What Stephen Carter doesn't say

Recently author and Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter wrote an essay, published in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in response to a fairly snarky piece in The New Yorker about the firm Chick-Fil-A’s alleged “infiltration” in New York City because of the founders’ explicitly Christian beliefs, specifically that homosexual conduct is morally wrong. Trying to suggest that Christians of all stages — young, old, those of color — might have been offended, Carter writes, “When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.”

The trouble is that Carter seems to paint all evangelical Christians with the same broad brush. When most people criticize “conservative Christians,” it’s understood that it isn’t the faith itself that they find chafing but their desire for cultural supremacy, and most of the people demanding such supremacy, overwhelmingly white and who have the wherewithal to run large-scale political campaigns, have themselves stated that they speak for so many millions of people or even God. While not explicitly stated, that was the intent of The New Yorker’s piece, which is likely why African-Americans and other “Christians of color” likely weren’t at all offended — they understood that it didn’t apply to them.

Carter mentions that the African-American population is more likely to attend church and, according to polls, believe that their faith informs what they do. But keep in mind that it was the African-American church from which the civil-rights movement sprang two generations ago — and which at the time was generally opposed and today generally ignored by white evangelicals. That’s because black and white American Christians have different histories and cultures and thus interpret the Gospel through different lenses. Not for no reason are the vast majority of African-Americans registered Democrats.

And when you consider the 1980s “golden age” of media so-called ministries, almost all of them were run by white male baby-boomers whose audiences were, among other things, frightened by their cultural privilege slipping away. Since black Christians never held such privilege we never paid that any mind, which is why so few of us were involved in the anti-abortion or anti-gay movements (despite that many of us actually agreed with them).

Carter also writes that large number of “millennials,” including Asians and Latinos, adhere to the Christian faith.  But again, they don’t share the political/ideological views of the previous generation, with fairly large numbers accepting “gay marriage” (a view I don’t share) and adopting a pro-life position greater than just opposing legal abortion (which I do agree with).

Basically, Carter’s concern is way off-base. The response to Chick-Fil-A in The New Yorker was based not on the Christian faith itself but on the fear that certain Christians have felt a need to shove their cultural agenda down the throats of others — and when you do that, pushback becomes inevitable.