Rosie’s thorny: On Sept. 12, on the TV show “The View” that she co-hosts with Barbara Walters and a couple other female talking heads, Rosie O’Donnell, blathering on about religion, dropped this little off-the-cuffer: “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like the United States.”
‘Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like the United States.’
— Rosie O’Donnell
Somehow I missed the ensuing ruckus raised by the Christian Right, the calls for ABC to fire O’Donnell, etc. Maybe that’s because “The View” is just not on my radar — or apparently many other folks’ radar, either.
So why bring this up two months later? Well, to fill the post-election vacuum, of course. But more importantly because our old pal George Barna has just released the results of another one of his Jesus surveys that sought to measure the depth of cultural penetration and height of dudgeon achieved by O’Donnell’s comment (which I agree wholeheartedly with, by the way). Here’s some of the results from the Barna Group survey:
Despite the media hailstorm stirred by her controversial remark, only one out of every six American adults (17 percent) was aware of her words. The group most likely to know of her verbal assault was evangelical Christians, who were twice as likely as other Americans (36 percent) to have heard about her statement. Even within the Christian community, other segments remained largely ignorant of the slur. For instance, only 17 percent of all other adults who consider themselves to be Christian but are not evangelicals knew of her words, similar to the statistics among Catholics (18 percent) and Protestants (20 percent). The episode failed to generate much buzz among non-Christian adults: only 10 percent of those who associate with a non-Christian faith, and 14 percent of atheists and agnostics were aware of her remarks. The outburst was no better known within the gay and lesbian community, of which Ms. O’Donnell is an outspoken champion: only 14 percent of adults who associate with that lifestyle were aware of her comments.
Most Americans disagreed with Ms. O’Donnell’s point of view. In total, just 10 percent strongly agreed with her statement and 18 percent agreed somewhat, while 15 percent disagreed somewhat and 48 percent disagreed strongly. In total, then, about one out of every four Americans (28 percent) agreed to some extent, while more than twice as many — two out of every three (63 percent) — disagreed.
Levels of disagreement varied substantially across faith groups. For instance, eight out of 10 evangelicals strongly disagreed compared to only one out of three non-Christians. Strong disagreement was measured among half of all Catholics (47 percent), nearly six out of 10 Protestants (57 percent), and eight out of 10 Revolutionary Christians (79 percent).
The question is, however, not whether one agrees with Rosie, but whether her assessment was correct. Of course evangelicals and “Revolutionary Christians” (whatever those are) came out 8-to-1 against, but that’s to be expected — because they are the problem. There are indeed parallels between what the Imams and the Christian Right are each trying to accomplish:
1) Creation of a theocracy where there is no distinction between church and state — a basic tenet of Islam and a goal of the Bible-thumpers.
2) Creation of a homogenous congregation that shares a monolithic belief system — for example, today Muslims who convert to Christianity can be jailed and executed in Afghanistan, and Lord only knows what Revolutionary Christians would do if they took over the government, but I give you the Protestant Reformation, for starters.
3) Conquest and conversion — both the radical Islamists and the radical Christists want to convert the whole world to their peculiar tenets, indeed, they believe that it is an essential facet of their faith to do so.
4) Eradication of homosexuality (except for preachers and pashas).
So, in a way, Rosie actually was right. Like some kind of idiot savant she managed to piece together a coherent sentence that made a very large point in a very small soundbite. Problem is, nobody much heard it or cared beyond the few heads of Christian groups who saw an opportunity to get their names in the media by condemning O’Donnell’s statement and calling for her to be fired (at the stake, perhaps?).
It’s clear that not that many people watch “The View,” and virtually nobody really cares about what Rosie O’Donnell thinks as a culture commentator. Unfortunately, the truth behind her words received as little consideration as their source, and that might turn out to be a very dangerous thing down the road, when the Christian equivalent of the Taliban takes over the United States.
Then we can hail Rosie as a prophet, a martyred lesbian prophet no doubt, but a true seer nonetheless.
