Boom Town

Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt Trucking and Wal-Mart are big national companies with one thing in common: they're based in the Bentonville area of Arkansas. New York journalist Marjorie Rosen traveled there and wrote a book, Boom Town, about it. Her less than objective goal was to record the "cold stark fear - at least among a segment of the white Christian majority, which sees its comfortable all-white way of life fading." Putting the cart before the horse, her conclusion preceded fact collection.

Boom Town was reviewed by Jay P. Greene in The Wall Street Journal. It turns out Ms. Rosen's notion is unsupported by her own writing. Greene notes that "we learn about African-American, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu groups blending rather smoothly into business and social life."

He goes on to write, "Ms. Rosen seems to expect that there should be especially severe problems with the acceptance of diverse newcomers in a geographical area that is, as she repeatedly puts it, 'emphatically Christian.' Instead, she finds that people of faith have an easy time understanding and accepting one another, including people who belong to different religious traditions, because they share a respect for religious belief. This type of tolerance is common in semi-rural northwest Arkansas but is not so common, one suspects, in the media and political centers that dot the coast."

The book displays biased thinking "but it is often Ms. Rosen's own." For example, she tells "how she was pulled over by the Bentonville police for driving slowly through a construction zone at midnight. The police obviously suspected she was drunk and subjected her to a sobriety test. In Ms. Rosen's mind the particular policeman who confronted her 'regards me as an alien...just arrived from an alternative universe called New York City.' She continues: 'My heart races as the boy-cop looks through my pocketbook, perhaps for a kilo of marijuana or a fifth of moonshine.' Moonshine? The irony of associating Arkansans with moonshine in a book (supposedly) condemning stereotypes appears to be lost on the author."

Leaving aside the fact that New York City is an alternative universe, Ms. Rosen's own misguided stereotypes against reputedly unenlightened provincial citizens tell more about her than her subjects. The policeman was probably a young officer working the graveyard shift who justifiably stopped her and treated her with the same professionalism as any other citizen. But she sees him as a "boy-cop" looking for "moonshine." Her attitude drips with unjustifiable condescension.

Condescending bias against Christians ironically comes from those who profess to be fair-minded. They're careful about what they say about minorities, non-Christian religions or other politically correct groups, but it's been open season on Christians for decades. These manufactured stereotypes have been built up because they're not challenged among those who perpetrate them. If people like Ms. Rosen ever walked into a church and met the people there they'd find them to be far more tolerant, accepting and loving than their narrow minded stereotypes. But this apparently doesn't happen much, if at all.

Unfortunately, the distorted view of Christianity discourages unbelievers from opening their minds to it and unfairly creates a high hurdle for Christians who wish to share their faith.


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