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Recently lamenting a politician who gained popularity “with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science,” you could think the New York Times was referencing Hillary Clinton and the Big Gender lobby. But the Gray Lady’s Katherine Stewart was actually talking about President Trump and his Christian supporters. Yet her op-ed, “The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response,” only illustrates how the media’s hostility to journalistic ethics is crippling our whole civilization.
Stewart begins building her case that Christian “science denialism” has historically been “crippling” by establishing a pattern of two: She cited one antebellum theologian who bemoaned the “physical sciences” and, complaining about how climate realists are “concentrated” among Christian Republicans, then referenced one group today that denounces environmentalism. She subsequently presents three individual churches — of the more than 300,000 in the United States — that she claims are scoffing at Wuhan virus safety measures.
Of course, today’s fashionable assumption is that “right-wing” Christians practically have a monopoly on science denialism. But it’s also a fashionable prejudice. Modern times’ perhaps most outrageous science denialists were the Soviet Union’s secular leftist Lysenkoists. They preached the heritability of acquired traits, persecuting and even executing biologists who disagreed, long after this myth had been discarded in favor of the genetics of Gregor Mendel — who was a Christian monk.
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Also a product of the secular Left is today’s prominent denial of biology, MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status or “transgender”) ideology, which considers the inborn state of being male or female negotiable. It’s also most ardently opposed by “right-wing” Christians, do note.
But while both religionists and secularists have at times denied science (and scientists have at times denied reality), it doesn’t appear that Trump has. Nonetheless, Stewart claims that the president has a “tendency to trust his gut” over the counsel of scientists and experts — even though doctors “Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have repeatedly said the nation’s commander-in-chief has based all of his major decisions on their advice,” the Blaze reminds us.
Stewart also claims that Trump touts “yet unproven cures,” by which she’s no doubt alluding to malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. But all the president said is that he felt “hopeful” about it, and he should. Doctors across the country — including an internist in-law of mine who recently contracted the Wuhan virus — have been prescribing the drug for themselves precisely because it appears highly efficacious against the disease. Studies indicate this, too.
Speaking of which, research also informs that, if anything, Christians are more likely than non-believers to practice governmental social-distancing guidelines. In fact, the Blaze relates that according “to a Morning Consult survey taken last week, 86% of Christians said they are practicing the recommendations, while 78% of agnostics and 80% of atheists said the same.”
“To be clear, given the survey’s margin of error, these are not significant differences, but it also demonstrates that for all her talk of “science denialism,” Stewart’s argument has little to no basis in research,” the site continues.
Note as well that the current epicenter of Wuhan virus infection is New York City, which I guess is part of the Bible Belt now (must be — Trump’s from there, right?!). Of course, the Big Apple’s Wuhan woes likely have little to do with its secularism. The point is that, to echo the Blaze, Stewart’s argument has no factual basis.
Stewart also blames the Wuhan-flu crisis on the idea that the “private sector is supposed to have the answer to every problem,” a principle to which the Trump administration supposedly subscribes and which she claims “Christian nationalism” is complicit in promoting. The Blaze calls this an odd contention, “considering the innovation coming out of the private sector that is driving our national response to the pandemic.”
Yet it’s also a false contention. I don’t know of any devout Christian or ardent Trump supporter (though one surely exists somewhere) who believes the private sector can solve every problem. Such people aren’t anarchists, after all; they believe government is necessary. Were it otherwise, why would they enthusiastically support Trump or anyone else running for a position in what they supposedly think is superfluous: government?
A more intelligent (and honest) criticism of Trump holds that far from being a small-government doctrinaire, he apparently lacks an ideological core and is what’s euphemistically called a “pragmatist.” In fact and quite ironically, the day Stewart’s op-ed was published (3/27) Trump signed into law $2 trillion-worth of government involvement in the private sector — world history’s largest stimulus bill.
Continuing with the odd contentions, Stewart further claims that Christian nationalism “has brought to American politics the conviction that our political differences are a battle between absolute evil and absolute good.”
Now, contrary to shades-of-gray pseudo-sophistication, good vs. evil actually is a more intelligent way of viewing the world than the through the “conservatism/liberalism” prism (two terms that don’t describe ideologies as much as processes). Yet Stewart misses what can appear a paradox: “Right-wing” Christians may correctly view right and wrong as black and white, but accept and tolerate that people are shades of gray.
Leftists may view “right and wrong” as shades of gray, but too often see people as black and white.
It is, after all, not conservative Christians but left-wing secularists who make headlines by physically attacking — and talking about killing — political opponents.
Why the difference? Christians believe all are sinners, including themselves. Leftists generally believe everything is relative and then make everything relative to themselves. Christians judge all by God’s perfect standard, Truth, and see that they pale in comparison just like anyone else; this breeds tolerance. Leftists make themselves the standard and see that only those disagreeing pale in comparison; this breeds intolerance.
Lastly, Christians believe in redemption, not just retribution. And though it’s often difficult, they’re called to see a political opponent as a brother; leftists often see him as the “other.”
As for Stewart, who’s not Christian, one could wonder who is the other to her. She uses the term “Christian nationalist/nationalism” five times in her piece and wrote a book about the supposed threat the ism poses. Should this be viewed any differently than someone continually bloviating about “Zionism”?
It should be — if Stewart were professing Truth. Yet her 1,400-word piece is riddled with more falsehoods and fallacies than can be addressed here. Ironic, too, since she writes of Christian nationalists: “Fealty to the cause is everything; fidelity to the facts means nothing.” Talk about projection.
Image: Ajay Suresh / Wikimedia Commons
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
