{"id":1779659,"date":"2022-12-19T06:32:34","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T11:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1779659"},"modified":"2022-12-19T06:32:39","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T11:32:39","slug":"washington-post-criticism-of-christians-is-all-name-calling-no-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/washington-post-criticism-of-christians-is-all-name-calling-no-argument\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post Criticism Of Christians Is All Name-Calling, No Argument"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwashington-post-criticism-of-christians-is-all-name-calling-no-argument%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1779659&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Washington Post\u2019s Senior Critic-at-Large Robin Givhan is on a theological tear of late. She\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2022\/12\/06\/my-column-was-misconstrued-supreme-court-brief\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">taken aim<\/a> at Colorado marketing and graphic design entrepreneur (and Christian) Lorie Smith, whose free speech case was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/oral_arguments\/audio\/2022\/21-476\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recently argued<\/a> to the Supreme Court, and whom Givhan accuses of not \u201cwant[ing] the nuances of individuality to chip away at the certainty of dogma.\u201d And, separately, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2022\/12\/13\/finding-light-religion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">she\u2019s accused religious conservatives<\/a> of disinterest in \u201cunderstanding the nuances and contradictions of theology\u201d and instead \u201ccarving out a how-to guide for a certain kind of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet, ironically, Givhan\u2019s recent writing on Smith\u2019s court case and a new exhibit on religion at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture has engaged in impressively uncharitable (and un-Christian) rhetoric. And, to boot, in order to make her case she quite incoherently contradicts things she wrote <em>just last month<\/em>. In fact, it is Givhan\u2019s own writing that evinces close-minded dogmatism and ideology.<\/p>\n<p> Givhan\u2019s Definition of Art <\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2022\/12\/06\/my-column-was-misconstrued-supreme-court-brief\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dec. 6 WaPo op-ed<\/a>, Givhan expresses displeasure that Lorie Smith\u2019s legal team referenced a column Givhan wrote in 2017, in which she supported American fashion designers\u2019 boycott of then-First Lady Melania Trump. Smith\u2019s legal team compared that boycott to Smith\u2019s refusal to craft wedding websites for same-sex couples because she has a religious objection to their unions \u2014 for Colorado to demand she do so amounts to compelled speech. \u201cThis is not what I had in mind when writing that column,\u201d writes the irksome Givhan.<\/p>\n<p>Givhan takes particular issue with Smith\u2019s claim that her professional work constitutes art. \u201cIs she creating art? Or simply an artful commodity,\u201d writes Givhan. \u201cSmith and her lawyers toss around the word \u2018art\u2019 as if it\u2019s common. As if it\u2019s easy. But art is what people aspire to by opening themselves up, not shutting themselves off.\u201d She ends her op-ed with this broadside: \u201cSmith and her lawyers seem intent on making sure that in the not-so-distant future we\u2019ll all be decidedly worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Art in the Service of Ideology <\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, the above could at least be a plausible complaint by someone who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for criticism and is a nationally respected art critic. Yet <em>just last month<\/em> Givhan wrote two features in which she cast a dramatically wide net regarding what constitutes art in her praise of artist Mickalene Thomas and\u00a0a new book entitled \u201cAphroChic: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/arts-entertainment\/2022\/11\/22\/mickalene-thomas-artist-paris-show\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">In her piece<\/a> on Brooklyn-based artist Thomas, Givhan lauds her work for, \u201cmov[ing] Black women into the foreground.\u201d See for yourself: Thomas\u2019s recent work is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.musee-orangerie.fr\/en\/whats-on\/exhibitions\/mickalene-thomas-avec-monet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">little more than collage<\/a>, sometimes with meandering outlines of objects drawn on top. But for Givhan, \u201cThomas\u2019s aesthetic \u2014 not just the pieces at l\u2019Orangerie, but her entire body of work \u2014 is a corrective. It\u2019s a reclamation of history and future history.\u201d In other words, Thomas\u2019s work is wonderful because it furthers ideological aims that are important to Givhan.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/books\/2022\/11\/18\/aphrochic-celebrating-black-family-home-jeanine-hays-bryan-mason\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">In her other recent piece<\/a>, Givhan waxes eloquent about the \u201cbeautiful interiors\u201d that are also \u201cstatements<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s most arresting about Washington Post Senior Critic-at-Large Robin Givhan\u2019s theological musings is that they lack an actual argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":658,"featured_media":1779662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[10171,7072,7375,6919,10172,4899,4086],"class_list":["post-1779659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-argument","tag-christians","tag-criticism","tag-federalist","tag-name-calling","tag-post","tag-washington"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1779662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}