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October 9, 2014|10:05 am

A protester dressed as a copy of the Bible joins groups demonstrating outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington June 30, 2014.

"Why do so many liberals despise Christianity?" liberal columnist Damon Linker pondered Wednesday.

In citing two recent examples, Linker was not writing about despising Christians, although that could be part of it, but despising Christianity as a belief system.

In the first example, Brian Palmer wrotefor Slate, a liberal news website, about the discomfort he feels over the fact that missionary doctors are helping people in developing nations, motivated by their Christian faith. Palmer believes that their medical work should be separate from their religion, even though they are engaged in the medical work, at great personal sacrifice, because of their religion.

Palmer's distaste for religion leads him, Linker wrote, to an illiberal notion of separating religion from health care.

In the second example, Gordon College, a Christian college in Massachusetts, is being investigated by its accreditation agency for upholding a Christian understanding of sexuality. More specifically, it forbids homosexual practice. (It also forbids all sexual activity outside of marriage, and those with same-sex attraction are welcomed to be part of the Gordon College community.)

"The accreditation board is not so much objecting to the college's treatment of gays as it is rejecting the legitimacy of its devoutly Christian sexual beliefs," Linker wrote.

Linker is a former conservative. He previously edited First Things, a conservative Catholic magazine. After rejecting conservatism and becoming a liberal, he wrote The Theocons: Secular America Under Siegein 2007, a book critical of the Christian Right.

Many of his recent articles have dealt with the recent trend of illiberal liberals, or, as he wrote in July, "how liberalism became an intolerant dogma."

Excerpt from:
Do Liberals Really Despise Christianity?