges claims, is the certainty of evangelical faith. Confidence, we are told, is a fascist ploy, while real Christians accept that we “do not understand what life is about. . . . Faith presupposes that we cannot know. We can never know.”
Has there ever been a time in all of human history when certainty has been defined as a vice and uncertainty a virtue? In light of this praise of uncertainty, one wonders about this second quote:
“Debate with the radical Religious Right is useless. . . . It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion.”
What is the point of rational thought and discussion if uncertainty is a virtue? Anderson also noted that:
By understanding faith as “an intellectual act, its object truth, and its result knowledge,” John Henry Newman must have been an anti-intellectual fascist, in Hedges’ definition.
So faith cannot deal with the intellect, truth or knowledge and if it does it becomes fascism!
And we are the ones incapable of rational thought?
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