Parks and Rec’s Leslie Knope Sheaths the Banana

I disagree with Russell Moore on many things.  But I do agree with the heart of Moore’s recent argument in the pages of Christianity Today.

Moore commented on a recent episode of the sitcom Parks and Recreation.  I didn’t see the show.  But according to Moore, the plotline concerned an outbreak of sexually transmitted infections among residents at a small-town nursing home.  Moore argued that the show engaged in the worst kind of smug culture-war preaching.

Moore’s accusations ring true.  Many self-professed “liberals” engage in the kind of liberal fundamentalism that Moore describes on the show.  In Moore’s words,

“the show intended to reinforce a view already held by the people to whom they were talking. Those who already deride abstinence education could nod their heads in affirmation, ridicule the morons who oppose good common sense, and feel much better about their moral and intellectual superiority to the Neanderthals out there.”

I support comprehensive sex education in public schools.  But as Moore points out, lots of people disagree.  And lots of those people are smart, caring, informed, and engaged.  At best, the kind of self-satisfied mockery that he describes on Parks and Rec sounds ineffective.  As Moore charges, “few people are going to have minds changed by seeing their viewpoints caricatured.”  At worst, this kind of preaching to the choir deepens our culture-war divisions and leaves us all more bitter, angry, and, in the end, ignorant about the real conflict.

As we battle over issues such as sex ed, prayer in schools, and creationism, we need to keep in mind that those with whom we disagree may have legitimate reasons for their positions.  Moore takes conservative evangelicals to task for often forgetting this message.  As Moore argues,

“Sexual liberation ideology is deadly, but we aren’t preaching to those in bondage to it if we simply repeat slogans. In order to see the true wickedness of sexual liberation, we must ask why it’s appealing, and why deceptive arguments can seem plausible. Only when we speak to the conscience can we get to where people are, as we all once were, hiding from God.

“Darwinism can’t explain the meaning and purpose of the universe or of humanity. But when we simply laugh and say, “My grandpa wasn’t a chimpanzee,” we aren’t taking seriously the claims of our opponents. In fact, we’re not speaking to them at all, just to ourselves.

“When unbelievers hear a canned, caricatured argument, they recognize exactly what I recognized when I listened to the moralizing of the Parks and Rec script: They’re not trying to convince me, or even to talk to me. They just want to soothe the psychologies of their partisans.”

Moore’s central point remains powerful even if we don’t agree about the nature of Darwinism or sex ed.  When we talk about the cultural truths at the heart of our education system, we need to remember that those with whom we disagree deserve respect.  True liberalism is not the pat preachiness of Leslie Knope.  Rather, it requires a much more difficult cultural argument that disagrees without deriding its opponents.