Mortal Remains
Alas, Average at Best
by S. M. Hutchens
Once again, this time in a story covering the pending liberal/traditionalist division over homosexuality in the United Methodist Church, I have encountered a journalist's assurance that religious conservatives are less educated, accomplished, and culturally sophisticated than their liberal antagonists. The implication is that those in the churches who oppose what used to be universally acknowledged in them as sexual sin are, on the whole, inferior human beings by the most meaningful indices of personal worth—they are, as Michael Weisskopf alleged in his infamous 1993 Washington Post story, "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command."
This observation, now more often insinuated than so flatly stated, is not uncommon. Fear not—the journalistic mandarins assure readers who may hesitate before the idea that religious traditionalists might be right about perversion and all that—superior people like us agree against the inferior sort that this is progress, and not "going
bad."
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on sex from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
Does Biblical Language for Man Matter? by Stephen F. Noll
25.4—July/August 2012
The Corrosive & Far-Reaching Fallout of the Sexual Revolution by Anthony Esolen
28.3—May/June 2015
Of Bicycles, Sex, & Natural Law
Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving by R. V. Young
more from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Why Scientism's Cherished Progress Narrative Fails by Jonathan Witt
14.6—July/August 2001
The Transformed Relics of the Fall
on the Fulfillment of History in Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
