Extremists like Charlie Fuqua in no way represent the overwhelming majority of Christians. But like Jewish and Islamic extremists they garner so much attention from the media it appears they are, if not the majority, the most prominent voices speaking for the particular faith tradition. If the media were not so quick to pick up on Charlie and his ilk, it is likely his voice and political power would quickly wither away to inconsequence. So the solution to these extremists lies not in laws or rules but in us. Don't give them the attention they so desperately desire, tell your local media outlets you are tired of hearing about Charlie and his ilk, complain to their advertisers. Instead of Charlie's voice of extremism, speak out such that voices of reason are heard.
I'm not so sure that's true.
Extremism appeals to a lot of people. It offers comfort and structure for people who are frightened by change and offended by people who hold different beliefs than they do. It does not require media attention to thrive; extremists are often very effective at finding one another and at organizing through their own communications networks. (Think of all the various Web sites dedicated to all manner of religious and political extremism. Think of the fact that in the days before the Internet, white supremacist groups like the White Aryan Resistance had their own network of computer bulletin board systems.)
When the media focuses attention on people like this, it roots out the cancer and exposes it to the withering light of day. Extremism thrives in dark corners; I think that most people AREN'T extremists, so the more people who are aware of it, the harder it is to grow.
It is quite likely that many, perhaps even most, people who voted for Fuqua do not share his idea that children should be put to death for disrespecting their parents. When the media exposes these ideas, I think fewer people will vote for him.
Darn! I guess that means me as well, doesn't it?
It does.
But more important, it means that people who identify as conservative Christians but who don't share these ideas need to stand up against them, too.
In any community or subculture--doesn't matter of we are talking about evangelical Christians, model airplane hobbyists, or people involved in bondage--there is a tendency to see the world in terms of 'us' and 'them.' A downside of that tendency is that people become very reluctant to speak out against abusers and nutcases in the 'us' category. The Catholics have a lot of trouble speaking out against abusive priests who molest children; the Evangelicals have trouble speaking out against one of their own who makes it to public office and then talks about putting children to death.
These kinds of abusers end up being sheltered by the group they belong to. The most effective way to stop abusers is for their group to turn against them. Human nature makes that hard to do; it's always much easier to look the other way when a person you identify as part of your 'us' group does evil.
There's
a great book about this called "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbardo, the researcher who did the infamous
Stanford prison experiment.
The idea of in-groups becoming places that shield evildoers is something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about lately, when
a friend of mine was sexually assaulted in the BDSM community (trigger alert: rape) and the community closed ranks behind the perpetrator. (As a result of the blog post I wrote about this event, my friend was recently interviewed on a major network TV show about the assault.)
The exact same sociological and psychological factors that caused the community to shield her attacker also cause the evangelical Christian movement to protect extremists like Fuqua.
Another friend of mine and I have been working on a project aimed at helping to educate people how to stand up against evildoers in their communities. He wrote an essay called
We All Need Mirrors about the responsibility that we all have--every one of us, as individuals--to stand up against wrongdoing on any level within our own communities. He and I are also working on building an education Web site based on his followup to that essay,
The Fix Is In, which is a how-to guide for empowering people to DO that standing up.
So on one level, you're right, people of reason need to stand up against unreason. But more importantly, people within any sort of community need to stand up against members of their own community who do wrong.
When people who are not Evangelicals complain about Fuqua, it's easy to deflect those criticisms; the Evangelical Christian movement already sees us as The Enemy, tools of Satan amassing an army against them. However, when Evangelicals stand up against him, now there is no place for him to hide; he can no longer say that it's just the enemy trying to tear him down.
