Fighting Prejudice

It’s not just for Obama anymore. Surber stands up for West By God Virginia: The gap-toothed sister-loving semi-literate gun-toting kloset-Klan snakehandlers of recent report and casual disparagement place a premium on education. 

Speaking of prejudices, the debunking thereof, here’s Times of London on recent scholarship re evangelism: It’s not just for gaptoothed sister-loving semi-literate gun-toting kloset-Klan snakehandlers any more.

And from the AP of all places:

BOSTON (AP) — For decades, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger says, American intellectuals have looked down on evangelicals.

Educated people have the notion that evangelicals are “barefoot people of Tobacco Road who, I don’t know, sleep with their sisters or something,” Berger says.

It’s time that attitude changed, he says.

“That was probably never correct, but it’s totally false now and I think the image should be corrected,” Berger said in a recent interview.

Now, his university’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs is leading a two-year project that explores an “evangelical intelligentsia” which Berger says is growing and needs to be better understood, given the large numbers of evangelicals and their influence.

“It’s not good if a prejudiced view of this community prevails in the elite circles of society,” said Berger, a self-described liberal Lutheran. “It’s bad for democracy and it’s wrong.”

Topics: America, religion

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:31 pm on Thursday, May 15, 2008

2 Responses to “Fighting Prejudice”

  1. Don Surber » Blog Archive » Education Says:

    [...] by Jules Crittenden. [...]

  2. RebeccaH Says:

    “That was probably never correct, but it’s totally false now…

    Probably?!?

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