Reason, thy name is bigotry

So lots of my favorite blogs have been linking, recently, to Conservapedia, which is an ill-named, openly ideological counterpart to the "biased" Wikipedia. If you follow that last link, you'll see a list of grievances against the mainstream wiki that started it all. The first entry also includes, at present, the following brief self-justification:

Though the rationale behind usage of the B. C. E. phrasing is to avoid offending religions other then Chrisitanity, Conservapedia does not accept the validity of these religions, and sees no differnce [sic] between 'not pro-Christian' and 'anti-Christian'.

The failure to see this difference has always mystified me somewhat. But it really does seem to be genuine for a lot of people. Here is an example, found through one of many helpful internet lists of "anti-Christian bias". (Note: if you google "anti-Christian bias", the top result is this amusing parody.)

In 2006, an explicitly pro-Christian (read: proselytizing) film entitled "Facing the Giants" was released with, heaven forbid, a PG rating from the MPAA. This became a big story in certain circles. The American Family Association was outraged. Kris Fuhr, a VP for marketing at Provident Films (owned by Sony Pictures), played up the controversy. (It is pretty well established, especially after the success of Mel Gibson's gore fest, that this is a good way to get results like these.)

What the MPAA said is that the movie contained strong 'thematic elements' that might disturb some parents.

[The MPAA] decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word 'proselytizing' when they talked about giving this movie a PG.

It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about.

Of course, this last interpretation could not possibly represent the intent of the MPAA ratings board. Indeed, the "controversy" lead to a statement retracting not the rating, but the reasons for it supposedly given to Fuhr.

[MPAA ratings board chairperson Joan] Graves sent [the Catholic League] a statement indicating their “long-standing policy not to comment to the press about individual films other than to give the rating and the rating reasons,” but owing to the “misunderstanding that this film received a PG rating for its ‘religious viewpoint,’” she felt obliged to respond. She added, “This film has a mature discussion about pregnancy, for example, as well as other elements that parents might want to be aware of. There are many religious films that have been submitted for rating, and they have garnered ratings from G to R, depending on the graphics and intensity of various elements in the film.”

This may be an accurate account of the grounds for the ratings board's decision. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that the ratings board did decide to grant a PG rating on account of the film's proselytizing. Would that be a bad thing? Would it be an example of anti-Christian bigotry?

Of course not. The relevant point isn't whether some people find Christianity "offensive." No film could be judged unsuitable for some audiences solely on the basis of its trafficking in religious subject matter. The ratings board's job is to offer parents guidance about whether or not a film contains content that they might want to review before allowing their children to watch a film. Now, if you were, say, a Jewish parent raising your child in that faith, or perhaps an atheist who wanted to avoid indoctrinating your children into an authoritarian moral theory, wouldn't it stand to reason that you would want to avoid exposing them to a film that makes no secret about its evangelical mission? To such parents, the religious mission of the film would not seem just a harmless bit of storytelling. And indeed, it clearly isn't just a bit of storytelling--whether or not it's harmless is what is open to debate. But it's not unreasonable for a non-evangelical organization to be concerned to respect the views of those non-Christians it serves.

The dynamic here is one in which a bunch of evangelical groups insist that their message should be endorsed as positive by other organizations that do not share their evangelical aims. When this demand is not met, they exploit a failure to distinguish between a failure to actively promote Christianity and "anti-Christian bigotry" to smear those of us who respect the views of those who don't want to be converted. Sadly, this tactic has been remarkably successful.