I Heard the Internet Needs More Opinions?

Greetings, True/Slant reader. I’m psyched and more than a little intimidated to be joining this diverse pack of smarties shedding light on seemingly every interesting speck floating in the ether. Please, make yourself at home. Mi page es tu page. Can I make you a virtual mimosa?

OK, so before I start laying down hard truths, maybe you’d like to know my slant?

As you can see from my little bio thing, I’m the author of In the Land of Believers, a forthcoming book about the time I spent undercover at Jerry Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, VA, trying to kind of method-act my way into understanding the complicated point of view of conservative evangelical Christians. You can read lots more about it (and me) here.

Mine is a tricky slant to explain, I think. The plain, germane facts are these: I am not now, nor have I ever been religious. By Jewish law, I’m Jewish, but I’m about as comfortable in synagogue as I was at a southern Baptist church. I identify chiefly with the progressive, secular, lightly cynical culture that’s uneasy about evangelical Christianity, that’s infuriated by Sarah Palin’s disingenuousness and reactionary politics, and that gets a soothing psychic massage every time a self-righteous conservative figure is exposed for practicing the perfectly normal perversions they’ve built careers on decrying as abominations.

The big however: I’ve made it my business to use good old-fashioned empathy to try to override my instincts, and now I spend lots of time thinking about why people who are very religious or very conservative behave the way they do.

That part causes confusion about my slant. Yesterday I had lunch with a childhood friend from Berkeley. Although I’ve known him since we were 11, we’ve been in the bad habit of speaking only about once a year, so we’ve lost that ESP-grade familiarity good friends often have.

Sitting on a bench in this sunny courtyard at GW, I jabbered excitedly about a theory I have on why many conservative white working class people are so angry right now. Racism, I said, was only part of the story, and denying there was more to their point of view seemed knee-jerk and dangerously dismissive.  My old friend seemed…unnerved.

“It’s weird,” he said, “you were this really liberal atheist, and now you’re all about the right wing.”

Er, not quite. A finer-point way to put it is this: I take a keen, outsider’s interest in fervent religion and political conservatism, and think there’s tons to recommend the act of patient, nuanced understanding of points of view anathema to my own. Though I recognize that such a statement violates the basic operating principles of the internet.

Here on True/Slant I’ll be writing lots about religion, conservative politics, and ethics, both directly, and as each subject intersects with the events of the day. Such as, what might the Zoroastrian community be thinking about the Michael Jackson burial?

Hm. Come to think, that might not be such a bad idea.