An Example of Neutrality

So, I kind of rushed through the postings of presuppositional apologetics because I read something today that inspired me to write a new post, and for consistency's sake, I didn't want to break up the presuppositional apologetics posts. So now to change gears midway through a thought...

There was an interesting article on World Net Daily recently. It was titled “You can’t advertise with us—you’re Christian” posted on October 1, 2010. The address for the article is http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=210573. The article was about a Christian bookstore owner who paid for an ad to appear in the menu of a restaurant. His check was returned and he was informed that his ad could not be displayed because it had the word “Christian” in it, and that might be offensive to some people.

The owner of the Christian bookstore commented on how what happened to him is indicative of how political correctness has lead to fears about the term “Christian” may offend people, despite the fact that this country has a Judeo-Christian background. I agree, and I think it also illustrates the danger and outright error of political correctness.

One concept involved in political correctness is neutrality. It is apparent from the article that neutrality was the reason behind the rejection of the ad. According to the article, the advertising company has a policy of rejecting any expressly religious or political ads (interestingly, the Christian bookstore ad was not rejected because it was expressly religious, rather it was because someone in the advertising company misinterpreted the policy). This policy was put into place after the company was sued by a satanic group because its ads were rejected. So rather than creating a policy that ads for satanic groups be rejected, the company took the neutral approach and banned all religious or political ads. In attempting to be neutral, they threw out the bad (satanism) with the good (Christianity). That is the danger of neutralism. Being unable to take a stand on what is good or bad, neutrality ceases to be neutral and becomes is own arbitrary standard. That is the error of neutrality.