Augustine, Aquinas, Edwards, and Isaac Newton--What Retards!:

I don't even know where to begin with this op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in today's New York Times. Sadly, this is about as good as Christians will ever get from the Times, since Kristof is the one person at the paper who has been publicly willing to admit that the Times is totally out of touch with tens of millions of Americans. Evangelicals are as alien to the Manhattan denizens at the Times as steak sauce is to Sudanese kids.

In the piece, Kristof says that the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world is religious faith.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view.

Now to me, that fact alone ought to be proof-positive of the virtue of religious faith and the deleterious results of the neglect of God. But in reading the article, one gets the vague sense that Kristof actually sees this as some sort of negative. As if we ought to be emulating the French.

What it all seems to boil down to for Kristof is a dichotomy he perceives. There are intellectuals, you see, and then there are stupid religious people. And never the 'twain shall meet:

The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.

My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

On can be religious or one can be intellectual. Kristof's grandfather was evidently one of the "good ones"--the ones who disingenuously denied the tenets of the faith they had sworn to uphold. The ones who made up their own religion as they went along, denying anything the Bible said that didn't fit their own preconceived notions of what God is capable of. This denial has, of course, eviscerated the mainline denominations, which Kristof laments. As it turns out, a god who does nothing miraculous or supernatural, and instead only has a few moralistic fables to tell us, doesn't really motivate anybody to get out of bed on Sunday morning.

If only those nutty Christians would stop actually believing that God might be who He says He is, America, the most successful and powerful nation on earth, could become more like France--an embittered, impotent, also-ran. Which is what the New York Times has desired all along.


(Addendum: I see that Hugh Hewitt has an excellent--and much more eloquent--post today dealing with Kristof's column. Hewitt points out that in addition to his bias, Kristof also demonstrates extremely shoddy academic research.)