NY Times' Keller Responds to Christian Critics
Bill Keller didn’t exactly go to ground after authoring a controversial column, published in the New York Times, suggesting that Republican presidential candidates ought to be aggressively probed about their religious beliefs.
But neither did the Gray Lady’s outgoing executive editor go out of his way to address the “heated response” his column elicited from “conservative pundits” on talk radio and cable television, and essayists in the religious blogosphere.
That is, until yesterday, when Keller’s latest column, headlined, “Is the New York Times Biased Against Religion?,” appeared on the New York Times Magazine blog, the 6th Floor. Keller’s latest offering is not the polemic that his previous column was, but a transcript of a series of rather civil e-mails he exchanged this past week with a conservative Christian critic in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
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Wilburn Smith III, a lawyer, began his online correspondence with Keller by taking him to task for opening his column by likening Republican candidates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who subscribe to evangelical Christian beliefs, to not-to-be-taken-serious political candidates who believe that “space aliens dwell among us.”
“You induce us,” writes Smith, “to naturally nod our heads in collective agreement that we would certainly question any candidate who was nutty enough to believe that little green Martians are roaming the Earth, and, then, before we can still our noggins, lead us to likewise challenge and beware the outlier religious notions of those strange and threatening Republicans.”
Keller replied, in an e-mail, that while his opening was “irreverent,” it “was not intended to mock.” He also insisted, “I was not equating space aliens with Christians.”
But Keller’s critics say they did not accuse him of making such an equation, but of comparing evangelical Christians to folks who believe extraterrestrial beings are living on Earth.
Smith also criticized the Times columnist for claiming that “many conservative Christians” are taught that Mormons are a “cult” and that “many others” think the faith shared by GOP presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John Huntsman “is just weird.”
“Democrat strategists can now cite the NYT as a definitive source,” the lawyer writes, when insinuating that Romney is weird. “Did you not know,“ he asked, “you played right into the White House strategy of framing Romney thus?”
Keller’s defense for putting the “weird” label on Romney, one of the favorites to capture the Republican presidential nomination, is that it’s not he who’s doing it, but others. “Even some Mormons,” Keller informed Smith, “describe their religion, proudly, as weird.”
As proof, he pointed Smith to an article written by Peter Applebome that quotes a Mormon singer, songwriter and actor who lives in Los Angeles. “Mormons are weird,“ the performer said. “We’re strange people; we get it.”
But one Mormon performer doesn’t equal “some,“ Smith replied. Just as an indeterminate number of conservative Christians who supposedly believe the Mormon faith is a cult doesn’t equal “many.“
That Keller apparently doesn’t get that, his critics say, explains why some, maybe many, Christians believe that the Times is, indeed, biased against religion.
