Neighbors of YHB have a car with a pro-life bumper-sticker. I don’t know them, but I see the car every day. It’s disconcerting, as I have some standard liberal prejudices concerning people with pro-life bumper-stickers: intolerant, small-minded, obsessive, judgmental. I’ve no idea if this particular couple are or not, and every day I seem to tell myself not to judge this couple in advance of perhaps someday meeting them, and every day I wind up thinking about the issue (which is, with one thing and another, an unpleasant one to think about, whether I’m ruminating on the social, the political, or the ethical aspects) and getting slightly disgruntled, and resenting them for it. Irrational, irrational.
Anyway, that’s background to sometime last week noticing the rear window of their car, which has the standard college decal with the name of the local college, as do many of the local cars of course, and underneath it in similar lettering and a similar style, recognizable as a ‘college decal’ the single word CHRISTENDOM. And I starting thinking ‘hey, is that some sort of scary religious-right recognition thing, saying we should be governed by a particular interpretation of Christian Scripture? Is this a disguised political statement? Are they in fact telling me and mine to get the heck out?’ And I get all cross about it.
So, it didn’t actually occur to me for about a week (that is, until today) that until moving here to study or work at the local college, one or another of them was at Christendom College, not a thousand miles from here. Not that this has dispelled my image of them as conservative, intolerant or obsessive; I still know almost nothing about them. But yesterday I knew even less than I thought I did, today I know a little bit more.
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-Vardibidian.
The idea of not judging people in advance of meeting them is great, but isn’t a bumper sticker an early glimpse of the car owner that the car owner has decided to offer? Put another way, what if you met a person at a party and the first thing he said was “Hi, I’m pro-life” — would you then be justified in forming an initial impression of him?
I might well be justified in forming some impression, but not necessarily the impression that he is intolerant, small-minded, obsessive, and judgmental. Well, obsessive, yes, OK, that would be justified.
I guess I’m saying, really, that I am inclined to think of them as bigots, homophobes, anti-semites, and prigs, with bad taste in music and books, and that there is really no evidence for any of that.
The truth is, I hardly know anybody who is pro-life, at least enough to have a bumper-sticker. My impression would be based on movies, tv, and books, mostly unconcerned with accuracy. Oh, and a few experiences with protestors and whatnot, when they are not at their best.
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-V.
OK, you want judgemental and prejudiced, here you go: I have met a lot of people who are fiercely pro-life. In my experience, the stereotype you are picturing (bigoted, narrowminded, etc.), when it is true, usually is true of people who are ferociously pro-life because they are fundamentalist Christians (i.e. Protestant extremists). People who are pro-life because they are Catholics, I’ve found, are much more likely to be sincerely troubled by abortion but without all of the other attributes you mention. This is, of course, not even close to universally true, but in my limited experience is more likely.
Note that if your neighbors went to Christendom College, they are almost certainly Catholics.
I hope the above won’t be taken as insulting by readers who are Protestants. I’m talking about a very particular “Moral Majority”-type minority of Protestants here.
Hi there. I went to Christendom College (graduated 2009).
It’s a 500-person, lay (not run by the Church or clergy) Roman Catholic, coed institution in Front Royal, Va. Almost all the students are conservative Catholics and nearly 100% pro-life. Most are Republicans or libertarians.
The educational focus is on classics, Thomistic philosophy, Lockean conservatism, and Austrian economics, although there is nothing like a consensus of political opinion on campus and debate is near-constant. Essay-writing is emphasized.
Ideosyncracies of the school include a predilection towards all things Irish, a fondness for classic rock or 70s-80s punk, a near-universal smoking habit, and practically raising Dostoyevsky to sainthood.
In my biased opinion, students of Christendom are no more judgmental than students at any other school and certainly less pushy than most of the Occidental students I have encountered.