Deeper Waters Podcast 5/30/2015: George Yancey

What’s coming up on this Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Many Christians today find their opinions aren’t exactly welcome in America. There is an increasing hostility towards Christians, which can certainly be seen on the internet, and Christians are often written off as if they were idiots who just believed everything based on blind faith. Of course, it could be that this is just a misconception on the part of Christians. Maybe we’re looking at the information wrong. Maybe we’re taking some of the personal experience that we’ve had and extrapolating it to a level that is not justified. Perhaps that is really what is going on. One could think that, but it would be more difficult to think that after reading So Many Christians, So Few Lions, and this Saturday one of the co-authors of that book will be on my show. Meet George Yancey.

george-yancey

According to his bio:

“Dr. George Yancey is a Professor of sociology at the University of North Texas. He has published several research articles on the topics of institutional racial diversity, racial identity, academic bias and anti-Christian hostility. His books include Compromising Scholarship (Baylor University Press), a book that explores religious and political biases in academia, There is no God (Rowman and Littlefield), a book that investigates atheism in the United States, and So Many Christians, So Few Lions (Rowman and Littlefield) a book that assesses Christianophobia in the United States. He currently is working to create the first Christian Studies center on a secular campus.”

We’ll be talking about his book on Christianophobia. Upfront, it’s not the term I would prefer to use as I really don’t care for describing an attitude as a phobia, such as in the case of so-called homophobia. (A point I actually agree with Peter Boghossian on!) I do think Yancey got the term from somewhere else. Still, the meaning that is put behind the term is something that he documents by sending out surveys to atheistic groups themselves and having them answer questions about their attitudes towards religious people and especially towards Christianity. The results are quite disturbing.

We’ll be talking with him on the subjects and how he did his research and what it means for us. How did he take the necessary steps to avoid bias in his research? Has his research been recognized by anyone else outside of the field? Has he received any feedback since the time of the writing to show that what he is talking about is going on? What does he think Christians need to do in order to make sure that they are doing their best to change the attitude that the popular culture has towards Christians?

I hope you’ll be here to join us and we are currently working on updating the latest episodes and getting them on the site for those of you who are concerned. As the summer gets closer I suspect that we will have a lot more time. Please do leave an ITunes review of the show also!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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