The Gray Lady Nods, Again

I don't mean to seem to be on an anti-Times kick.  As I've said before, I think the Times is generally an excellent paper and that accusations of bias, while accurate to the extent they capture the impact of class and educational background on reporters, generally fall wide of the mark -- especially as to the news pages.  The arts pages are often a different story, and an example from this past Sunday's New York Times Book Review makes the point nicely.  From this review by Lucy Ellmann of a novel by Kathryn Davis comes this quote that leads off the review:

The good news is this isn't another memoir about dieting. The "thin place" isn't Kathryn Davis's gym but a term devised by Celtic Christians to describe a location or state of mind in which the physical and spiritual worlds meet. I should declare immediately that I resent and fear Christianity, not only for its sexism and incitement of violence but for its deadening effect on the imagination. That said, Davis's imagination, religiously inspired or not, seems to be in fine working order, if at times a little aimless.

Now, given this lede, one might search long and hard for further suggestions that Christianity is relevant to the novel or the review.  Long and hard but, save for a couple of passing references to religion in the plot (in a novel whose scope is clearly wider than that), one would also search in vain.  So why keep this narrow-minded, stereotypical and stereotype-using condemnation of Christianity in the review?  What is served by keeping it, and what would have been lost by cutting it?  Why did Ellmann's editor fall asleep at the switch? 

I must say, first, that Ellmann might want to do a little more reading about Christianity and feminism, and second, that if she believes her absurdly sweeping statement that Christianity has "a deadening effect on the imagination" (take that, Dante, Kazantzakis, Scorsese, Marilynne Robinson, et al!), I am inclined to doubt her own powers of imagination.  The cutline reads, "Lucy Ellmann's latest novel, 'Doctors and Nurses,' will be published next month."  I'll pass, thank you.