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The Liberal Commissars

Why do so many liberals have 'irrational animus' for Christianity?
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Damon Linker, in an excellent column, says that the Gordon College case and the Brian Palmer column are examples of irrational liberal animus against Christianity. Excerpt:

My use of the term “irrational animus” isn’t arbitrary. The Supreme Court has made “irrational animus” a cornerstone of its jurisprudence on gay rights. A law cannot stand if it can be shown to be motivated by rationally unjustifiable hostility to homosexuals, and on several occasions the court has declared that traditional religious objections to homosexuality are reducible to just such a motive.

But the urge to eliminate Christianity’s influence on and legacy within our world can be its own form of irrational animus. The problem is not just the cavalier dismissal of people’s long-established beliefs and the ways of life and traditions based on them. The problem is also the dogmatic denial of the beauty and wisdom contained within those beliefs, ways of life, and traditions. (You know, the kind of thing that leads a doctor to risk his life and forego a comfortable stateside livelihood in favor of treating deadly illness in dangerous, impoverished African cities and villages, all out of a love for Jesus Christ.)

Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. The idea that someone, somewhere might devote her life to an alternative vision of the good — one that clashes in some respects with liberalism’s moral creed — is increasingly intolerable.

That is a betrayal of what’s best in the liberal tradition.

Read the whole thing.  And also read about this case from Canada, in which a graduate of an Evangelical college there was denied employment as a river guide with a Norwegian-owned company doing business in Canada because her putative employer hates Christians. She cited e-mails from company owner Olaf Amundsen, who explained why graduates of Trinity Western University are unwelcome in his company. Excerpt from the CBC story:

In the rejection email, Amundsen also wrote: “The Norse background of most of the guys at the management level means that we are not a Christian organization, and most of us actually  see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition and way of life.”

Bethany Paquette used to be a river guide and hoped to become a wilderness guide for Norwegian company Amaruk’s expeditions to Yukon.

Paquette wrote Amundsen back defending her faith, saying “your disagreement with Trinity Western University, simply because they do not support sex outside of marriage, can in fact be noted as discrimination of approximately 76 per cent of the world population!!! Wow, that’s a lot of diverse people that you don’t embrace.”

She also wrote that the Norse people chose Christianity.

“I signed it God Bless, probably partially because I knew it would irritate them,” Paquette said.

It clearly irritated Amundsen, who wrote back, describing himself as “a Viking with a PhD in Norse culture. So propaganda is lost on me.”

He explained why graduates from Trinity Western are not welcome in the Norwegian company.

“In asking students to refrain from same-sex relationships, Trinity Western University, and any person associated with it, has engaged in discrimination.”

He ended the email writing, “‘God bless’ is very offensive to me and yet another sign of your attempts to impose your religious views on me.

“I do not want to be blessed by some guy… who has been the very reason for the most horrendous abuses and human rights violations in the history of the human race.”

Amundsen then used an expletive to state that if he met God, he would have sex with him.

The CBC reports that Amundsen describes himself as a “Viking.” You know, if there’s one thing I think of when I think of “Vikings,” it’s peace, love, and respect for diversity.

Imagine this guy having the nerve to say this to a Jew, a Muslim, or a Hindu. He wouldn’t dare. This is the culture we are in.

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