RELIGIOUS BIGOTS TARGET CHRISTIANS

                           BY GEORGE ROCHE

                     President, Hillsdale College



   What kind of men would deserve to be called, in print, "fanatics . 

. . thick-necked jugheads . . . uglier and uglier?"  What kind of 

organization could be ripped in public for its supposed "contrived 

emotion . . . snake oil ot tent revivalism," called "fervent" and 

"dumbed down"?  Could Sunday School classes be compared to 

groups of Islamic terrorists and a national leader of family renewal 

vilified as a modern version of Adolf Hitler, a "raving lunatic" and 

a "lop-eyed loon?"

   Religious bigotry in America? All these phrases were used in 

print to attack American men making an honest effort to be better 

husbands and fathers.  This vicious, intolerant language came 

from Scott Raab in the January, 1996, issue of Gentleman's 

Quarterly magazine.



Promise Keepers



 The target -- former Colorado football Bill McCartney and his 

Promise Keepers, a faith-based movement that emphasizes 

strengthening families by getting men of all ages to rededicate 

their lives to God, their families and wives.

   The message GQ chose to send couldn't be clearer. Anti-

Christian bigotry, alive and apparently thriving in America, 

justifies brutal attacks on men whose sole crime seems to be a 

consistent public commitment to strengthening their own spiritual 

lives and those of their families.

   Let's take another example of religious intolerance, aired on Na-

tional Public Radio's All Things Considered just before Christmas.  

Reporter Andrei Codrescu chose to comment on Thessalonians 

4:17, which offers St. Paul's version of the return of Christ and His 

embrace of all believers.  

   Before calling the passage "crap," Mr. Codrescu made another 

remark that simply defies belief.  Read the words from the 

broadcast transcript itself: The evaporation of four million [people] 

who believe in this crap would leave the world an instantly better 

place."

   NPR initially refused to apologize for Codrescu's insultingly un-

professional tirade (executive producer Ellen Weiss did admit that 

NPR "crossed the line," as though they didn't virtually live on the 

other side of the line all the time) and never did allow Christian 

Coalition director Ralph reed to respond.

   "This is a puritanical, conservative Christian country that wants 

for force its abominable Christian religion down everybody's 

throat.  Christians and Jews believe that religion is indispensable 

to morality.  That's a falsehood.  That's what drives these people 

to try and change everybody else." The speaker, George Carlin, 

echoes the views of the people who dominate television, radio and 

motion pictures.  They clearly despise Christianity, especially Roman

Catholics and Evangelicals.

   They direct all their creative energy and venomous ideology to 

making their million, but remain out of touch with the real world 

and the destructive consequences of their own opinions.  

   Teenagers who choose abstinence  get ridiculed on nightly talk 

shows.  The supposed "family hour" has disappeared.     

Television, radio and movies get more ideological and less 

responsible, more vulgar and less creative, more profane and 

less sophisticated.