Zealotry, Intolerance and the NYT

The NYTimes editorializes today about evangelicals at the Air Force Academy, and leads off with:

In an overdue burst of candor, the superintendent of the Air Force Academy has acknowledged that his campus is so permeated with evangelical proselytizing that it will take years to rid the institution of religious intolerance.

Despite biblical teachings cautioning believers not to evangelize obnoxiously, some Christians do just that. They stand at the gates of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City and shout at LDS-ers that they will burn in Hell. They shout at gays with hate. They accuse people of being sinners, instead of talking in love about lives, hurts, needs, wants.

Nonetheless, the sentence above if a mind-spinner in that it tells us that to bigtime MSM outlets like the NYT, being religious is being intolerant. Even talking about faith is intolerant.

The very title of the editorial is itself intolerant, "Zealots at the Air Force Academy." While many Christians strive to be "fanatically devoted," the word Zealot has darker, more negative connotations to the general public. To them, 9/11 terrorists and suicide bombers are Zealots, as are the masked villains who shout "Allah Akbar!" as they behead an innocent.

To group born-again Christians in this connotation is itself intolerant and comes from the lack of biblical knowledge that permeates the Left. If they would read Paul, if they would read Christ, they would know that evangelism is a gentle, tolerant craft -- and much of what went on at the Air Force Academy was just that.