Faith Too Vulnerable to be Disputed, Will Not be Taken Seriously.

Ross Douthat has a column in today's New York Times that gets to an issue discussed before on this blog. Namely, that of weak faithed fundamentalists - and people at St. Johns Lutheran in Roanoke - who cannot stand anything that might disturb their house of cards faith system and cause the whole edifice to collapse. The hysteria over gays is a case in point. With these believers, if what they claim the Bible says about homosexuality is not indeed true, their entire faith system unravels and what they have seen as certainty becomes more shades of gray rather than black and white. Worse yet, they might have to think and analyze about what in the Bible is true and what is not. There are already many things that are casually ignored - the Gospel prohibition on divorce being the most noticeable, perhaps - but sexuality issues scares the living you know what out of them. Douthat makes the point that their rigidness on aspects of faith actually shows weakness, not strength and argues to others why their beliefs are not worthy of respect. Here are some highlights:
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Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas.
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That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion.
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A week ago, Brit Hume broke all three rules at once. Asked on a Fox News panel what advice he’d give to the embattled Tiger Woods, Hume suggested that the golfer consider converting to Christianity. “He’s said to be a Buddhist,” Hume noted.
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Hume’s critics suggested that had he been a Buddhist commentator urging a Christian celebrity to convert — or more provocatively, a Muslim touting the advantages of Islam — Christians would be calling for his head.
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No doubt many would. The tendency to take offense at freewheeling religious debate is widespread. There are European Christians who side with Muslims in support of blasphemy laws, lest Jesus or the Prophet Muhammad have his reputation sullied. There are American Catholics who cry “bigotry” every time a newspaper columnist criticizes the church’s teaching on sexuality. Many Christians have decided that the best way to compete in an era of political correctness is to play the victim card.
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But these believers are colluding in their own marginalization. If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all.
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When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
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Thought and analysis terrifies fundamentalist be they Christian extremists or Islamic extremists. Anything that challenges their belief system is to be stomped out rather than run the risk that other believers might begin to question the legitimacy of elements of dogma. We gays frighten the Hell out of Christianists for the very reason that our lives and love suggest that just maybe they are wrong. Once the unraveling begins, their entire fragile and artificial world begins to collapse. Thus, we are a feared/hated enemy.