The problem with tackling the assigned rhetoric readings so late in the week is that everyone has already addressed what interested me! Yes, Crowley’s stance is troubling. I appreciated her preface, where she writes, “I see few ways around the divide erected by conflicting belief systems, short of conversion, for an outsider who would analyze the discourse of believers. As a result I worry that in many places in this book I am simply returning the favor of misrepresentation” (x). I took heart in this admission, but as Faith astutely comments, “I spent much of the weekend trapped in an airport, and reflecting on the first half makes me wish that Crowley had spent more of the first half just being honest about her liberal politics and the fact that, as the second half of this book makes clear, she knows little to nothing about real Christians.”
Crowley’s project is an important one, and I actually found myself more interested in issues of ancient rhetoric than the liberal vs. Christian war (though the political climate of the culture does concern me). But not only is Crowley not “above the fray,” as another poster mentioned, she contributes to the fray. Although she takes justly-earned shots at liberals (I am liberal myself), such as a refusal to really listen to opponents and rely all too heavily on fact and reason (Al Gore, during his campaign, seemed like an overeager debate captain who had memorized reams of factoids), she is much rougher on conservatives. Although I cannot honestly pretend to truly place myself in the shoes of an apocalyptic Christian, I do try to read texts from the point of view of a doubting reader. How would a conservative pundit respond to Crowley’s text? How would an educated fundamentalist Christian respond to Crowley? I imagine even the most open-minded of Christians (as others have pointed out, there are plenty of Christians who value epistemology and the questioning of what it means to have faith) slamming Crowley’s book closed. Am I the only one who felt the same way? The information in Crowley’s text feels stacked. She’s much harsher on fundamentalist Christians/conservatives than liberals. Okay, I’ll let my liberal colors bleed through. She should perhaps be a bit harsher on fundamentalist Christians, but did anyone else feel that she didn’t really try all that hard at being somewhat balanced? Is Crowley’s text achieving stasis?
Thus, I appreciated Mark’s mentioning of Michael Moore, a polarizing figure who frustrates liberal-minded me (was I the only member of the left who disliked Fahrenheit 9/11?) Mark writes, “In fact, we know that there are few individuals as polarizing as Michael Moore. He is undoubtedly part of the problem Crowley describes.” Might Crowley, unwittingly, also be part of the problem?
2 comments:
I agree that she's harsher on fundamentalist Christians than liberals--but like you said about her preface, she kind of puts it on the line that she will be. Elsewhere in the Preface--towards the beginning--she states plainly that "...the more I study apocalypticism, the more intense becomes my desire not only to dissent from it but to warn others of the ideological dangers it poses to democracy" (ix).
For what it's worth, she also parses which Christians she's concerned with (pages 6-7) though it might be too little, too late by the time the reader gets to it. She admits that "Of course there are many varities of Christian belief" (6-7)and asserts that the variety with which she is "interested here typically flourishes among conservative Protestants called 'evangelicals' or 'fundamentalists'..." (7). She goes on to concede that "The phrase 'liberal Christian' is not an oxymoron" and outlines how many of the nation's founders were Christians. Successful or not, she does seem to try and disengage from the binary she creates (though your own quote from her points out that she knows she's not going to do a good job).
And I feel like she charged the left with its own brand of fundamentalism just enough to make me feel as though she were more than just an over-educated pundit.
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