Several years ago the Washington Post stirred up controversy for describing evangelicals as “poor, undereducated and easily led.” It’s not that they didn’t believe it to be true, they just knew they shouldn’t have got caught saying it in public.
I suspect Nicole Allan, a staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, may soon feel the same about this sentence:
People are sometimes caught off guard by Huckabee’s intellectual competence because of his rural Arkansas habits (he and his wife lived in a trailer while the governor’s mansion was being renovated) and his outspoken evangelical views.
People are sometimes caught off guard by the intellectual incompetence of clueless urban journalists who write about subjects they know nothing about (like Southerners or evangelicals). But it rarely surprises me anymore. I’ve been around enough of them to know that it’s usually not malice, but rather an honest ignorance of the world outside their narrow circles, that leads them to make such dumb remarks.
This is an example of the problem with elitism in America—particularly in the elite media. The issue isn’t with elitism as a concept (like most good conservatives, I’m in favor of elitism) but with the quality of what passes for elite in this country. If you have a degree from Yale (like Allan) you can usually finagle your way into a job with a premier media outlet (like The Atlantic) despite having neither a working knowledge of religion (especially popular religious views) nor the ability to apply basic logic.
For instance, I’m not sure what “rural Arkansas habits” have to do with “intellectual competence”—and I suspect Allan doesn’t have a clue what the connection is either. (Does living in a trailer lower your IQ?) But the fact that she feels comfortable expressing such a bizarre sentiment is symptomatic of a culture that promotes incompetent thinkers because they aquired all the right “elite “credentials.
(Via Frank Lockwood, a journalist who somehow managed to graduate from Harvard despite being an evangelical from Arkansas.)
June 24th, 2010 | 5:33 pm
And I’m certain that she thinks Bill Clinton is also a surprise, given his being from small-town Arkansas and blessed with a modicum of intelligence. She probably wonders how someone from Arkansas could ever be President of anything more than the local auto club.
June 24th, 2010 | 5:38 pm
It’s one thing to say that Allan shouldn’t have said this; it’s quite another thing to say that the generalizations that Allan is drawing upon are completely false and without any factual basis.
So are there actually no correlations between “intellectual competence” and “rural Arkansas habits” combined with “outspoken evangelical views”?
Even before the facts come in, isn’t it somewhat plausible to suppose that there are correlations between “intellectual competence” and educational achievement, and that there are also correlations between educational achievement and “outspoken evangelical views” combined with “rural Arkansas habits”? Do you deny that there are such correlations?
We may dislike these (and similar) correlations, and it may be that we ought to be sensitive in speaking about them. It may even show a defect of character to be “caught off guard” because one’s social expectations were based on such correlations. But none of this means that such correlations are illusory.
June 24th, 2010 | 6:03 pm
Janice So are there actually no correlations between “intellectual competence” and “rural Arkansas habits” combined with “outspoken evangelical views”?
Your question could be applied to just about any substitutions that could be made to that sentence. For example: “Are there no correlations between “intellectual competence” and “urban New York habits” combined with “outspoken Catholic views”?
The answer—to just about anything you could substitute—is “it depends.” Almost all stereotypes have some basis in truth. But the idea that the majority of Southern evangelicals are “intellectually incompetent” is the kind of dumb claim that could only be made by someone who has never met many Southern evangelicals.
Many people tend not to even realize that they are relying on such sloppy stereotypical thinking. Over twenty years ago a friend of mine—a native New Yorker—admitted that he thought people who spoke with a Southern accent were “dumb.” He was surprised to hear that many Southerners felt the same way on hearing a New York accent.
June 24th, 2010 | 6:29 pm
I expect to hear ill-informed comments from non-evangelicals about evangelicals. They really do have no clue. What depresses me is that evangelicals themselves so often take those comments to heart and begin to believe them and repeat them to others.
June 24th, 2010 | 6:59 pm
Janice,
I mostly agree. But imagine if someone made analogous comments regarding Obama’s race and low-income upbringing. They would have been considered beyond the pale.
June 24th, 2010 | 7:25 pm
I’m not an evangelical. This is my experience:
How could someone who reads the entire Bible numerous times, quotes many chapters and verses, appreciates the sweep of that document, spends countless hours debating and thinking about the words and meaning of the text, and medidates on the meaning of this work in their lives NOT be an intellectual?
The Bible remains the most difficult book I have ever read. Don’t get me wrong – the messages in the Bible can be applicable to a wide range of intellects, and you don’t need a Ph.D. to get the point. But seriously grappling with the text requires brains.
I periodically listen to an evangelical radio station, and I feel like I am in a graduate school course in Biblical exegesis, and the people who call in seem like visiting scholars. You better be know your Obadiah from your Amos, or you’ll make a complete ass of yourself.
Sure, some evangelicals may have accents, some may be politically convservative, some may not have any gay friends – but you will be way off base if your default assumption is ‘stupid until proven otherwise’.
June 24th, 2010 | 7:44 pm
You are right on the money here, Joe. I’m a Manhattan resident for many years, and I often get suspicious looks when buying FIRST THINGS at a local Barnes and Noble by ignorant hipster employees. I can vouch for the fact that there are many intellectually challenged people living here. However, they are often minority (and now white post-college frat-jocks, degrees notwithstanding), so any commentary that would draw these correlations is highly taboo. It would seem that uninformed stereotypes of city dwellers being educated and country dwellers being bumpkins withstands anything to the contrary–dating at least to the “paganus” of the Roman Empire perhaps. I am always amused at white-collar Yuppies placed in physically challenging situations in environments where they are the veritable fish-out-of-water. Where does their book knowledge, sophistication (read: self-absorbed pursuit of entertainment as a raison d’etre), or vacuous consumerism get them in those instances? It almost makes me recall the movie “Deliverance”. Knowledge comes in different forms, and the ability to talk as a dilettante about pseudo-highbrow popular culture (often the focus of THE ATLANTIC, a magazine that has plummeted over the past five years) and poorly reasoned fashionable politics is a charade, pure and simple. Just remember, there have been many conservationists in rural areas for decades, but it wasn’t until dollar signs and moralistic capital were at stake that the urban “elites” embraced it. BTW, I believe there is malice in her comment. The disdain for religious people among NYC white professionals is utterly astounding. It is the only safe bigotry in this culturally declining city.
June 24th, 2010 | 9:54 pm
Is it different when Mark Noll says it?
June 24th, 2010 | 10:03 pm
…THE ATLANTIC, a magazine that has plummeted over the past five years…
I’ll say. After Michael Kinsley’s tragic death, it’s been all down hill.
June 24th, 2010 | 11:05 pm
Rod Blaine Is it different when Mark Noll says it?
Mark Noll never said that evangelicals lacked “intellectual competence.” Indeed, it would be rather odd for him to say such a thing since he himself is an evangelical.
Noll’s criticism—which though overstated is not without merit—is that evangelicals are really not all that different from average Americans (i.e., lacking intellectual seriousness). He is calling evangelicals to a higher standard of the discipleship of the mind. What Allan is saying, I presume, is that evangelicals really believe all that goofy stuff like Jesus being raised from the dead and that the claims of the Bible are true.
June 25th, 2010 | 12:17 am
Yes, indeed, that Britney Spears cover story in THE ATLANTIC was a vital piece of journalism. Who needs William Langewiesche?
June 25th, 2010 | 1:34 am
Aha. I see your distinction… Allan et al believe the fundoes were only handed out two talents of intellect each, whereas Noll is saying they were given twenty talents but are only using two of them.
June 25th, 2010 | 3:03 am
Howdy from Tennessee. Hate to break to y’all, but most of us down here don’t much care that etiolated whippersnappers living in glorified closets between 57th and 96th and east of Fifth Avenue think we’re ignorant (note the use of the fancy, French derived adjective abutted against the crisp Anglo-Saxon insult with a bit of Manhattan geography thrown in). We know they think we’re stupid; it’s not really news down here. But we smile, since we believe in courtesy, and continue to provide the nation with her writers, and musicians, and evangelists (and no, we’re not ashamed of our evangelists), and politicians (speaking of shame)—and y’all are welcome. And for Mr JM who thinks that “seriously grappling” with the Bible “requires brains.” Well, son (that’s the way we speak in the South: the sentence begins with a soft welcome and then commences to make everybody family) nope. Not really. Really grapplin’ with the Holy Bible requires a hunger for righteousness. And meekness. Being poor in spirit. Fear helps. And purity of heart, can’t leave that one out. Things like that. Brains? Being clever? Don’t even make the list (the bad grammar of pretended folksiness another Southern tradition).
June 25th, 2010 | 8:08 am
The smug, self-satisfied, seemingly completely unrecognized prejudice of most Northerners (often expressed while discussing the problem of prejudice in the South) is astonishing to behold.
June 25th, 2010 | 8:51 am
I’ve found that we all have our own prejudices. Living in Boston after having lived in Charleston, South Carolina for five years makes for an interesting contrast. I work in the software field and have met some certifiable geniuses. Yet the majority too frequently demonstrate the specialist maxim about knowing everything about nothing. Then I try a mirror and am ashamed.
I’ve concluded that the first rule of religion is “I am not God.” That may seem like a special case of the first commandment, but in reality it is the only case that matters. Once you know you are not God, you have a chance at seeing the limits of your opinions. You have a chance at reaching for God rather than telling God who God is.
June 25th, 2010 | 11:17 am
I believe it was Michael Kelly of the Atlantic who died, not now Washington Post columnistMichael Kinsley.
June 25th, 2010 | 2:33 pm
for what it’s worth:
i grew up in rural northeastern brazil, playing soccer with kids who owned nothing but the shorts they wore. i could not have had a better and more formative childhood.
i then spent 9 years at yale pursuing multiple degrees. i can tell you from experience that a degree from there, by itself, doesn’t mean much.
some of the sharpest, most talented, and nicest people i’ve met are from the midwest. my wife is from a town of 700 people in rural iowa. my father-in-law has “only” a high school degree, was a maintenance man for the local high school, and towers over me in faith, love, and hope. i am deeply humbled that i belong to his family.
mike linton’s incisive comment above are hilarious. and i thought of farmer wendell berry when i read the original post; he’s one of the profoundest thinkers i know.
here are a few germane words from c.s. lewis:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship….
We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind)
which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.
June 26th, 2010 | 1:33 pm
Mr Carter, did you actually read the New Yorker piece? The quote from Nicole Allan is a pretty innocent summary of part of it. The observation about people’s reactions to the trailer thing traces back to comments by the guy who managed the facilities at the governor’s mansion during Huckabee’s tenure.
June 26th, 2010 | 3:05 pm
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June 27th, 2010 | 3:06 pm
Dear Andrew:
“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
Wow. Exactly. Thanks for that.
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