The question is whether all conservatives are destined to be labeled as racists whenever they encounter a progressive.

For those of you who missed it, Elijah Prewitt-Davis of Union Theological Seminary wrote a very humble, edifying, and engaging response to the letter I wrote last week (http://bit.ly/9RXpuE) after reading his interview of the President of Union Theological Seminary. I want to post some of his comments and respond to a few others.

In response to my criticism that conservatives were conflated with racists, sexists, and fascists in the interview, he cited his own personal experience from his hometown in the Midwest:

I am from a small town in the Midwest, where the injustice of racism raises its head each day in the form of out-right denunciations and subtle jokes. I lived in that small town for the first twenty-five years of my life. I commuted to my undergrad university and worked construction part-time while I was studying. After the market crashed and I graduated, I worked in a factory before I moved to New York to study at Union.

I say all of that not to legitimate myself as “in touch” with the common American-as if such a thing even exists-but to give you my context. When President Jones speaks of “Racist, Sexist and Fascist sensibilities” it is not Glenn Beck that I necessarily think of, because his type is certainly not the only type of conservative that I ever encounter. Indeed, it is not even those conservatives that I ultimately care about.

Rather, it is the people from my home town. It is the dispossessed construction worker who blames the immigrant worker for his lack of work, somehow neglecting the fact that it is his white boss who hired them. It is a close family member who after Obama’s election has become increasingly racist, fearing the loss of an America that never existed. It is my former pastor, who welcomes the Gulf coast oil spill as a sign of the world’s end.

He further explains why he left his childhood church (of some conservative denomination, I suppose):

I left the church of my childhood because at the age of 16, I no longer witnessed The Sermon on the Mount in my congregation. A sermon that, through my then literalist interpretation, encapsulates the idea of the complete acceptance and love of the other. The goal at the end of the day is not to start a fight with Glenn Beck, but to show my family and friends a different way of understanding what their faith means.

He also calls me on one of my quotations I plucked from the introduction to the interview:

My claim that progressives and academics “seek more erudite modes of engagement” was meant to be a critique of my constituencies and myself. Obviously you missed this critique, which I may not have made clearly enough.

In some sense he is correct. The quotation appeared in his introduction commenting on how progressive Christians prefer not to get involved in Glenn Beck-style theatrics or respond to them. So yes, it was a self-critique, but it struck me as an arrogant and hypocritical self-critique. Particularly, it struck me as hypocritical because one would think that progressive academics who pride themselves on erudite modes of engagement would have read, referenced, and maybe even refuted the one book that appeared in the segment they are criticizing.

Now, Mr. Prewitt-Davis says that he wrote his article merely to explain why he thought Glenn Beck attacked Dr. Cone and black liberation theology at this juncture in time, and he offers instead Dr. Karyn Carlo’s critique of some of Glenn Beck’s theological points, which, while making some good points, still manages to avoid a single reference to the book that appeared on Beck’s show.

I suppose my greatest concern with the original Union response to the Glenn Beck segment was their conflation of “conservative” with “racist”, “sexist”, and “fascist”, the idea that the only reason someone would oppose black liberation theology is because of fear, frustration, and hate. Mr. Prewitt-Davis gives some good examples from his own background to significantly nuance and contextualize his earlier piece. As all readers of this blog know, racism is alive and well in the United States. So no need to debate that point. The question is whether all conservatives are destined to be labeled as racists whenever they encounter a progressive.

At one point he specifically recognizes this concern:

Of course, there exist many justifiable anxieties and philosophical differences that cross the spectrum. I welcome these different perspectives. But if your anxieties and philosophical differences somehow lead people to demonize others, than I do question their validity.

From his response, I can tell Mr. Prewitt-Davis has his heart in the right place.
So, maybe after a little bit of reading, perhaps we really can have a good substantial discussion about theology, the role of government, and the best way to pursue social justice.

Chris Schaefer has lived in all four continental US time zones and on three other continents. He has B.A.’s in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Spanish from the University of Oklahoma and a M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Currently on leave from Penn’s Ph.D. program, he lives in Morocco where he studies Arabic, teaches English, and spends lots of time in cafes. Schaefer is a regular blogger at Anthony Bradley’s The Institute and this article is used with permission.