Not long ago, someone asked me what my favorite books were, and when I told her, she laughed and said something along the lines of, “I try to read the favorites of people I know, but I am not reading the Chronicles of Narnia.”

I didn’t ask why. I suppose it’s possible she really, really hates children’s literature set in 1940s England, but my guess is she heard the name, recognized it as Christian allegory, and recoiled.

And I understand completely.

Narnia is not the point. The point is that nonreligious people tend to be skittish about religion, and in particular, about Christianity. I would be too. People claiming to be doing God’s work have given us the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition — centuries of murder and torture, supposedly mandated by Mr. “Love your Neighbor” Himself.

These days — in this country at least — things have calmed down a bit. Instead of Torquemada, we’ve got Fred Phelps, traveling the country in order to spread as much hatred as possible, and those people who think killing a doctor who performs abortions is somehow better than killing a fetus.

But mostly, instead of people actively doing evil in the name of Christ, we’ve got people who appear both well meaning and sane, yet still manage to give their religion a terrible reputation. There is, of course, that religious right we hear about, the ones in favor of censorship, prayer in the schools, sex education that boils down to “premarital sex equals death,” and excommunicating gay people. They obviously want nothing more than to please God and clean up society, but all they accomplish is to make everyone else think all Christians are illogical jerks with an imperfect grasp of the Bill of Rights.

And then there are the annoying people: the ones who can’t get through a conversation without using the phrase “accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior;” the ones who go about being holy so thoroughly they no longer laugh at jokes, even clean jokes; the ones who refuse to listen to any music edgier than the Supertones. When a friend of mine saw a Bible in my backpack and warily asked, “Are you a Jesus freak?” these are the people she was thinking of.

So I understand why Christianity has a bad reputation. There’s the hypocrisy factor, the bigotry factor, the annoyance factor. There’s also the fact that so much culture — art, literature, music — is religious at the core. I imagine a lot of non-Christians feel like they’re getting beat over the head with crucifixes a lot of the time.

But just because some followers of a religion give it a bad name, that doesn’t mean all of them are like that, and it certainly doesn’t mean the religion is a pile of crap. Most Christians are ashamed of the Rev. Donald Wildmon and would like to tie up Phelps in a basement somewhere to keep him from doing any more damage. Most Christians recognize that “Love your neighbor as yourself” does not lead logically to “Ostracize your neighbor if his/her lifestyle is different from yours” or “Prevent your neighbor’s children from reading Harry Potter.” Most Christians are regular people, perfectly nice to be around, maybe a little more well-behaved than average. Your average, garden-variety Christian is not a bigot, a hypocrite or a holier-than-thou loudmouth.

I guess what I’m saying is that Christianity deserves a chance. It bothers me so many people dismiss it outright, as if it were one of the wackier forms of astrology, or get fidgety when it’s mentioned, as if it were an unappetizing personal habit. It’s not. I can definitely see where people get that impression, but it’s just not true.

I don’t mean to proselytize. This is the Opinion section and I’d be perfectly within my rights, but personally, if I were reading a secular publication and came across an article urging me to check out a religion to which I don’t belong, I’d think, “Boy, what kind of jerk wrote that?” and turn the page.

I’m also not saying I’m any better than anyone else. As Christians go, I’m actually a fairly pathetic one, and I certainly don’t have the right to judge anyone else’s behavior, although I just spent several hundred words doing so.

I just don’t like seeing something that’s important to me given less than fair treatment.

So if you can, look past Phelps and his Cast of Idiots, kick Torquemada to the curb, use DC Talk CDs for skeet-shooting — and notice what’s left: nice, normal, compassionate people, and a fairly logical system of belief that might — believe it or not — have something to it.

Jackie May ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.