If there is a blog on the internet that actually discuses christian perspectives in any level of detail, it is MandM.
Matt turns his attention to the common accusation that Christians defending their moral positions are bigots. As a strong defender of the christian faith, Matt is quite the expert in the area of receiving random abuse!
On occasions, I discuss issues related to abortion and homosexual conduct something which, I think, is unavoidable if one is a theologian writing from a relatively conservative evangelical perspective. I believe that homosexual conduct is contrary to divine law and I believe that feticide is homicide. The latter claim is not just a casual opinion; I spent some years writing a PhD thesis on the topic and over the last couple of years I have had articles published in this area.
Now a pervasive response to my position on these issues is that appeals to divine law to condemn practises like feticide or homosexual conduct are really an expression of bigotry. One would think that it would be fairly obvious to people that you don’t refute a position by calling the person who holds it a bigot and it is tempting to dismiss this response as simply a confused ad hominem; the problem is that people do not appear to find this obvious. In my experience, many people even educated people, recoil from considering any argument against feticide or homosexual conduct or listening to theological concerns on these matters because they perceive such positions to be bigoted.
It’s worth fisking this objection a bit. A good place to start is to ask what does this charge amount to? When someone claims that another is a bigot, what is meant by this? The Pocket Oxford English Dictionary defines a bigot as someone who is obstinate in his or her beliefs and is intolerant of others. Presumably, the objector claims that one who appeals to the law of God to condemn feticide or homosexual conduct (or some other practise celebrated by contemporary liberal secularists) displays or expresses these features – they are both obstinate and intolerant. The accusation clarified, an obvious question arises, why hold this claim?
I do get rather sick of people just turning up on this blog and making random accusations – frequently I have no idea which particular idea they’re talking about because they rarely ever explain their reasoning.
Something should go here, maybe later. 
4 responses to “Christians and accusations of bigotry”
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What I find most frustrating about this problem is how many Christians buy into it. They think that if someone loudly barks at them that their position is bigotted they need to accept the criticism, despite the lack of argument, and modify their own approach and position.
The flakey and post-modern emergent church rubbish so prevalent in Christendom was spawned, in part at least, from an uncritical acceptance of abuse as reasoned argument on the part of Christians.
Now it is always worthwhile to check one’s approach is not overly confrontational and is well reasoned and supported but throwing out your position or watering it down just because someone called you names is ludicrous. I think many Christians do not get that the problem is that they are Christians and they are breathing, it is not that their position needs modifying, these people will hate them regardless. Sure they back off once the Christians have modified their stance but thats because the weak, wishy washy, emotive, irrational position they have moved to lacks credibility outside their own circles and is no longer a threat.
The price of having Christianity’s abusers stop frothing at the mouth is failure to engage the culture and that is a price that is not worth paying.
A bigot is some-one who is not prepared to “tolerate” something that the other person is comfortable with.
Thus, if one expresses a distaste for anal sex, accusations of bigotry and intolerance of homosexuals abound. (yes, I know gay men are not the only ones who have a strange fascination with such orifices, that doesn’t stop people making the association as an issue of homophobia)
Yet if one expresses a distaste for pedophilia, then it’s a case of “of course”
It is an opinion based on a blend of moral relativism and liberalism. Usually, anything is permissible if consent is involved. Of course, if the age of sexual consent got lowered to 11, or increased to age 18 what position would that put moral relativists in? Would I instantly become a bigoted prude if I thought 11 was too young? Is consent meaningless at age 17? Think about arguing on sexual conduct from those two “lines in the sand”.
PS: My first paragraph was meant sarcastically.
[…] at Christians as a method to silence debate got me thinking. Some of my thinking came out in the comment I wrote on Half Done and in Matt’s comment in the original post but I still feel I have more to […]