{"id":566,"date":"2010-08-16T18:41:40","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T00:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=566"},"modified":"2010-08-16T18:41:40","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T00:41:40","slug":"the-arrogance-of-elites-baptist-otherwise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=566","title":{"rendered":"The Arrogance of Elites (Baptist & Otherwise)!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>You come to this country, take advantage of the system and think because we are tolerant that we are weak and helpless. Your arrogance offends me.\u00a0 Bryan Mills,\u00a0 from the movie Taken<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Norman Jameson, the editor of the North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder, wanted to write a condescendingly arrogant opinion piece defending the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan<\/a>, in the infamous words of George W. Bush — Mission Accomplished!\u00a0 Fresh on the heals of President Obama’s entirely predictable endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque<\/a>,\u00a0Jameson, in what has to be one of the most smarmy editorials written from a Baptist Christian perspective\u00a0to\u00a0weigh\u00a0in on the Ground Zero mosque, has certainly outdone himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before any of my freedom loving, Baptist historian friends throw rocks, let me make it perfectly clear that I believe Jameson has every right to spout foolish non-sense, even under the guise of religious liberty and Baptist freedoms.\u00a0 However, he should\u00a0not expect his\u00a0words to go unchallenged.\u00a0 For the editor of any paper, much less a Baptist paper, to write such utter,\u00a0insensitive drivel is mind-boggling!<\/p>\n

If I have your attention, good!\u00a0 Before I dissect Jameson’s “arguments” about why he thinks Americans in general, and Baptists in particular, should have warm, fuzzy feelings and be oh so thankful\u00a0that a\u00a0Muslim Cultural Center and Mosque is being built near the greatest\u00a0mass murder\u00a0in U.S. history, let me ask a question.\u00a0 If Westboro\u00a0“Baptist Church”, the\u00a0hate-filled\u00a0group known for its vile signs and despicable\u00a0protests at military funerals, bought property in lower Manhattan\u00a0and proposed to build a cultural center and church at the same location as the mosque, how many elites, including Jameson, Mayor Bloomberg, and President Obama, would be defending\u00a0Westboro’s “rights”\u00a0based on religious freedom grounds?\u00a0 That’s what I\u00a0thought.<\/p>\n

After 18 months in office, one has come to expect this kind of\u00a0lawyerese from Obama.\u00a0 Sadly, one also has come to expect this type of\u00a0blather from Baptists like Jameson.\u00a0 In trying to defend the indefensible, Jameson resorting to Baptist history and\u00a0First Amendment Religious Freedom grounds is both patronizing and belittling at the same time.\u00a0 It\u00a0smacks\u00a0of hubris on a par\u00a0with the likes of President Obama.<\/p>\n

In a stunning grasp of the obvious that Jameson so eloquently points\u00a0out, no one disputes that there are other mosques throughout New York City, including in Manhattan.\u00a0 However, to equate mosques built pre-September 11, 2001 with\u00a0the Ground Zero mosque, expected to be dedicated September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attack on this country by\u00a0Muslim extremists,\u00a0conveys an elitist pre-9\/11 mentality\u00a0that\u00a0would be funny if it were not so sad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m glad that Jameson outed himself as an opponent of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.\u00a0 If he is not,\u00a0you could have fooled me.\u00a0 In one of the most ridiculous\u00a0lines in\u00a0his piece, Jameson\u00a0writes:<\/p>\n

That atrocity threw our country into a funk from which a stink cloud still rises. Because we could not bear the insult, we invaded Iraq and justified a pending invasion of Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No Mr. Jameson.\u00a0 Our country is not in a funk.\u00a0 We are in a war!\u00a0 What happened on 9\/11 was not an insult.\u00a0 If I told you that you\u00a0look funny, I would be insulting you.\u00a0 To have almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens killed in the worst attack in our nation’s history is not an insult.\u00a0 To say\u00a0so is itself insulting beyond compare, but I highly doubt that\u00a0he comprehends that fact.\u00a0 And for the record, we attacked Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan before we went into Iraq.\u00a0 And no\u00a0sir.\u00a0 We didn’t have to justify our response.\u00a0 The Twin Towers, the Pentagon, the field in Shanksville, PA and all the dead — murdered in the name of militant Islam —\u00a0was justification enough!\u00a0 I guess for Mr. Jameson, it should have been just “grin and bear it time” for the uneducated masses.<\/p>\n

I’m so glad that Mr. Jameson has it all figured out.\u00a0 You see, to him,\u00a0opposition to the Ground Zero mosque is \u00a0just some “self-absorbed Americans nourishing our pain from 9\/11” while taking “another\u00a0dip in the pool of self-pity,” as we proudly display our “irritating penchant for memorializing tragedy.”\u00a0 Mr. Jameson, your arrogance offends me!<\/p>\n

Please, spare us your sorrow for the families of 9\/11\/2001.\u00a0 You might\u00a0wish to live as if\u00a0you were in\u00a0pre-9\/11 America.\u00a0 But most Americans, and I would daresay most Baptists, do not, sir.\u00a0 Support for building the mosque near Ground Zero is not, as you so high-mindedly claim, being “true to our principles” as Christians and as Americans.\u00a0 Nor is\u00a0opposition to the mosque merely the\u00a0“sympathetic acquiescence to those families whose identity was arrested by the events of that day. . . .”<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have you forgotten?\u00a0 The events of 9\/11 will, in a certain sense, always be related to what happens near Ground Zero.\u00a0 That’s why most Americans believe that the building of a mosque near Ground Zero is remarkable in every way.\u00a0 Your arrogance, in dismissing opposition to the mosque with such utter disdain, should offend us all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You come to this country, take advantage of the system and think because we are tolerant that we are weak and helpless. Your arrogance offends me.\u00a0 Bryan Mills,\u00a0 from the movie Taken If Norman Jameson, the editor of the North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder, wanted to write a condescendingly arrogant opinion piece defending the construction…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,21,29],"tags":[128,463,3388,687,726,729],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom-of-religion","category-freedoms","category-islam","tag-baptists","tag-ground-zero-mosque","tag-islam","tag-muslims","tag-norman-jameson","tag-north-carolina-baptist-biblical-recorder"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-98","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}