Thanks to Hugh Hewitt, you may have already heard about the article in today’s Boston Globe where an intrepid reporter was sent into the wilds of an evangelical enclave in Ohio to explore the mysteries of a family that tries to live out its faith.
The article is actually pretty good and it doesn’t appear the reporter set out to try and make the family look foolish. Globe readers may find some of the revelations shocking but the family sounded pretty normal to me. Then again, I don’t live in Massachusetts.
Still, I do kind of wonder why the Globe sought out this story. It really had the feel of a National Geographic exploration of a foreign culture. I half-expected some Jane Goodall type of narration along the lines of “I carefully approached the alpha male, my head bowed in biblical submission…” or Marlin Perkins saying “I waited in the boat while Jim wrestled with the family over the Theory of Evolution.”
And now I’m picturing some Bostonian putting down his newspaper and saying, “Good heavens, Muffy, these primitives care more about what the Bible says than what Jacques Chirac thinks of us.”
Actually, the Globe wasn’t that original in this approach. I remember the Night Writer had this post earlier about an interview the Strib did with an author by the name of James Ault, Jr. who spent three years observing an evangelical community and made it back alive.
If this keeps up, people are going to start thinking Christians are nice people.
