Timothy Dalrymple gives an almost perfect example of the tone argument
in this post. For those of you not familiar with the tone argument, it is a logical fallacy of arguing over how something is said, rather than its actual content. Dalrymple relies incredibly heavily on the tone argument throughout his posting, mainly because he argues in blog post after blog post that conservative Christians have been made in "caricatures," but he does not actually disagree with any part of that caricature. In fact, the caricatures he rails against almost perfectly define him, something that he inevitably has to admit in most posts. So he's left complaining about the way people message, because he can't really argue with the content of it.
If You’re Selling Scorn for Conservative Christians, the Market is Hot
Right at the start of all this, Dalrymple is making the exact type of disingenuous and uncharitable statement that he will rail against in the upcoming post. He's literally claiming that the "scorn" conservative Christians receive is some sort of money making scheme, rather than an opinion that is honestly arrived at. Of course, he won't ever admit that vastly larger sums of money are vastly easier to acquire by appealing to those conservative Christians, rather than appealing against them.
But by accepting the caricatures coming mostly from secular critics, legitimating and perpetuating them, they themselves — acting out of concern for the damage done to the church and its witness — are doing great harm to the church and its witness. If we truly care for the public witness of the church, then we (liberal and conservative) need to stop slandering and caricaturing the other half of the church. Don’t throw your Christian brothers and sisters under the bus. Even if you disagree with them, you can provide a coherent, charitable explanation for what “those other evangelicals” believe.
Again, Dalrymple is being disingenuous. The "caricatures" are not coming mostly from "secular critics," but rather people with first hand experience, some of it extensive. Also again, the caricature Dalrymple is complaining about is something that accurately defines him. He's actually going to launch into just how accurate those caricatures are in this post, and his only complaint is that the "secular critics" state it in harsh, unflattering terms.
If that was all they wanted to say, however, they could have rented a billboard with the boards, “Our hearts are with you.” Given their beliefs on homosexuality and marriage, that would have been a fine thing to do. Yet that’s not what they did. Instead they called their fellow believers, who feel differently from them on this issue, ”narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive, [and] manipulative.”
Of course, Dalrymple fails to mention their fellow believers, who feel differently from them on this issue, were, in fact, narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive, and manipulative. Anyone who has followed the issue of marriage equality with any degree of closeness knows this is the case. It does not matter if you look at Protect Marriage, the National Organization for Marriage, or the American Family Association (or any others), they are all narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive, and manipulative. This is just a matter of public fact. If we are to be extremely charitable towards them, their supporters (both supporting the organizations and co-supporting their causes), then those supporters are, at best, complacent in being narrow-minded, judgmental deceptive, and manipulative.
(1) They’re perpetuating the worst images of conservative Christians who support traditional marriage.
Which also happens to be an image that is true. Acknowledging truth is not a bad thing, no matter how harshly worded that truth is.
(2) They’re holding themselves our as a better alternative. They are the good Christians, the more Christ-like Christians, who are not judgmental — even as they’re judging sixty percent of North Carolinians, a majority of Californians, over half of Christians in the United States and the great majority of Christians around the world.
They are, almost undoubtedly. a better alternative. And those Christians deserve to be judged for exactly what their participation was. For someone who complains about a lack of nuance, Dalrymple is ultimately using the multiple shades of "judge" for a quick, convenient point. Mission Gathering is judging people for their actions which demonstrably attack and harm others. Christians such as Dalrymple are judging people for existing in the first place. Two entirely different and mutually exclusive standards.
In other words, (3) they’re saying “our hearts are with you” in that “we feel the same anger and scorn in our hearts as you do.”
Good. Those people deserve all the anger and scorn they get. It is nothing less than a good thing to tell the victims of a rather heinous attack that you feel as righteously angry about that attack as they do.
Their intentions are honorable, but undermined by an incoherent strategy and by their deep-seated scorn for conservative Christians. They’re trying to encourage love — by being hateful (and no, I don’t think that’s too strong a word). They’re trying to encourage tolerance — but judging everyone who disagrees with them. They’re trying to improve the witness of the church — by legitimating the stereotype that the conservative half of the church is bigoted and deceitful. They hold themselves out as a better alternative — by throwing more conservative Christians under the bus.
Actually nothing is incoherent about it, and conservative Christians deserve all the scorn they get. They are trying to encourage love, by rebuking hate. There's actually nothing hateful about Mission Gathering's statement, it is just a statement of fact, one supported by a mountain of evidence. One supported by basically everything that occurred in the entire Proposition 8 trial. They're encouraging tolerance by rebuking the intolerant. Dalrymple here is just putting out the barest bones of the classic, "if you are so tolerant, why don't you tolerate my intolerance?" argument. That one is just a semantic word game that is logically false. There is nothing about that stereotype that is false. It is completely legitimate, and at no point does Dalrymple attempt to falsify that stereotype, mainly because he can't. And no one is throwing anyone under the bus, other than conservative Christians throwing themselves under the bus. Mission Gathering is simply pointing out that they did it.
And these are bumper-sticker arguments. I am for a family founded on the marriage of man and woman; I am for the defense of innocent human life even prior to birth. And I am not trying to advance the kingdom so much as I am trying to defend the innocent and defend social structures I consider sacred and valuable. The dead are not raised by politics, but the living can be protected and served by it.
Actually, Dalrymple is presenting bumper-sticking re-phrasings. Being for, "for a family founded on the marriage of man and woman" is simply being against a vast swath of alternative family structures. And it conveniently ignores actions. How does voting against marriage equality benefit or promote families founded on the marriage of a man and a woman? The truth is that it doesn't, hence why so many conservative Christians have to make the absolutely insane claims that if we allow gay people to marry, there will somehow be more single woman, who will then produce more criminals, and all of society will fall apart. Nope, actions prove that Dalrymple is just anti-gay. And, unless Dalrymple is radically different from the conservative Christian he presents himself to be, he is just anti-abortion. If we was really concerned for the "defense of innocent human life even prior to birth" then he would the contraception policy in Obamacare, as making contraception more available and cheaper would prevent abortions. He would also love Planned Parenthood, an organization that does more to prevent abortions than any other in America. He would also support universal healthcare, public housing, and a strong welfare state, as the lack of all those things contribute to why women have abortions. Most conservative Christians do not support anything to help ease the financial and social burden on pregnant women, which would reduce abortions dramatically. So we are left with the fact that they are just anti-abortion. In fact, they only care about the act of abortion, and could not possibly care less about either mother or child.
For conservative Christians, of course, there are not merely political victories. These are matters of fundamental moral and theological import, critical to the health of individuals and societies.
And that's the difference between Dalrymple and the progressive Christians. They do not view these issues as "political victories" or "matters of fundamental moral and theological import." Instead they view them as incredible hardships that directly affect specific people. When a gay couple is denied the benefits of marriage, it is not an abstract theological point. It is a specific hardship that couple has to live with their entire lives. It does real, calculable damage to them. To the progressive Christians the morality and the theology are derived from the harm to the vulnerable, they do not deduce that morality and theology demand they harm the vulnerable.
Evans never engages with how conservative Christians articulate the reasons for their actions. She never gives an explanation at all — much less a charitable one — for the things her brothers and sisters in Christ believe and do.
Which is just begging the question of if an explanation is even relevant. Certainly why people do what they do is an interesting psychological question, but really all that matters are actions. Beliefs are immaterial, easily lied about, and often forgotten. Actions are permanent and can be examined. By their actions, conservative Christians should be judged. And their actions show they deserve far more scorn than they actually receive.
I have many close relationships with gays and lesbians who do, indeed, find actions like Prop 8 and Amendment 1 hurtful. I do feel for them, and I genuinely wish for the sake of our relationships that I could agree with them on these issues.
Some of my best friends are gay! No, you actually do not feel for them. If you consider the demonstrable harm you are imposing upon them as less important than abstract theology, then you do not feel for them.
This is selling anger, not offering enlightenment.
It should be interesting how Dalrymple usurps the vocabulary of capitalism to apply to Christianity, but it really isn't.
But one would never know, from a post like Evans’, that there are loving and thoughtful and self-sacrificial people on the conservative side of the argument who are genuinely trying to do the right thing for all people.
Which begs the question, are there loving and thoughtful and self-sacrificial people on the conservative side of the argument? The answer, I think, is fairly obviously, "no." Let's start with "self-sacrificial." If their side is victorious, then they actually sacrifice nothing. They live exactly the same lives as before. You can argue that they have to deal with the justified scorn of society, but the truth is, they don't. They can simply not tell how they voted, or lie about their vote (which is exactly what they will do twenty years from now, just like the pro-segregationists did). They sacrifice nothing. Now let's look at "loving." Can you be anti-gay rights and still be loving? No, you can not. You are demonstrably harming people. You are making their lives more difficult. That is not love. So, now "thoughtful." Well, you can be thoughtful, but it is a nasty, spiteful hostile form of thought that has no empathy for others. So, I think we can safely say there aren't loving and thoughtful and self-sacrificial people on the conservative side of the argument.
There is a growing genre — call it Progressive Christian Scorn Literature — about the scorn progressive Christians have for conservative evangelicals. It seems to be celebrated on the Left as a kind of righteous comeuppance for the Christian Right, and it wins the applause of the Left for the Christian Left. But it’s wrong and it needs to be called out. It’s neither winsome, nor loving, nor constructive, nor right.
Actually it is right, and it needs to be celebrated. conservative evangelicals deserve all the scorn they get. They actually deserve much, much, much, more. In fact, this paragraph comes after the following sentence,"Sometimes the best way to wash a person’s feet is to tell him those feed are striding down a self-destructive path," which neatly sums up Dalrymple's own lack of self-awareness. According to Dalrymple himself, Progressive Christian Scorn Literature would in fact be winsome, loving, constructive, and right, if it wasn't for the fact that it is directed at his own causes. When he tells someone they are striding down a self-destructive path, it is about love, but when progressives do it, it is about scorn.
