Kathleen Parker’s Uppity Boogedy

Gracious. So Kathleen Parker explains her description of some Christians as “oogedy boogedy” in her column yesterday. And displays once again her utter contempt for — and complete cluelessness about — evangelicalism.

Based on its onomatopoeic qualities, her term seemed to indicate a sense that evangelical Christianity was some sort of frightening, primitive religious observance, akin to voodoo or animism, with its practitioners a cross between witch doctors and bogeymen — or is it “boogedymen?”

Thank goodness that Parker sorta kinda almost elucidates what she really means:

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If Jim and Tammy Faye (Bakker) put you in mind of oogedy-boogedy, you’re getting warm.

Otherwise, the term may best be illuminated by two connoisseurs of the linguistic arts: Fats Waller and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

The latter, unable to define pornography, famously said, “I know it when I see it.” Waller, responding to a request to explain “swing,” said, “If you got to ask, you ain’t got it.”

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Now that was helpful. Other than perhaps the fact that Ms. Parker is confirming our suspicions as to just how demeaning the term is meant to be by taking easy aim at the two biggest and most cartoonish figures in modern religious history — roughly akin to firing a bazooka at the broad side of an aircraft hangar.

But let’s take a look at the main point of the columnist’s latest jeremiad — because it also nicely narrows down precisely what she intends to get across with her otherwise terminological inexactitude:

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How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments.

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Ah ha! Now we get it. Oogedy boogedy, it turns out, is a particularly uppity, ugly putdown of Christian beliefs that actually constitute beliefs — as opposed to nice observance that gets taken out of the closet on Sunday and neatly folded back up the rest of the week.

It’s like the time a boss of mine encouraged me to “empty your mind of what you’re thinking, and start thinking what I’m thinking.” (I really love her to death anyway. But you can tell why I’m not working for her anymore.)

It turns out that’s what is really bugging Ms. Parker. Evangelical Christians such as I are daring to think what we want to think, when we want to think about it, how we want to think about it.

Strangely enough, we whack, scary oogedy boogedy types who believe that God should actually be at the center of our everyday lives also believe that He should also be at the center of our intellectual and political lives, where He could do some real good not only for us but for other people as well. In the Apostle Paul’s words (since Ms. Parker has now also taken to selectively quoting Scripture), we truly believe we should “take every thought captive to Jesus Christ.”

I’ve always loved it when non- or mainstream Christians tell us evangelical or fundamentalist Christians (they don’t know the diff) how we should live our lives, and even more when liberal Democrats tell us conservative Republicans how we should conduct our politics.

In other words, Ms. Parker, stop trying to tell me to keep my God out of my “public arguments” — where you might have to contend not only with me, but also with Him.

Now that could be oogedy boogedy, indeed.

MORE: Speaking of things that would be oogedy boogedy, HotAir speculates that a Palin-Huckabee head-to-head in the ‘12 primaries would inspire a Parker column on the subject every week.

Tags: evangelical Christians, fundamentalism, Kathleen Parker, oogedy boogedy, religion