Something has been troubling me lately, and I'm going to try to articulate it here. It's kind of a long post, but if you can get through it, I'd really appreciate any thoughts you all have. (Also, a couple of you reading this might recognize yourselves in here. I don't mean any sort of disrespect at all, and I hope I haven't misrepresented any of you. It's just a sort of launching point for something that's been on my mind for a very long time--years, even.)

When I was in high school, I was trained to utterly reject moral relativism--truth was truth was truth. But when I got to college, I discovered that a certain kind of relativism is utterly necessary to any sort of critical discourse, especially in the study of other cultures. You can't say anything interesting about the Mayans, for example, if you can't get around the issue of sacrificial mutilation. You can't usefully read parts of Plato if you're not willing to accept that in Greece, it was expected that older men would sleep with younger men.

You get the idea. What we learn is a sort of situational relativism. I would never marry my brother, but I set aside that cultural taboo in order to discuss the ancient Egyptians. You have to do this, because otherwise you're left with little to do but condemn the culture as perverse and wrong-headed. It's a kind of relativism that can look at another culture and realize that it's possible to avoid condemning them without compromising your own cultural values in any way.

That's all very well and good. I'm completely fine with it. But I've noticed a problem in the practice of it. It's come to the fore this semester, because I'm taking Christianity. Suddenly, people who are highly intellegent, competent, rigorous scholars are perfectly willing to dismiss aspects of Christianity--especially modern Christianity--as wrong and possibly malicious.

As many of you know, I was raised in a highly charismatic, Evangelical church environment. We had it all--speaking in tongues, falling down in the aisle, casting out demons, you name it. So, I'm very familiar with that kind of environment. Lately, we've had occasion to discuss exactly this sort of phenomenon, and I have friend, whom I highly respect as a scholar and like as a person, who completely dismisses these things. She's convinced that if someone is speaking in tongues or whatever, they're only doing it for the attention--nothing more.

Now, obviously, this friend doesn't believe that the Holy Spirit is actually speaking into the heads of these people. But what really gets me is her complete refusal to acknowledge that what a charismatic Christian does is true to them. I've seen these things happen, and I'm firmly convinced that most of the participants fully believe that what they're experiencing is reality. Maybe some of them are in it for the attention, but I think on the most part, to deny that their convictions even exist is extremely troubling.

And the thing is, I find that this attitude is very common among the students here. (I can't really speak for the professors . . . I think either they're more moderate, or at least capable of seeming so.) I often find this sort of attitude that everything is good except for the traditional paradigm, whether it's Christianity specifically or Western society at large. I noticed this when I was in high school. I had a couple of people come to me and basically say, "I hate Christians, because they're all so closed minded."

Another example: With a different friend, I attended a gospel concert. It was rather uncomfortable for both of us, because we had both once been Christian and sort of slipped away from it one way or another. At the end of the concert, there was an altar call, and people who went up for prayer were led into another room. My friend found it a little disturbing (but also a little amusing, which is fine). I maintained, and still do, that it was a perfectly valid form of religious expression.

I'm not saying all this because I want to rally support for Christianity. I'm saying all this because I think there's true hypocrisy in this sort of relativism. If you're going to adopt a relativistic attitude towards one culture, you'd better give other cultures the same benefit of the doubt--even ones you dislike. It's no fairer to mock a Christian for speaking in tongues and believing it's the Holy Spirit than it is to mock a Catholic for believing that the Eucharist is really the blood and body of Christ, or a Muslim for praying daily, or a Jew for eating unleavened bread during Passover.

The world is an amazing place full of beautiful, weird, wonderful traditions--as almost any scholar would be willing to agree. So, why is it so hard to treat Christianity as part of that fantastic diversity that makes the world such an interesting place?