{"id":97,"date":"2010-10-24T16:33:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T16:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/religion-expert-does-a-juan-williams.html"},"modified":"2010-10-24T16:33:41","modified_gmt":"2010-10-24T16:33:41","slug":"religion-expert-does-a-juan-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/religion-expert-does-a-juan-williams.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion expert does a Juan Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
JW:
\n“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve
\nwritten about the civil rights movement in this country.  <\/span>But
\nwhen I get on airplane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in
\nMuslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first
\nand foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, imagine the Senior Analyst on NPR’s All Things Religious:<\/p>\n

SA:
\n“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of writing I’ve
\ndone over the years about religious pluralism. But…<\/p>\n

when
\nI run into a guy in a Roman collar and I think, you know, he’s
\nidentifying himself first and foremost as a Catholic priest, I get
\nworried. I get nervous, thinking about all those altar boys;<\/p>\n

and
\nwhen a couple of clean-cut young men come to my door and ask what I know
\nabout the LDS Church, I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves
\nfirst and foremost as Mormons. I get worried. I get nervous, if my
\ndaughters are in the house;<\/p>\n

and when I see some kids chanting
\n“Hare Krishna” on a street corner and I think, you know, they’re
\nidentifying themselves first and foremost as Hare Krishnas, I get
\nworried. I get nervous, thinking about the brainwashing that cults do;<\/p>\n

and
\nwhen a bearded guy in a turban walks past me and I think, you know,
\nhe’s identifying himself first and foremost as a Sikh, I get worried. I
\nget nervous, thinking about that sword he’s carrying on his person.<\/p>\n

and when two nicely dressed black ladies come to my door with copies of The Watchtower<\/i>
\nand I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and
\nforemost as Jehovah’s Witnesses, I get worried. I get nervous, thinking
\nabout how they’ve got sick kids at home who will die because they won’t
\nget to see a doctor;<\/p>\n

and when I overtake a buggy driving through Lancaster County and I
\nthink, you know, the driver is identifying himself first and foremost as
\nAmish, I get worried. I get nervous, thinking about how I’m going to
\navoid hitting the sucker;<\/p>\n

and when I pass a bunch of beards in black suits and fedoras walking into a shul and
\nI think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as
\nHasids, I get pissed off, thinking why don’t these jokers do some
\nhonest work for a change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, those are
\nnothing more than my involuntary reactions. Sharing them with your
\nviewers naturally won’t hurt my credibility as a religion analyst, will
\nit, Bill?”
<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JW: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country.  But when I get on airplane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion expert does a Juan Williams - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/religion-expert-does-a-juan-williams.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religion expert does a Juan Williams - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"JW: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}