WWJD

We try to keep a level head about Mark Hyman at “The Counterpoint.” Believe it or not, we try to give him the benefit of every doubt. Sure, we disagree with his politics, we find his arguments poorly constructed, and we resent the fact that he forces himself on millions of news viewers without allowing any significant countering voice.

But we try not to believe the worst about him. We try to see this as a project of responding to a fellow citizen who has very mistaken views about the world, but who isn’t a bad human being.

This continues to become more difficult as time goes on.

The latest case is an astonishing commentary on the role of religion in the previous election. Hyman draws a line between those on the “Angry Left” who he claims deride religious belief and the red-staters who think it’s an important part of life. But as factually inaccurate as it is to claim that Republicans are religious and Democrats are not, this distinction is not nearly as ugly as the second boundary Hyman draws that parallels this one along ethnic lines.

While spouting off statistics about the link between religious belief and voting patterns, Hyman makes a point of announcing not only that the majority of evangelical Christians and white protestants more generally voted for Bush, but that overwhelming majorities of Jews and African Americans voted for Kerry (in fact, Hyman lumps Jews and non-believers into the same demographic category—apparently for him, this is a distinction without a difference). Just to underscore this, Hyman quotes three newspaper columnists who he believes have expressed intolerance toward Christians since the election. Of the three, two (Ellen Goodman and Thomas Friedman) are Jewish. The other, E.J. Dionne, is Catholic. Coincidence?

So, we have a commentary in which Hyman bemoans religious intolerance and division, yet in which he himself draws clear distinctions between the believing Red states and the “elitists in the nation’s coastal pockets of blue states” (note to Mark: what about us Midwestern elitists?), between conservatives and liberals, and between white Protestants and Jews, African Americans, and nonbelievers. Hyman will likely say that he was simply reporting the facts on voter demographics and didn’t mean anything by it. But given the obvious good/bad dichotomy Hyman sets up in this piece, the association of certain religious and ethnic groups with “goodness” and “badness” is inescapable and certainly intentional.

We’ve seen in the past that Hyman dabbles in racism and religious bigotry, and we’ve called him on it. But we’ve tried to avoid invoking dialog-crushing invective likening Hyman’s stance with Nazism or lynch-mobs. This kind of hyperbole is unfair and diminishes the true evil of people like a Joseph Goebbels or KKK members by domesticating it and using it for rhetorical point-scoring. But we can avoid using this language and still call Hyman’s rhetoric for what it is: bigotry.

Beyond the ugliness of Hyman’s words, he’s simply wrong. Most of the liberals we know are not only believers, but have political beliefs that are rooted in their spiritual convictions. What the columnists Hyman cites are criticizing is not the religiosity of voters; it’s the equation of religious belief with an extreme and narrow set of positions on a handful of issues

Hyman and his ilk should keep this in mind: of the sentences in the New Testament, fully 10% are saying something about helping the less fortunate. Jesus never said anything about gay marriage. He did say we should help the poor. Jesus never advocated tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. He did say it was harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into Heaven. Jesus didn’t talk about prayer in schools or posting the Ten Commandments in public spaces. He did say we shouldn’t parade our faith in front of others but practice it privately. Jesus didn’t say homosexuality was a sin, that illegal immigrants should be punished, or that the death penalty was a good idea. He did say “judge not lest ye be judged.”

We believe, based on what the Bible tells us, that Christ would probably think universal healthcare was a good idea. He’d probably want us to spend more money on schools, particularly in poverty-stricken areas. He’d probably want us to help drug addicts, not throw them in jail. He’d likely be against starting a war against a country that wasn’t at war with us. He’d favor a progressive tax code that ensured that the wealthiest contributed to the well being of the least fortunate. He’d be for protecting the environment. He’d want to take care of the homeless. He’d be for taking better care of veterans. He would be for taking care of the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, and the developmentally disabled. He’d likely be more concerned for the welfare of the unwed teen mother than for the stockholders of Halliburton. And he’d have no time for divisive bigots. Jesus really would be a uniter, not a divider.

We think Jesus would have voted for Kerry.

And that’s The Counterpoint.