Thinking to Believe

Christian “apologist” Rob Bowman had some interesting things to say about the connotation “apologist” evokes among many non-Christians: 

Although some of us actually consider the role of a Christian apologist to be an honorable vocation and ministry, the term apologist is now largely used as a pejorative. The Jerusalem Post, for example, refers to Jimmy Carter as “Hamas’s apologist.” Similarly, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch calls John Esposito, a Western scholar on Islam funded by Saudi royalty, an Islamic “apologist.” Salon.com refers to Holocaust denier David Irving as “Hitler’s apologist.” Various scholars and critics of groups commonly called “cults” have referred to those scholars whose treatment of these groups was more sympathetic or exculpatory as “cult apologists.”

The connotation of apologist in this usage is pretty clear: an apologist is someone who defends the indefensible, for whatever reason (prejudice, power, and money are among the most common accusations). In popular usage, apologists are not truth-seekers but rather truth-benders, sophisticates skilled at making the irrational seem reasonable, the immoral seem moral, and the false seem true. Their intention is simply to defend the position they have chosen to take, come what may, facts and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

I think Bowman’s assessment is dead-on.  I’m just not so sure what I should call myself now.  Saying “I am a man who presents rational arguments in support of the veracity of Christianity” to everyone who asks me what I do seems a bit much!

In the UK, grandparents have had their grandchildren forcibly removed from the home by social services because they were deemed too old and too sick to care for them.  They are only 59 and 46 years old, and suffer from angina and diabetes.  Unless there is more to the story, I fail to see how this warrants the children being removed from the home, and being put up for adoption.  There are times to remove children from a home, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them.  It scares me to know that a democratic government can wield this kind of power and get away with it.  I hope the people of the UK rise up against it.  

HT: Melinda Penner