Wednesday, May 23, 2007
(12:03 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Follow-up on Religious Right Conversations
It's amazing that no matter what I say about the religious right, it indicates that I sympathize with them, consciously or unconsciously. If I express doubt about the degree of their influence, I'm "minimizing" them in such a way as to help their nefarious schemes to go undetected. Presumably if I were hysterical about their power, clear-headed commenters would read my exaggerated idea of their power as a secret identification with them. If I don't respond to them on the theological level (something I have already done, probably hundreds of times on this very blog), it's because I'm unwilling to examine the presuppositions I share with them. If I did respond theologically, people would be complaining that I'm implying that the only possible grounds of debate are religious and thereby silencing secular voices.I literally cannot win here. I can't put out a good-faith opinion on this matter without some hackneyed, ill-informed version of my "personal history" -- and again, if anyone actually wanted to know about my personal history rather than simply deploying stereotypes, I have been more than forthcoming on this blog for years and years -- allowing people to psychologize away what I'm saying.
There is apparently no way for me to prevent this. Thus, the logical solution is to ignore the problem. But I find it difficult to ignore, however, because it plays into a persistent fear -- that no matter what I do, I will be dismissed as a fundamentalist. It's back to the old conundrum of whether The Weblog is a Christian blog -- I'm always too Christian for some, not Christian enough for others, and for some, I'm both at the same time.
