0 comment Saturday, December 6, 2014 | admin
In a recent post, I discussed the fact that the psychological worldview, as presented by the popular culture and the old media, has become a widely accepted, very influential belief system. It's also insidious in that most people have absorbed many of the core beliefs of this worldview without even being aware of it. Anybody who watches shows like Oprah, or reads any of the best-selling 'self-help' books, or who undergoes therapy or counseling for life problems, has taken in a good deal of the beliefs of the psychological worldview. Anybody who has taken social science courses in the last several decades has also imbibed some of these beliefs.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Labels: Christianity, Death Of The West, Globalism, Liberalism, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, One World, Politics, Pop Psychology, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society, Transnationalism
0 comment Friday, November 28, 2014 | admin
After reading a blog entry over at VFR, 'What Christianity requires in order not to be destructive of society'
I think I have a glimmer of understanding that had not occurred to me before. If anyone else has thoughts or comments, please feel free to add your thoughts.
Auster says
The key to Christian this-worldly confidence is not that an individual Christian be Jewish (an absurd and offensive idea); it is that Christian society--any Christian society--must include non-Christian cultural and political sources.
This is an absolutely fundamental point that Christians must understand. The original teaching of Christianity as presented in the New Testament is about how to live in what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven. It is about the individual soul's relation with God through Christ. It is not about the political organization of society. The New Testament simply assumes the existence of political society and goes on from there. Because Christianity is not, like orthodox Judaism and Islam, a complete recipe for this-worldly existence, Christian society is necessarily more complex--more differentiated, to use Eric Voegelin's term--than any other. It is multileveled, mediating between the pole of the Christian, spiritual realm and the pole of political and cultural existence in this world, which does not come from Christianity itself. If the society loses its this-worldly pole it will go out of existence. ''
Yes, this makes sense. Much of the New Testament is concerned with Kingdom living, which fact was touched on in a recent thread in which a reader mentioned the Sermon on the Mount and the ethos prescribed there.
Lawrence Auster in his blog entry makes this point which seems important:
Historical Christianity included the Old Testament as part of its scripture. This was a non-Christian source that provided the sense of living in this world as a community of people under God, a sense that is not provided by the New Testament. Thus Protestants, including the people who created America, were able to build strong national societies because they based themselves heavily on the Old Testament with its powerful sense of a people under God.''
Yes, I think the Old Testament religion is often described as 'this-worldly', while the New Testament is not concerned as much with this world. We are told to think of ourselves as 'pilgrims and strangers' in this world, and to consider ourselves as seeking a heavenly country. But for now we do have to live in this world, and it does seem that we need the anchoring in the Old Testament to keep us grounded.
I do think that Christianity is sufficient, just as I believe that the Bible is sufficient, but we have to take the 'whole counsel of God', both Old and New Testaments. It does seem to be true that the very liberal pacifist Christian concentrates solely on the New Testament, and tends to eliminate all but the Gospels or the words of Jesus. That does give one a very otherworldly orientation.
It definitely seemed to me that the turning point came with the liberalizing trend in Christianity, the point at which Christianity became a stunted form of the faith of our fathers. And that trend coincided with the downplaying or outright rejection of much of the Old Testament. Something important was lost there.
There is a saying that some Christians are 'too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good.' I think there is truth in that description, and it sums up the divide between the liberals and the conservative Christians pretty well.
I am still mulling all this over, and it's late, so these are just some quick random thoughts about what I have just read.
I hope my readers will offer their perspectives, and of course if you haven't already, read the post at VFR.
Thanks to Lawrence Auster for giving me some real food for thought here.
I think I have a glimmer of understanding that had not occurred to me before. If anyone else has thoughts or comments, please feel free to add your thoughts.
Auster says
The key to Christian this-worldly confidence is not that an individual Christian be Jewish (an absurd and offensive idea); it is that Christian society--any Christian society--must include non-Christian cultural and political sources.
This is an absolutely fundamental point that Christians must understand. The original teaching of Christianity as presented in the New Testament is about how to live in what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven. It is about the individual soul's relation with God through Christ. It is not about the political organization of society. The New Testament simply assumes the existence of political society and goes on from there. Because Christianity is not, like orthodox Judaism and Islam, a complete recipe for this-worldly existence, Christian society is necessarily more complex--more differentiated, to use Eric Voegelin's term--than any other. It is multileveled, mediating between the pole of the Christian, spiritual realm and the pole of political and cultural existence in this world, which does not come from Christianity itself. If the society loses its this-worldly pole it will go out of existence. ''
Yes, this makes sense. Much of the New Testament is concerned with Kingdom living, which fact was touched on in a recent thread in which a reader mentioned the Sermon on the Mount and the ethos prescribed there.
Lawrence Auster in his blog entry makes this point which seems important:
Historical Christianity included the Old Testament as part of its scripture. This was a non-Christian source that provided the sense of living in this world as a community of people under God, a sense that is not provided by the New Testament. Thus Protestants, including the people who created America, were able to build strong national societies because they based themselves heavily on the Old Testament with its powerful sense of a people under God.''
Yes, I think the Old Testament religion is often described as 'this-worldly', while the New Testament is not concerned as much with this world. We are told to think of ourselves as 'pilgrims and strangers' in this world, and to consider ourselves as seeking a heavenly country. But for now we do have to live in this world, and it does seem that we need the anchoring in the Old Testament to keep us grounded.
I do think that Christianity is sufficient, just as I believe that the Bible is sufficient, but we have to take the 'whole counsel of God', both Old and New Testaments. It does seem to be true that the very liberal pacifist Christian concentrates solely on the New Testament, and tends to eliminate all but the Gospels or the words of Jesus. That does give one a very otherworldly orientation.
It definitely seemed to me that the turning point came with the liberalizing trend in Christianity, the point at which Christianity became a stunted form of the faith of our fathers. And that trend coincided with the downplaying or outright rejection of much of the Old Testament. Something important was lost there.
There is a saying that some Christians are 'too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good.' I think there is truth in that description, and it sums up the divide between the liberals and the conservative Christians pretty well.
I am still mulling all this over, and it's late, so these are just some quick random thoughts about what I have just read.
I hope my readers will offer their perspectives, and of course if you haven't already, read the post at VFR.
Thanks to Lawrence Auster for giving me some real food for thought here.
Labels: Christianity, Liberalism, Pacifism, Western Civilization
0 comment Friday, November 14, 2014 | admin
The Cambria Will Not Yield blog has had a spate of wonderful posts lately, and this latest is another worthy one.
...What then do we lack that our ancestors had? We lack the heroic, integral way of responding to adversity. We no longer see an evil and say, "this must not go on," (1) and strike out at the evil. Instead, we form "think tanks" and study groups. We spend years of fruitless effort in trying to get someone elected who will address the particular evil we are trying to combat. In short, we are Hamlet prior to his conversion from confused graduate student to the lawful King of Denmark. We are "crawling around between heaven and earth."
[...]
Our ancestors who built Christian Europe lived life in the heroic mode. They did not feel called upon to match wits with the devil. They felt called upon to defend their souls and their civilization from the onslaughts of the devil. The Christian hero cares only about one thing: Is his cause God�s cause? And if it is, he sallies forth and leaves the rest to God.
There's a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come: if it be not to
come, it will be now: if it be not now,
yet it will come; the readiness is all.
Since no man has ought of what he
leaves. What is't to leave betimes?
Every society has men of courage. But it takes more than courage to maintain a Christian civilization or to mount a counterattack against a satanic civilization. It takes courage and vision. And the "vision thing" of which George Bush senior was so dismissive is what has been lacking and is still lacking in the ranks of the far right.''
By all means read the rest.
CWNY makes one point which I have alluded to a time or two: when, as frequently happens these days, somebody on our side is decrying Christianity as the cause of our decline in the West, they often add that we need a new religion, one which will strengthen our side, unlike Christianity. Or, more likely, they say we need to go back to our 'old' religions, which presumably our ancestors held to before Christianity.
Now, I take exception to that line of thought because, first of all, being a Christian and a student of history, I think it's a groundless accusation to indict Christianity for our post-modern failure of courage and will. I won't go into that again now. But even were I not a Christian, I would find fault with this notion that we need to order up a 'better religion'.
CWNY quotes such critics here as implying:
"We need a religion to beat the barbarians � let�s buy one at the religion store." It doesn�t work that way, of course. European man has a religion, he has the religion, and it has always been his religion.
Even before I was a Christian, when I was still a spiritual seeker, I knew that "picking a religion" was not, as CWNY says, like shopping at a store and picking out the most suitable one or the best bargain. Only an atheist at heart would imagine that one 'picks a religion' as one picks out an article of clothing. If religion is a matter of expediency, or of its usefulness to us as individuals or as a people, then there is no God at all, just a series of roughly equivalent personal preferences in the line of religious merchandise, according to your tastes and lifestyle. Religion is not a consumer product that one takes back to be exchanged if it doesn't 'give us our money's worth', or if it doesn't serve as a talisman that brings us good luck and good fortune. To regard religion in that way is on the level of superstition.
Stray into your local barrio or ghetto and you will see stores peddling 'good luck' candles and scents and powders; you will see 'wangas' or fetishes meant to bring love or sexual conquests or power or money. Is this what our people think religion amounts to? We know that the more primitive peoples certainly believe so. Their religion is meant to provide power or material goods or 'love'; their 'gods' or spirits are like the genies in the old Arabian Nights stories, to be conjured up to serve them, not vice-versa.
However anyone who thinks deeply about religion or about a God ought to realize that if there is a God who is the Creator of this universe, and who created us, we ought to be in great awe of Him. We would surely not try to summon up such a Being and demand favors from him; we ought to be on our knees, not attempting to extort things from him.
I have had considerable first-hand knowledge of people who dabble in the 'natural' religions, and ultimately they all believe that their will should come first, and religion, which often amounts to little more than ritual and ceremony, ultimately is meant to be a servant to their wills. They thus see themselves as 'gods' of a sort, who wield power over supernatural forces.
In other words, they don't believe that there is one transcendental and yet immanent God, but they may believe there are multiple 'gods' who can be put into harness to serve their ends.
In that sense, I would call them unbelievers. They simply don't believe in one Creator God who is to be served, but they see themselves as small-g 'gods' and 'goddesses' who can shape reality to their wills.
Isn't this what the people are saying who claim that we have to go back to worshiping some nature 'gods'? The idea is apparently that these gods will empower us to be successful and dominant as our ancestors supposedly were in some pre-Christian 'golden age'. So we order up some gods who will act as our personal genies and who will lead us to victory.
Either there is a God who created this universe and all that is in it, or there are only small-g 'gods' who are thus not really gods at all, just some kind of magical beings who can be pressed into service towards our ends.
So the non-believer who proposes we scrap Christianity because our team is losing too many games, and we need a new mascot, truly does not understand what religion is, or what deity means. Religion is ultimately a matter of truth. If religion is not based on truth, but only on its usefulness to us in our worldly needs or on its expediency, then it is not religion in the true sense; it's magic or superstition.
Either a religion is true or it is not.
I strongly suspect that those who propose we wheel out the old pagan deities and put up altars to them don't for a moment believe that those 'gods' even exist; I suspect they believe that religions are meant to be some kind of psychological crutch or pep-talk to help us toward success. Religion would seem, to these people, to be no more than a kind of self-help system that we employ.
Our forefathers prospered and succeeded when Christianity was at its Zenith. Our fortunes in the West have waxed and waned with Christianity. But that is not a reason to be faithful to Christianity; Christianity is not a mere means to an earthly end. But it's apparent that we were blessed when we were faithful, and we've lost that blessing to a great extent as we've strayed from the faith of our fathers.
I believe, as CWNY says, that our Christianity is part of our blood and our substance, and to the extent that we have walked away from it, or have in some cases perverted it into a caricature of its real self, we have forfeited our sense of our identity and our heritage as Westerners, heirs of Christendom.
...What then do we lack that our ancestors had? We lack the heroic, integral way of responding to adversity. We no longer see an evil and say, "this must not go on," (1) and strike out at the evil. Instead, we form "think tanks" and study groups. We spend years of fruitless effort in trying to get someone elected who will address the particular evil we are trying to combat. In short, we are Hamlet prior to his conversion from confused graduate student to the lawful King of Denmark. We are "crawling around between heaven and earth."
[...]
Our ancestors who built Christian Europe lived life in the heroic mode. They did not feel called upon to match wits with the devil. They felt called upon to defend their souls and their civilization from the onslaughts of the devil. The Christian hero cares only about one thing: Is his cause God�s cause? And if it is, he sallies forth and leaves the rest to God.
There's a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come: if it be not to
come, it will be now: if it be not now,
yet it will come; the readiness is all.
Since no man has ought of what he
leaves. What is't to leave betimes?
Every society has men of courage. But it takes more than courage to maintain a Christian civilization or to mount a counterattack against a satanic civilization. It takes courage and vision. And the "vision thing" of which George Bush senior was so dismissive is what has been lacking and is still lacking in the ranks of the far right.''
By all means read the rest.
CWNY makes one point which I have alluded to a time or two: when, as frequently happens these days, somebody on our side is decrying Christianity as the cause of our decline in the West, they often add that we need a new religion, one which will strengthen our side, unlike Christianity. Or, more likely, they say we need to go back to our 'old' religions, which presumably our ancestors held to before Christianity.
Now, I take exception to that line of thought because, first of all, being a Christian and a student of history, I think it's a groundless accusation to indict Christianity for our post-modern failure of courage and will. I won't go into that again now. But even were I not a Christian, I would find fault with this notion that we need to order up a 'better religion'.
CWNY quotes such critics here as implying:
"We need a religion to beat the barbarians � let�s buy one at the religion store." It doesn�t work that way, of course. European man has a religion, he has the religion, and it has always been his religion.
Even before I was a Christian, when I was still a spiritual seeker, I knew that "picking a religion" was not, as CWNY says, like shopping at a store and picking out the most suitable one or the best bargain. Only an atheist at heart would imagine that one 'picks a religion' as one picks out an article of clothing. If religion is a matter of expediency, or of its usefulness to us as individuals or as a people, then there is no God at all, just a series of roughly equivalent personal preferences in the line of religious merchandise, according to your tastes and lifestyle. Religion is not a consumer product that one takes back to be exchanged if it doesn't 'give us our money's worth', or if it doesn't serve as a talisman that brings us good luck and good fortune. To regard religion in that way is on the level of superstition.
Stray into your local barrio or ghetto and you will see stores peddling 'good luck' candles and scents and powders; you will see 'wangas' or fetishes meant to bring love or sexual conquests or power or money. Is this what our people think religion amounts to? We know that the more primitive peoples certainly believe so. Their religion is meant to provide power or material goods or 'love'; their 'gods' or spirits are like the genies in the old Arabian Nights stories, to be conjured up to serve them, not vice-versa.
However anyone who thinks deeply about religion or about a God ought to realize that if there is a God who is the Creator of this universe, and who created us, we ought to be in great awe of Him. We would surely not try to summon up such a Being and demand favors from him; we ought to be on our knees, not attempting to extort things from him.
I have had considerable first-hand knowledge of people who dabble in the 'natural' religions, and ultimately they all believe that their will should come first, and religion, which often amounts to little more than ritual and ceremony, ultimately is meant to be a servant to their wills. They thus see themselves as 'gods' of a sort, who wield power over supernatural forces.
In other words, they don't believe that there is one transcendental and yet immanent God, but they may believe there are multiple 'gods' who can be put into harness to serve their ends.
In that sense, I would call them unbelievers. They simply don't believe in one Creator God who is to be served, but they see themselves as small-g 'gods' and 'goddesses' who can shape reality to their wills.
Isn't this what the people are saying who claim that we have to go back to worshiping some nature 'gods'? The idea is apparently that these gods will empower us to be successful and dominant as our ancestors supposedly were in some pre-Christian 'golden age'. So we order up some gods who will act as our personal genies and who will lead us to victory.
Either there is a God who created this universe and all that is in it, or there are only small-g 'gods' who are thus not really gods at all, just some kind of magical beings who can be pressed into service towards our ends.
So the non-believer who proposes we scrap Christianity because our team is losing too many games, and we need a new mascot, truly does not understand what religion is, or what deity means. Religion is ultimately a matter of truth. If religion is not based on truth, but only on its usefulness to us in our worldly needs or on its expediency, then it is not religion in the true sense; it's magic or superstition.
Either a religion is true or it is not.
I strongly suspect that those who propose we wheel out the old pagan deities and put up altars to them don't for a moment believe that those 'gods' even exist; I suspect they believe that religions are meant to be some kind of psychological crutch or pep-talk to help us toward success. Religion would seem, to these people, to be no more than a kind of self-help system that we employ.
Our forefathers prospered and succeeded when Christianity was at its Zenith. Our fortunes in the West have waxed and waned with Christianity. But that is not a reason to be faithful to Christianity; Christianity is not a mere means to an earthly end. But it's apparent that we were blessed when we were faithful, and we've lost that blessing to a great extent as we've strayed from the faith of our fathers.
I believe, as CWNY says, that our Christianity is part of our blood and our substance, and to the extent that we have walked away from it, or have in some cases perverted it into a caricature of its real self, we have forfeited our sense of our identity and our heritage as Westerners, heirs of Christendom.
Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Western Civilization, Western Decline
0 comment Saturday, October 11, 2014 | admin
Here, DanielJ of the blog Tomorrow in Vinland writes about Philip Rieff and the Triumph of the Therapeutic.
I will not even attempt to discuss Rieff and his ideas. I know little but that he was Jewish, and that he was married to Susan Sontag, she of the infamous ''the White race is the cancer of the human race'' comment.
Now that does not necessarily delegitimize his ideas or writings, but nonetheless I haven't been inclined to read his works. There is a thread at the Kinism Forum on Rieff, here, for those interested.
The excerpts I have read show his writing to be too abstruse and arcane and too intellectual for my liking; I am not one of those who can deal in abstractions and ideas about ideas on a sustained basis. So I will leave Rieff and his ideas to those who have a head for such rarefied stuff. I am, however, interested in the idea of the role of the therapeutic culture in a post-Christian West. That may be a topic for another entry. And even more, I am concerned with the ongoing anti-Christianism that many self-identified neo-pagans promote on the racial right.
Taking that last into account, this first reply to DanielJ's post was expected, and all too typical:
If today�s Christianity is a defence mechanism against non-White invasion of Euroman�s lands then I�m a baked hedgehog with mushroom sauce. Christianity, that ancient Hebrew heresy foisted upon White people by Jews and their proselytising, brainwashed catspaws, is the natural parent of multi-culturalism�s sponsor, Marxism. Of course, the supernatural element of Christianity�s arrant nonsense had to be excised in order for those foolishly egalitarian Whites who, at least, valued observed reality above blind, racially alien, Middle Eastern deity worship to accept the worthless religion�s new Communist guise.''
He pretty much hits all the usual notes sounded by the anti-Christian zealots on the racial right.
But wait, one pro-Christian comment appears:
1. Christianity has been for a long time the religion of the West. As an empirical proposition, as Europe has dispensed with the old faith, it has been transmogrified into a bunch of non-reproducing, non-white-ass-kissing pansies and socialists. Correlation or causation?
2. Must Christianity lead to multiculturalism? I genuinely do not know (and neither do you - this is one of the most profound yet largely unexplored areas of intellectual concern). All patriots should avoid this easy inference, however, as it is not clear that multiculturalism is a latent outgrowth of "taking Christianity seriously". At least as likely is the hypothesis that Christianity�s replacement, sentimental secular humanism, the aptly called Religion of Humanity, is what has directly lead to our modern hysterical denials of racial differences, and acceptance of race-replacement.''
Yes. If 'taking Christianity seriously' is the issue, then just about any generation before the 20th century took it much more seriously than today's lukewarm liberal Christians and CINOs (Christians In Name Only). So if Christianity was the toxic ingredient that killed off the spirit, and is killing the body, of the West, it would have done so long ago. None of the critics ever address this little anomaly.
3. Another empirical proposition. Most conservatives generally, and most racial conservatives in particular (I don�t mean celebrity racialists, or extreme rightists - just the plain people who vote against immigration, affirmative action, etc) describe themselves as "conservative Christians", at least here in America. There is, in other words, a much stronger correlation between Christian conservatism and racial conservatism, than between atheism and racial conservatism. Why this should be, or WHETHER this should be, intellectually, I don�t know. But this fact ought to influence political thinking about explorations of the intersection of Christianity and race-liberalism, especially when calls for a new paganism or similar nonsense start issuing forth.''
This is a point I haven't made sufficiently: there is at least as much of a case, if not more, as the commenter says, for a correlation between conservative Christianity and racial conservatism. I keep asking, with no response, why, if Christianity is guilty of destroying the West, it took millennia to do so. That's like saying that a meal eaten a decade ago could kill someone today. Presumably if Christianity was so destructive to the West, the West would not have survived and prospered and expanded for centuries.
4. I am sufficiently confident in my comparative theological knowledge to make this claim: the only philosophically and scientifically tenable alternatives to atheism are either some form of rational Christianity, or a deism as yet not fully articulated; that is, all existing non-Christian forms of supernaturalism, including various Christian sects, fail intellectually and scientifically. Christianity, especially Catholicism, is very strong, however. The more it is studied the more (intellectually) impressive it becomes. Paganism, however, whatever its former tribe-unifying merits, cannot be resurrected by the modern mind.''
The last sentence seems convincing to me. The fact is we know very little about the pre-Christian religions of Europe; there was no extensive body of writings, no holy books, nothing other than bits and pieces written by Roman historians or others in various places. Much of what is called 'paganism' today is a cobbled-together 'tradition', mostly the work of Gerald Gardner, who lived in the 20th century, far-removed from the traditions he was supposedly resurrecting. In Victorian times, Sir James Frazer and his work The Golden Bough also contributed a great deal to this reinvented paganism. In other words, the authenticity of it is very much in question, but then I suspect that matters not at all to its proponents, because it appears that to them, neo-paganism is merely a means to an end, a supplanter of Christianity which they deem as more useful to their cause of creating a new Europe in which the hated faith of our fathers will not exist. A Christendom without Christ, as some have put it.
5. Even if all religion is, finally, empirically false, white nationalists may want to encourage a new efflorescence of traditional Christianity, if only for its healthy, life-affirming aspects. The old faith encouraged large families (biological reproduction). We need this now. For centuries, moreover, the old faith was not seen to be incompatible with anti-miscegenation laws, with ethnic expulsions, with ranks and hierarchies, and with anti-immigration statutes. Instead of jettisoning the faith because it has been racially corrupted, the easier as well as more politically prudent and fruitful course would be to recover and reapply the earlier, non-multiculturalist understanding of Christian obligation."
[Emphasis mine.]
6. The Faith presided over great periods of Western (biological) expansion. It may have helped cause that expansion, directly and certainly indirectly. The Faith is therefore not necessarily inimical to the West; secular liberalism undeniably is. Oh, and the Faith may even be true ... racialists should adjust their thinking accordingly. ''
That last little point is not made often enough. What if Christianity is true? That should be the central question. Is it true? Is there a God, one God, as the Bible states, and is Christ his son and our savior? If so, then it behooves those who revere truth to seek out the true God, rather than inventing or 'rediscovering' a set of 'gods' who will serve as mascots or talismans for their new Christless Eurotopia.
I'm often tempted to ask those who profess to be pagans: do you really believe in your gods or are they just intellectual symbols for you? Props in your scenario for a new Europe? If they do exist, and if they are specifically tribal gods of the White race or the Northern European race, are they not there to help their people now? Or are they dormant until Christianity is overthrown?
Truth be told, I've known people who professed to be pagans or Wiccans or sort of freelance witches, or Druids. Before I was a Christian, I was something of a seeker, spiritually, and I learned about all religions, Eastern and Western. I never got the sense that the pagan gods were real and vital in the minds of those who called themselves pagans. How is worshipping them supposed to spiritually and racially revivify the West? Come to that, why did the pagan West fall to Christianity, if the gods were so potent, and if paganism was authentic while Christianity was alien and artificial for Europeans?
And I don't buy the allegation that Christianity was 'forced' at swordpoint on Europeans. Those who say that must be confusing Christianity with Islam. Christianity was not forced on Europe. The story of Constantine forcing his supposed 'faith' on Rome (his profession being in doubt, according to some observers) does not apply to Europe generally.
I have no grudge against the pagans or neo-pagans on the right, as long as they are not calling for the stamping out of Christianity, nor engaging in wholesale slanders against our Christian ancestors. I think that all of us who care about the future of our people have to come to some kind of modus vivendi, and tolerate one another. We can't afford the divisions, and I don't see these divisions as originating with the Christian side; the hostility consistently shows up in the constant blaming and vilifying of Christians and the faith of old Europe. I simply don't see how one can love Europe and hate the faith which informed it during its height of achievement and strength.
I will not even attempt to discuss Rieff and his ideas. I know little but that he was Jewish, and that he was married to Susan Sontag, she of the infamous ''the White race is the cancer of the human race'' comment.
Now that does not necessarily delegitimize his ideas or writings, but nonetheless I haven't been inclined to read his works. There is a thread at the Kinism Forum on Rieff, here, for those interested.
The excerpts I have read show his writing to be too abstruse and arcane and too intellectual for my liking; I am not one of those who can deal in abstractions and ideas about ideas on a sustained basis. So I will leave Rieff and his ideas to those who have a head for such rarefied stuff. I am, however, interested in the idea of the role of the therapeutic culture in a post-Christian West. That may be a topic for another entry. And even more, I am concerned with the ongoing anti-Christianism that many self-identified neo-pagans promote on the racial right.
Taking that last into account, this first reply to DanielJ's post was expected, and all too typical:
If today�s Christianity is a defence mechanism against non-White invasion of Euroman�s lands then I�m a baked hedgehog with mushroom sauce. Christianity, that ancient Hebrew heresy foisted upon White people by Jews and their proselytising, brainwashed catspaws, is the natural parent of multi-culturalism�s sponsor, Marxism. Of course, the supernatural element of Christianity�s arrant nonsense had to be excised in order for those foolishly egalitarian Whites who, at least, valued observed reality above blind, racially alien, Middle Eastern deity worship to accept the worthless religion�s new Communist guise.''
He pretty much hits all the usual notes sounded by the anti-Christian zealots on the racial right.
But wait, one pro-Christian comment appears:
1. Christianity has been for a long time the religion of the West. As an empirical proposition, as Europe has dispensed with the old faith, it has been transmogrified into a bunch of non-reproducing, non-white-ass-kissing pansies and socialists. Correlation or causation?
2. Must Christianity lead to multiculturalism? I genuinely do not know (and neither do you - this is one of the most profound yet largely unexplored areas of intellectual concern). All patriots should avoid this easy inference, however, as it is not clear that multiculturalism is a latent outgrowth of "taking Christianity seriously". At least as likely is the hypothesis that Christianity�s replacement, sentimental secular humanism, the aptly called Religion of Humanity, is what has directly lead to our modern hysterical denials of racial differences, and acceptance of race-replacement.''
Yes. If 'taking Christianity seriously' is the issue, then just about any generation before the 20th century took it much more seriously than today's lukewarm liberal Christians and CINOs (Christians In Name Only). So if Christianity was the toxic ingredient that killed off the spirit, and is killing the body, of the West, it would have done so long ago. None of the critics ever address this little anomaly.
3. Another empirical proposition. Most conservatives generally, and most racial conservatives in particular (I don�t mean celebrity racialists, or extreme rightists - just the plain people who vote against immigration, affirmative action, etc) describe themselves as "conservative Christians", at least here in America. There is, in other words, a much stronger correlation between Christian conservatism and racial conservatism, than between atheism and racial conservatism. Why this should be, or WHETHER this should be, intellectually, I don�t know. But this fact ought to influence political thinking about explorations of the intersection of Christianity and race-liberalism, especially when calls for a new paganism or similar nonsense start issuing forth.''
This is a point I haven't made sufficiently: there is at least as much of a case, if not more, as the commenter says, for a correlation between conservative Christianity and racial conservatism. I keep asking, with no response, why, if Christianity is guilty of destroying the West, it took millennia to do so. That's like saying that a meal eaten a decade ago could kill someone today. Presumably if Christianity was so destructive to the West, the West would not have survived and prospered and expanded for centuries.
4. I am sufficiently confident in my comparative theological knowledge to make this claim: the only philosophically and scientifically tenable alternatives to atheism are either some form of rational Christianity, or a deism as yet not fully articulated; that is, all existing non-Christian forms of supernaturalism, including various Christian sects, fail intellectually and scientifically. Christianity, especially Catholicism, is very strong, however. The more it is studied the more (intellectually) impressive it becomes. Paganism, however, whatever its former tribe-unifying merits, cannot be resurrected by the modern mind.''
The last sentence seems convincing to me. The fact is we know very little about the pre-Christian religions of Europe; there was no extensive body of writings, no holy books, nothing other than bits and pieces written by Roman historians or others in various places. Much of what is called 'paganism' today is a cobbled-together 'tradition', mostly the work of Gerald Gardner, who lived in the 20th century, far-removed from the traditions he was supposedly resurrecting. In Victorian times, Sir James Frazer and his work The Golden Bough also contributed a great deal to this reinvented paganism. In other words, the authenticity of it is very much in question, but then I suspect that matters not at all to its proponents, because it appears that to them, neo-paganism is merely a means to an end, a supplanter of Christianity which they deem as more useful to their cause of creating a new Europe in which the hated faith of our fathers will not exist. A Christendom without Christ, as some have put it.
5. Even if all religion is, finally, empirically false, white nationalists may want to encourage a new efflorescence of traditional Christianity, if only for its healthy, life-affirming aspects. The old faith encouraged large families (biological reproduction). We need this now. For centuries, moreover, the old faith was not seen to be incompatible with anti-miscegenation laws, with ethnic expulsions, with ranks and hierarchies, and with anti-immigration statutes. Instead of jettisoning the faith because it has been racially corrupted, the easier as well as more politically prudent and fruitful course would be to recover and reapply the earlier, non-multiculturalist understanding of Christian obligation."
[Emphasis mine.]
6. The Faith presided over great periods of Western (biological) expansion. It may have helped cause that expansion, directly and certainly indirectly. The Faith is therefore not necessarily inimical to the West; secular liberalism undeniably is. Oh, and the Faith may even be true ... racialists should adjust their thinking accordingly. ''
That last little point is not made often enough. What if Christianity is true? That should be the central question. Is it true? Is there a God, one God, as the Bible states, and is Christ his son and our savior? If so, then it behooves those who revere truth to seek out the true God, rather than inventing or 'rediscovering' a set of 'gods' who will serve as mascots or talismans for their new Christless Eurotopia.
I'm often tempted to ask those who profess to be pagans: do you really believe in your gods or are they just intellectual symbols for you? Props in your scenario for a new Europe? If they do exist, and if they are specifically tribal gods of the White race or the Northern European race, are they not there to help their people now? Or are they dormant until Christianity is overthrown?
Truth be told, I've known people who professed to be pagans or Wiccans or sort of freelance witches, or Druids. Before I was a Christian, I was something of a seeker, spiritually, and I learned about all religions, Eastern and Western. I never got the sense that the pagan gods were real and vital in the minds of those who called themselves pagans. How is worshipping them supposed to spiritually and racially revivify the West? Come to that, why did the pagan West fall to Christianity, if the gods were so potent, and if paganism was authentic while Christianity was alien and artificial for Europeans?
And I don't buy the allegation that Christianity was 'forced' at swordpoint on Europeans. Those who say that must be confusing Christianity with Islam. Christianity was not forced on Europe. The story of Constantine forcing his supposed 'faith' on Rome (his profession being in doubt, according to some observers) does not apply to Europe generally.
I have no grudge against the pagans or neo-pagans on the right, as long as they are not calling for the stamping out of Christianity, nor engaging in wholesale slanders against our Christian ancestors. I think that all of us who care about the future of our people have to come to some kind of modus vivendi, and tolerate one another. We can't afford the divisions, and I don't see these divisions as originating with the Christian side; the hostility consistently shows up in the constant blaming and vilifying of Christians and the faith of old Europe. I simply don't see how one can love Europe and hate the faith which informed it during its height of achievement and strength.
Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Europe, Liberal Christianity, Western Civilization
0 comment Tuesday, September 30, 2014 | admin
Over at TakiMag, Paul Gottfried has a piece about Christianity, specifically Protestant evangelical Christianity and the Obama cult, as manifested in a Northern Michigan election party. He relates how a friend sent him clippings about the behavior of many young Christians in northern Michigan upon Obama's election:
In this heavily Protestant and very Nordic region of the country, the youth had trouble containing their joy on the outcome of this year�s election, according to the Northern Weekly Express. Throngs of young adults gathered at an election day party at the InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City, where the full house "rocked the rafters" as they watched Obama storm to victory. "Some of the biggest cheers that night came when images of African-Americans were shown on the big screen, WEEPING FOR JOY at the election of Barack Obama." The paper hastens to remind the reader that this victory was 'by any measure, one of the MOST SIGNIFICANT events in the history of the United States." Even without the use of caps, the Northern Weekly Express conveyed the ecstasy of the hour by showing the glowing faces of the Northern Michigan young standing beside cardboard images of their black savior. The election party looked more like a revival meeting than a Friday night bash, and it radiated something akin to the joy of being cleansed of one�s sins.
[...]
I think this hysteria that I�ve been observing is religious in nature. It is not confined to the atheist, social engineering Left; it is also very much alive and well among religious Protestants, and particularly among the Evangelicals and Mennonites of my acquaintance. These people are anything but non-believers. Nonetheless they entirely agree with Obama�s remark, made to Pastor Rick Warren, indicating that sin means "sexism, racism, and homophobia." A neighbor, who is a very orthodox Mennonite minister and who has the Nicene Creed on his wall, was campaigning for Obama, as an act of overcoming the ingrained racism of his community.
[...]
The exaltation of the supposedly downtrodden, as an act of group atonement for social sins and for thinking bigoted thoughts, and as the prelude to building a truly egalitarian society, have become characteristic of those seeking righteousness. Religious fervor has now been turned toward the task of validating designated minorities, including illegals streaming across our Southern borders. Such behavior is no longer specific to professional atheists, raging at the Christian Right. It is now to all appearances an epidemic spreading through the American religious community and one that is likely to continue to spread. And unlike its manifestations in non-Protestant America, in Protestant America, the advocacy of multiculturalism is definitely aimed at the displacement of traditional ethnic-cultural communities�or of what remains of them.''
I am not sure that I understand that last sentence, and from what I read it to mean, I don't agree. How is 'non-Protestant' America less guilty of promoting the displacement of traditional communities when it supports mass immigration?
The PC Christian phenomenon he is describing is not something that began with the Obama campaign, although Obama provided a figure around which these multicult 'Christians' might rally. The present-day trend in mainstream Christianity, towards embracing leftist positions on all social matters, has been going on for some time. Rick Warren gets a passing mention in the article, though he should be front and center; he has been a big influence in this trend among formerly conservative Christians towards leftist, politically correct values, and away from the Biblically-based faith of their fathers. Warren, with his emphasis on pop psychology and the 'self', along with a warmed-over social gospel, has brought many Christians into line with mainstream liberal ideology. It's no coincidence that Warren is rubbing elbows with the Bono types, and with globalists.
The brand of Christianity that Warren and his followers promote is the kind of thing which causes many outside the Christian sphere to denounce Christianity as being detrimental to Western peoples and their survival.
It's no secret that the mainstream Christian denominations have been heavily infiltrated by leftists since at least the 1940s, if not sooner. The WCC has long been known to be sympathetic to leftist radical causes. The left, as we know, has been fairly open about its longstanding effort to infiltrate and subvert from within all the institutions of our society, and the churches are not exempt; far from it. Influencing Christians away from the Word of God and towards the leftist/socialist/globalist worldview is a strategy aimed at removing one of the last obstacles to the remaking of the world, the erasure of borders, and the breakdown of family and extended kin loyalties.
The fact is, however, this is not just something that can be blamed on Protestantism or those dreaded 'WASPs' again. All branches of Christianity are to some extent affected by the new politically-corrected counterfeit Christianity.
I don't think that it is peculiar to Protestantism, although the TakiMag commentariat might be likely to suggest that, at least those with an open Catholic or Orthodox bias. Obviously the Catholic hierarchy has been in the forefront of activism in favor of open borders, especially when the borders being erased separate us from Latino Catholics, who are now being eagerly welcomed by the Church hierarchy. I've been told by some that the Church rank and file are not as fervently open-borders as the leadership, but I am not sure about that.
However, Protestant churches have been moving towards globalist politically correct ideology, too. Personally, I think it's all a part of a larger trend in Christianity, in which Christians of all denominations seemingly believe that to be a good Christian, one has to embrace one's exact opposite. To champion the rights of those who are not only extremely 'Other' in relation to us is seen as a virtue, and embracing those who are openly hostile to us, even our avowed enemies, is seen as the highest virtue, as saintliness.
We could see the recent events in the Castro District of San Francisco in the light of this. A group of Christians have been going into the Castro to pray and witness to the ''gay community.' However, in the aftermath of the recent furor over Proposition 8 in California, many of the local 'gays' were enraged by the presence of the Christians and by their public singing and praying. So they set upon the Christians, shouting obscenities and threats, and apparently even attempting to molest some of the Christians.
The Christians in question mostly reiterated how they loved their attackers, and forgave them, refusing to press charges for molestation or sexual assault.
I am certain many Christians will say this is exemplary, highly Christian behavior, and that all good Christians might hope to show such character in a similar situation.
I won't try to argue that point; it deserves another post to itself. But it exemplifies the seeming value today's Christians seem to attach to those who are the most hostile towards us. This is how you prove your mettle as a Christian: to lay down and passively accept abuse by others, or to sacrifice yourself so as to benefit some 'Other' who is either indifferent or hostile towards you. I wonder if our forefathers would have interpreted Christianity this way. They certainly did not embrace self-destruction as peoples in the name of Christianity.
Again, I know those who despise Christianity will say that this is exactly why they despise Christianity: because it makes us the doormats of the world. It makes us self-abasing and self-abnegating, and downright masochistic in some cases. I hate to use Freudian jargon but the term masochistic seems to be the only term available to describe those who find some kind of gratification in being mistreated or abused by others. And that sums up much of the Western world's behavior these days, as our leaders avidly seek people to come and loot our countries.
There may be an element of seeking redemption for our supposed collective 'sins' of xenophobia and 'racism'. We have collectively been seized by an apology mania, in which we are desperately seeking someone to whom we can apologize and make restitution for our past 'sins' or the transgressions of our fathers. In Catholic terms this is a seeking of absolution from another human being. But this is not Biblical Christianity; Christians know that we can only be redeemed by Christ, not by another human being or group of human beings.
The comments following are the usual mixed bag, with the usual axes being ground. There is usually at least one in the TakiMag comment box who has to blame the Protestant Reformation for all the evils in the world. But there are a couple of good comments, one by Condor.
Another commenter later in the discussion turns the discussion to the usual condemnation of 'WASPs', saying that the Kennedys, for example, were merely emulating WASP culture, assimilating to WASP 'Boston Brahmin' norms. That argument never dies. It's usually resorted to by those of later immigrant stock, who are still resentful generations after their families immigrated here, resentful of the WASPs -- who gave them the opportunity to become Americans. It shows that no good deed goes unpunished.
The same anti-WASP commenter cites David Hackett Fischer and his work 'Albion's Seed.' I've read Albion's Seed, and it's an interesting book, a sizeable, hefty book, with a lot of information, but it is not Gospel. Fischer is not the last word, and it's really getting very old to hear people citing him in support of their pet theories. The anti-WASP faction really love Fischer. It's too bad he has gained this cult status, and his interpretation seems to go unchallenged.
Gottfried seems to imply in his article that WASPs somehow deserve the animus the various ethnic groups direct towards them, because they ''excluded" the various ethnic immigrants of the Ellis Island wave. Well, there is another side to that story. I might easily say that the various ethnic immigrant groups who have this monumental, generations-long grudge against WASPs are people who suffer from inferiority feelings, and who felt envy towards the WASPs who built the country to which their ancestors sought admission. It seems to be human nature to resent someone to whom you are beholden. We see this with all the minority 'victim' groups, and in fact their cult of victimology, which has done so much harm in our day, could be said to have been pioneered by the various ethnic immigrants. It is they who, to this day, bemoan the supposed 'discrimination' their ancestors suffered when they landed here from the Old Country. The Irish have their centuries-old vendetta against the English for having 'stolen' their country and their culture and their language. That anti-English tradition must have colored their perceptions of the Anglo-Protestants they met here. The rhetoric is exactly the same as that of Third World peoples, American Indians, and others. It might be argued that all the opportunistic 'huddled masses' of today are following the template established by the Ellis Islanders and their descendants.
The whole cult of anti-White or anti-Western resentment might be seen as being based, ultimately, in the 'undeveloped' world's resentment and envy of European man's accomplishments and successes. Look at the Anglo-Saxon as being sort of the epitome of Western strength and dominance (think of the British Empire at its height, or American dominance during its heyday) and success. The most successful are always regarded with a mix of envy and resentment. Sometimes the resentment escalates to hatred and desire for revenge, the desire to pull down the most successful and destroy his accomplishments, which are seen as an affront to the less successful peoples.
The Anglo-Saxon male is the target mostly because he inspired so much envy and resentment by his successes -- and also by his generosity. Sometimes generosity is despised as weakness, even by those who are the recipients of that generosity.
''Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides." - Pliny
So, again, we have the usual blaming of Christians, and the blaming specifically of Anglo-Saxon Protestants for the perils we are facing now.
How long will this continue? I could blame the later waves of immigrants for their grudges and resentments, and their tendency to champion The Other out of spite towards WASP America.
It is not just the nonwhite victim groups that have fostered this White Protestant guilt syndrome, but all the other immigrant victimhood-cultists. Many White Protestants who are not identified with some ethnic victim group end up absorbing some of the blame and guilt directed at old-stock Anglo-Americans.
We could see that we are all in this together, and that what happened in the mid-19th century should be put aside in the name of saving what remains of our heritage. Can we do that, or will we continue to snipe and one another and undercut one another?
In this heavily Protestant and very Nordic region of the country, the youth had trouble containing their joy on the outcome of this year�s election, according to the Northern Weekly Express. Throngs of young adults gathered at an election day party at the InsideOut Gallery in Traverse City, where the full house "rocked the rafters" as they watched Obama storm to victory. "Some of the biggest cheers that night came when images of African-Americans were shown on the big screen, WEEPING FOR JOY at the election of Barack Obama." The paper hastens to remind the reader that this victory was 'by any measure, one of the MOST SIGNIFICANT events in the history of the United States." Even without the use of caps, the Northern Weekly Express conveyed the ecstasy of the hour by showing the glowing faces of the Northern Michigan young standing beside cardboard images of their black savior. The election party looked more like a revival meeting than a Friday night bash, and it radiated something akin to the joy of being cleansed of one�s sins.
[...]
I think this hysteria that I�ve been observing is religious in nature. It is not confined to the atheist, social engineering Left; it is also very much alive and well among religious Protestants, and particularly among the Evangelicals and Mennonites of my acquaintance. These people are anything but non-believers. Nonetheless they entirely agree with Obama�s remark, made to Pastor Rick Warren, indicating that sin means "sexism, racism, and homophobia." A neighbor, who is a very orthodox Mennonite minister and who has the Nicene Creed on his wall, was campaigning for Obama, as an act of overcoming the ingrained racism of his community.
[...]
The exaltation of the supposedly downtrodden, as an act of group atonement for social sins and for thinking bigoted thoughts, and as the prelude to building a truly egalitarian society, have become characteristic of those seeking righteousness. Religious fervor has now been turned toward the task of validating designated minorities, including illegals streaming across our Southern borders. Such behavior is no longer specific to professional atheists, raging at the Christian Right. It is now to all appearances an epidemic spreading through the American religious community and one that is likely to continue to spread. And unlike its manifestations in non-Protestant America, in Protestant America, the advocacy of multiculturalism is definitely aimed at the displacement of traditional ethnic-cultural communities�or of what remains of them.''
I am not sure that I understand that last sentence, and from what I read it to mean, I don't agree. How is 'non-Protestant' America less guilty of promoting the displacement of traditional communities when it supports mass immigration?
The PC Christian phenomenon he is describing is not something that began with the Obama campaign, although Obama provided a figure around which these multicult 'Christians' might rally. The present-day trend in mainstream Christianity, towards embracing leftist positions on all social matters, has been going on for some time. Rick Warren gets a passing mention in the article, though he should be front and center; he has been a big influence in this trend among formerly conservative Christians towards leftist, politically correct values, and away from the Biblically-based faith of their fathers. Warren, with his emphasis on pop psychology and the 'self', along with a warmed-over social gospel, has brought many Christians into line with mainstream liberal ideology. It's no coincidence that Warren is rubbing elbows with the Bono types, and with globalists.
The brand of Christianity that Warren and his followers promote is the kind of thing which causes many outside the Christian sphere to denounce Christianity as being detrimental to Western peoples and their survival.
It's no secret that the mainstream Christian denominations have been heavily infiltrated by leftists since at least the 1940s, if not sooner. The WCC has long been known to be sympathetic to leftist radical causes. The left, as we know, has been fairly open about its longstanding effort to infiltrate and subvert from within all the institutions of our society, and the churches are not exempt; far from it. Influencing Christians away from the Word of God and towards the leftist/socialist/globalist worldview is a strategy aimed at removing one of the last obstacles to the remaking of the world, the erasure of borders, and the breakdown of family and extended kin loyalties.
The fact is, however, this is not just something that can be blamed on Protestantism or those dreaded 'WASPs' again. All branches of Christianity are to some extent affected by the new politically-corrected counterfeit Christianity.
I don't think that it is peculiar to Protestantism, although the TakiMag commentariat might be likely to suggest that, at least those with an open Catholic or Orthodox bias. Obviously the Catholic hierarchy has been in the forefront of activism in favor of open borders, especially when the borders being erased separate us from Latino Catholics, who are now being eagerly welcomed by the Church hierarchy. I've been told by some that the Church rank and file are not as fervently open-borders as the leadership, but I am not sure about that.
However, Protestant churches have been moving towards globalist politically correct ideology, too. Personally, I think it's all a part of a larger trend in Christianity, in which Christians of all denominations seemingly believe that to be a good Christian, one has to embrace one's exact opposite. To champion the rights of those who are not only extremely 'Other' in relation to us is seen as a virtue, and embracing those who are openly hostile to us, even our avowed enemies, is seen as the highest virtue, as saintliness.
We could see the recent events in the Castro District of San Francisco in the light of this. A group of Christians have been going into the Castro to pray and witness to the ''gay community.' However, in the aftermath of the recent furor over Proposition 8 in California, many of the local 'gays' were enraged by the presence of the Christians and by their public singing and praying. So they set upon the Christians, shouting obscenities and threats, and apparently even attempting to molest some of the Christians.
The Christians in question mostly reiterated how they loved their attackers, and forgave them, refusing to press charges for molestation or sexual assault.
I am certain many Christians will say this is exemplary, highly Christian behavior, and that all good Christians might hope to show such character in a similar situation.
I won't try to argue that point; it deserves another post to itself. But it exemplifies the seeming value today's Christians seem to attach to those who are the most hostile towards us. This is how you prove your mettle as a Christian: to lay down and passively accept abuse by others, or to sacrifice yourself so as to benefit some 'Other' who is either indifferent or hostile towards you. I wonder if our forefathers would have interpreted Christianity this way. They certainly did not embrace self-destruction as peoples in the name of Christianity.
Again, I know those who despise Christianity will say that this is exactly why they despise Christianity: because it makes us the doormats of the world. It makes us self-abasing and self-abnegating, and downright masochistic in some cases. I hate to use Freudian jargon but the term masochistic seems to be the only term available to describe those who find some kind of gratification in being mistreated or abused by others. And that sums up much of the Western world's behavior these days, as our leaders avidly seek people to come and loot our countries.
There may be an element of seeking redemption for our supposed collective 'sins' of xenophobia and 'racism'. We have collectively been seized by an apology mania, in which we are desperately seeking someone to whom we can apologize and make restitution for our past 'sins' or the transgressions of our fathers. In Catholic terms this is a seeking of absolution from another human being. But this is not Biblical Christianity; Christians know that we can only be redeemed by Christ, not by another human being or group of human beings.
The comments following are the usual mixed bag, with the usual axes being ground. There is usually at least one in the TakiMag comment box who has to blame the Protestant Reformation for all the evils in the world. But there are a couple of good comments, one by Condor.
Another commenter later in the discussion turns the discussion to the usual condemnation of 'WASPs', saying that the Kennedys, for example, were merely emulating WASP culture, assimilating to WASP 'Boston Brahmin' norms. That argument never dies. It's usually resorted to by those of later immigrant stock, who are still resentful generations after their families immigrated here, resentful of the WASPs -- who gave them the opportunity to become Americans. It shows that no good deed goes unpunished.
The same anti-WASP commenter cites David Hackett Fischer and his work 'Albion's Seed.' I've read Albion's Seed, and it's an interesting book, a sizeable, hefty book, with a lot of information, but it is not Gospel. Fischer is not the last word, and it's really getting very old to hear people citing him in support of their pet theories. The anti-WASP faction really love Fischer. It's too bad he has gained this cult status, and his interpretation seems to go unchallenged.
Gottfried seems to imply in his article that WASPs somehow deserve the animus the various ethnic groups direct towards them, because they ''excluded" the various ethnic immigrants of the Ellis Island wave. Well, there is another side to that story. I might easily say that the various ethnic immigrant groups who have this monumental, generations-long grudge against WASPs are people who suffer from inferiority feelings, and who felt envy towards the WASPs who built the country to which their ancestors sought admission. It seems to be human nature to resent someone to whom you are beholden. We see this with all the minority 'victim' groups, and in fact their cult of victimology, which has done so much harm in our day, could be said to have been pioneered by the various ethnic immigrants. It is they who, to this day, bemoan the supposed 'discrimination' their ancestors suffered when they landed here from the Old Country. The Irish have their centuries-old vendetta against the English for having 'stolen' their country and their culture and their language. That anti-English tradition must have colored their perceptions of the Anglo-Protestants they met here. The rhetoric is exactly the same as that of Third World peoples, American Indians, and others. It might be argued that all the opportunistic 'huddled masses' of today are following the template established by the Ellis Islanders and their descendants.
The whole cult of anti-White or anti-Western resentment might be seen as being based, ultimately, in the 'undeveloped' world's resentment and envy of European man's accomplishments and successes. Look at the Anglo-Saxon as being sort of the epitome of Western strength and dominance (think of the British Empire at its height, or American dominance during its heyday) and success. The most successful are always regarded with a mix of envy and resentment. Sometimes the resentment escalates to hatred and desire for revenge, the desire to pull down the most successful and destroy his accomplishments, which are seen as an affront to the less successful peoples.
The Anglo-Saxon male is the target mostly because he inspired so much envy and resentment by his successes -- and also by his generosity. Sometimes generosity is despised as weakness, even by those who are the recipients of that generosity.
''Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides." - Pliny
So, again, we have the usual blaming of Christians, and the blaming specifically of Anglo-Saxon Protestants for the perils we are facing now.
How long will this continue? I could blame the later waves of immigrants for their grudges and resentments, and their tendency to champion The Other out of spite towards WASP America.
It is not just the nonwhite victim groups that have fostered this White Protestant guilt syndrome, but all the other immigrant victimhood-cultists. Many White Protestants who are not identified with some ethnic victim group end up absorbing some of the blame and guilt directed at old-stock Anglo-Americans.
We could see that we are all in this together, and that what happened in the mid-19th century should be put aside in the name of saving what remains of our heritage. Can we do that, or will we continue to snipe and one another and undercut one another?
Labels: Christianity, Ethnic Division, Ethnic Identity, Globalism, Liberalism, Old America, Political Correctness, Wasps
0 comment Monday, September 29, 2014 | admin
This post is directed mainly at my Christian readers. As most of us know, tomorrow is the official beginning of the season of Lent, which includes the six weeks before Easter. But I am simply curious for personal reasons: is Lent now becoming widely observed by Protestants? I have been hearing from acquaintances (Protestant) that they are 'giving up' this or that for Lent. Now, this puzzles me because I associate Lent with Catholicism, though I understand that those denominations which have stayed closer to Catholic practices may also observe Lent. But judging by these articles I found, it seems as if Lent is now becoming a Protestant as well as a Catholic observance.
From Slate magazine, Protestants do the sober season and here is an article from a Presbyterian source:
In a year dedicated to John Calvin�s legacy, it is intriguing to note one thing Presbyterians cannot trace back to him: our practice of Lent. Those of us who choose to "give up" something for Lent are not doing so with Calvin�s blessing. More than likely Calvin would also be surprised to find Presbyterians wearing ashes on their foreheads at the beginning of Lent, because Protestants have historically avoided that practice. For many years Presbyterians and other Reformed Christians shied away from all things Roman Catholic. The timidity, of course, was something we inherited from the Protestant Reformation. In their efforts to free Christians from what they saw to be the oppressive rule-making of the Catholic Church in Rome, Calvin and other Reformation theologians sought to eradicate practices of popular piety that were not singularly Christ-centered. As with any major shift or movement, however, the pendulum swung so far away from Roman Catholicism that much of the Reformed tradition lost ties to some Christian practices that we are now moving to recover.''
This article from the Mormon Times (note the nod to 'diversity' with the picture at the top of the article) says
The Puritans officially disavowed Lent in 1645. And over the centuries, Protestants have tended to view Lent as a Catholic observance. But Vatican II bridged the gap and helped Protestants reclaim some of their traditions, the Rev. Hare-Diggs notes. As a boy, he remembers only the Maundy Thursday church services. Now his church observes Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and more.''
Now, I am not attempting to pass judgment on this trend; I am curious as to how widespread it is among Protestants. I suppose it's unsurprising given the trend toward erasing some of the longstanding differences between Catholic and Protestant.
From Slate magazine, Protestants do the sober season and here is an article from a Presbyterian source:
In a year dedicated to John Calvin�s legacy, it is intriguing to note one thing Presbyterians cannot trace back to him: our practice of Lent. Those of us who choose to "give up" something for Lent are not doing so with Calvin�s blessing. More than likely Calvin would also be surprised to find Presbyterians wearing ashes on their foreheads at the beginning of Lent, because Protestants have historically avoided that practice. For many years Presbyterians and other Reformed Christians shied away from all things Roman Catholic. The timidity, of course, was something we inherited from the Protestant Reformation. In their efforts to free Christians from what they saw to be the oppressive rule-making of the Catholic Church in Rome, Calvin and other Reformation theologians sought to eradicate practices of popular piety that were not singularly Christ-centered. As with any major shift or movement, however, the pendulum swung so far away from Roman Catholicism that much of the Reformed tradition lost ties to some Christian practices that we are now moving to recover.''
This article from the Mormon Times (note the nod to 'diversity' with the picture at the top of the article) says
The Puritans officially disavowed Lent in 1645. And over the centuries, Protestants have tended to view Lent as a Catholic observance. But Vatican II bridged the gap and helped Protestants reclaim some of their traditions, the Rev. Hare-Diggs notes. As a boy, he remembers only the Maundy Thursday church services. Now his church observes Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and more.''
Now, I am not attempting to pass judgment on this trend; I am curious as to how widespread it is among Protestants. I suppose it's unsurprising given the trend toward erasing some of the longstanding differences between Catholic and Protestant.
Labels: Christianity, Ecumenicism, Western Culture
0 comment Saturday, September 13, 2014 | admin
I've been hearing more about the recent trip to Central America by some of our local youth.
What I'm hearing and seeing is a deliberate program of making our young people believe that the Third World is our responsibility, and that being a good Christian involves feeling enormous guilt about how prosperous we are. After all, those poor people south of the 'border' have nothing, and we have everything.
Teenagers are emotional creatures, very susceptible to this kind of manipulation. Most are naive and have a tendency to want to help those who seem downtrodden or helpless, at least if those downtrodden people are Third Worlders.
So I don't blame the young people as much as I do their elders, who are just as emotionally vulnerable as the young people are. Is this another manifestation of our national adolescence? There are so many adults who seem to live as perpetual adolescents, with all the soft-headedness and gullibility that characterizes many immature young people.
One such person is a parent of one of the young folks who just came back after the guilt-trip (literally) south of the border. I am now hearing stories of how these youngsters were taken to a prison which is said to be 'controlled by gangs', and which is said to have an area where even the guards will not go, because the prisoners apparently have de facto control over that area.
Would any of you let your sons and daughters go into this prison, accompanied by a Christian chaperon who is as naive as the kids? I certainly wouldn't, especially a daughter. In today's PC climate, that is considered a 'racist' attitude, but a few decades ago it was simple common sense.
I don't hear of any concern or outrage on the part of the parents whose kids were taken into this prison to 'minister' to the criminals. Of course visiting those in prison is part of what Christians are enjoined to do. But surely some common sense should govern who goes to do this kind of thing, and under what conditions. Let grown men do this, not adolescent girls and boys with no clue about reality.
I am 100 percent certain that these parents would not let their sons and especially their daughters enter our state prison with its hardened criminals. But the Third World? They're all just victims there, of course, and we can't judge them, can we?
And another question occurs to me: Latin America was supposedly Christianized centuries ago, was it not? Why are missionaries and assorted other do-gooders, including kids, still having to bring them the Gospel?
That's a rather rhetorical question on my part; I don't believe that many Latin Americans are Christian, their beliefs being a hodgepodge of heathen superstition with various corrupted Catholic practices.
But even so, surely the many missionaries who go down there have spread the Gospel thoroughly? It seems to me that the purpose of going is to minister to the people's material needs, but why do Christians go there on seeming guilt tours? Is this part of the mission to make the young, especially, feel more connected to those who are coming to live among us? To give them more of a 'global consciousness'?
It may be noteworthy that the church sponsoring this is one of those 'seeker-sensitive' Oprah-ized churches. And though they are ostensibly Protestant, they seem to believe in 'earning' salvation by good works.
The kids, bless their idealistic hearts, are champing at the bit to go back and help those poor people 'who have nothing'.
The mother of one of the teens says that she now sees illegal immigration in a different light: these people 'have nothing', so it's understandable that they are entering our country in droves to find a 'better life.'
And just a side note: the woman in question has taken a tough line on illegals heretofore, sounding quite a bit like me at times, on the subject of the invasion. All it took was a few hearts-and-flowers stories about the poor peasants who 'have nothing', and she is suddenly full of sympathy for the illegals.
This encapsulates the average White American's response to the invasion. We are too prone to feel sympathy and pity for the poor illegals -- did you know they 'have nothing' in their countries? -- and to put our own interests last.
Our young people, as I said, are being inculcated with racial guilt, guilt over our supposed wrongs toward the have-nots of the world, and guilt for our prosperity and comfort. Protestants have not traditionally believed in self-flagellation and 'mortification of the flesh' as Catholics once did, but this is the modern equivalent, this racial guilt and a sense of enduring obligation to the downtrodden and the aggrieved have-nots of the world. So these kids will work and save money to go again next year to take care of the perpetual basket-cases of the world and thus do penance for their sin of being born White and born in a prosperous, comfortable country.
Maybe they are much better Christians than I, but then I don't pretend to be an exemplar in that regard.
At times I struggle with the question of whether I am a bad Christian or a bad human being because I am not inclined to such self-sacrifice and I don't believe we are compelled as Christians to embrace self-immolation, giving our home away to aliens, or sending our children into harm's way to make ourselves feel more virtuous.
This sending of our young to these dangerous and crime-ridden countries seems to me rather like the Old Testament stories of 'passing children through the fire', sacrificing them to the idol Moloch. That these local kids came back without having been physically harmed is beside the point; they are being indoctrinated into the multicult, which is Moloch in 21st century guise.
Again, I keep coming back to this idea of post-modern 'Christianity' as a cult of niceness, a mere empty shell of its former self.
Too many Christians today have no concept of goodness, knowing only 'niceness', which is an anemic, simpering caricature of Christian goodness. Niceness wishes only to think only good of everyone, even those who are evil, and those who are enemies of God. Niceness does not want to offend or exclude anyone. Niceness will tell flattering lies rather than unflattering truths. Niceness does not hold truth in high regard, as goodness does.
Niceness will not make tough decisions, or execute justice when needed; niceness wants only to accommodate everyone, please everyone, and make everyone 'equal', even though that flies in the face of justice. Niceness is a stranger to justice, and prefers it that way.
Niceness thinks that it is virtuous to give preference to those who least merit it, or least deserve it. Niceness seeks recognition for being self-abnegating and for appeasing evil -- in fact, niceness does not acknowledge that evil exists -- except in the case of those who violate political correctness.
In fact, political correctness is one of the most recognizable faces worn by 'niceness'; the emphasis is on falsehoods and obfuscation in the name of being 'sensitive.'
May the Lord preserve us from 'nice' people. Nice people are seldom good people.
Goodness includes within itself hardness when appropriate; true goodness is not weak and feeble, but strong and fearless, willing to actively oppose evil, to confront it.
Goodness recognizes evil where it exists, and calls it by its name. Niceness refrains from judging or confronting, except when condemning those who speak unflattering and uncomfortable truths.
Goodness takes a stand, discerning and judging. Niceness takes a neutral position, so as not to judge, much less to 'condemn.' Even worse, sometimes niceness aids and abets evil, and expects praise and approbation for its 'tolerance' and 'broadmindedness' or 'compassion.'
If goodness were like the impostor, niceness, it would long ago have been extinguished altogether from lack of willingness to oppose evil.
Niceness is held in higher regard, sadly, by most Christians today, than goodness and righteousness.
It seems niceness is at bottom a part of pride: the desire to be seen by all as tolerant and accepting. It's a kind of conspicuous display of 'virtue', the kind of public posturing which caused the Pharisees to be condemned for their pride and hypocrisy.
I do understand the exasperation expressed by so many people who see the role played by this counterfeit Christianity in the destruction of the West. I suppose it's understandable that there is dismay, given the way much of Christianity has gone off the rails, adopting a psychology-based, pop-culture-ized, universalistic, one-world, no-borders belief system while continuing to call it Christianity.
This 'new and improved' Christianity knows nothing of the God of the Bible, having created a god in their image, a god who does not condemn, and does not punish, but instead is an indulgent, tolerant, all-accepting friend and buddy. Their 'god' is unfailingly nice, always the lamb and never a lion. The god of niceness is not the 'consuming fire' or the Just Judge of the Bible. That was the God of our Fathers, who was not only perfectly good but perfectly just. 'Goodness and severity' combined. As we believed in that God, our society then embodied 'goodness and severity', at least to the extent that any flawed human society can. Now we have lost the 'severity' or strength, and have thus exchanged goodness for its useless counterfeit, niceness.
God, according to the Bible, commands that we not only cleave to the good, but abhor evil. Abhor. That is a strong word, but it is not in the vocabulary of the 'niceness' cultists, hence their bland and vapid response to evil
The Christianity which has become the fad of today, with its show business style and its feel-good trappings and catchphrases, is another gospel, and it preaches a god who is only half a god, a god of bland niceness, all mercy and forgiveness and no justice.
And even many non-Christians or outright atheists actually worship this hollow idol of niceness, so it can't be blamed on Christians alone.
Whoever is ultimately to blame, and we can point fingers everywhere, the niceness will surely be the end of us; it's what brought us to where we are now, surrounded in our own country, like Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians.
Speaking of that analogy, Pat Boone's recent article about immigration used that same metaphor, which I've also used here on the blog.
I suppose it's an obvious metaphor; we are Gulliver, tied down by the Lilliputians surrounding us. And it may be that we simply don't know our own strength. It's our own false perceptions that are tying us down, including our false ideas about niceness and the real article, goodness.
We need only to look through the fog of our present era back to earlier times, when we knew and thought and believed with more clarity and strength than we do in our present bound, helpless condition.
The old strengths are still available to us, if we can only break free of our mental and spiritual bonds.
What I'm hearing and seeing is a deliberate program of making our young people believe that the Third World is our responsibility, and that being a good Christian involves feeling enormous guilt about how prosperous we are. After all, those poor people south of the 'border' have nothing, and we have everything.
Teenagers are emotional creatures, very susceptible to this kind of manipulation. Most are naive and have a tendency to want to help those who seem downtrodden or helpless, at least if those downtrodden people are Third Worlders.
So I don't blame the young people as much as I do their elders, who are just as emotionally vulnerable as the young people are. Is this another manifestation of our national adolescence? There are so many adults who seem to live as perpetual adolescents, with all the soft-headedness and gullibility that characterizes many immature young people.
One such person is a parent of one of the young folks who just came back after the guilt-trip (literally) south of the border. I am now hearing stories of how these youngsters were taken to a prison which is said to be 'controlled by gangs', and which is said to have an area where even the guards will not go, because the prisoners apparently have de facto control over that area.
Would any of you let your sons and daughters go into this prison, accompanied by a Christian chaperon who is as naive as the kids? I certainly wouldn't, especially a daughter. In today's PC climate, that is considered a 'racist' attitude, but a few decades ago it was simple common sense.
I don't hear of any concern or outrage on the part of the parents whose kids were taken into this prison to 'minister' to the criminals. Of course visiting those in prison is part of what Christians are enjoined to do. But surely some common sense should govern who goes to do this kind of thing, and under what conditions. Let grown men do this, not adolescent girls and boys with no clue about reality.
I am 100 percent certain that these parents would not let their sons and especially their daughters enter our state prison with its hardened criminals. But the Third World? They're all just victims there, of course, and we can't judge them, can we?
And another question occurs to me: Latin America was supposedly Christianized centuries ago, was it not? Why are missionaries and assorted other do-gooders, including kids, still having to bring them the Gospel?
That's a rather rhetorical question on my part; I don't believe that many Latin Americans are Christian, their beliefs being a hodgepodge of heathen superstition with various corrupted Catholic practices.
But even so, surely the many missionaries who go down there have spread the Gospel thoroughly? It seems to me that the purpose of going is to minister to the people's material needs, but why do Christians go there on seeming guilt tours? Is this part of the mission to make the young, especially, feel more connected to those who are coming to live among us? To give them more of a 'global consciousness'?
It may be noteworthy that the church sponsoring this is one of those 'seeker-sensitive' Oprah-ized churches. And though they are ostensibly Protestant, they seem to believe in 'earning' salvation by good works.
The kids, bless their idealistic hearts, are champing at the bit to go back and help those poor people 'who have nothing'.
The mother of one of the teens says that she now sees illegal immigration in a different light: these people 'have nothing', so it's understandable that they are entering our country in droves to find a 'better life.'
And just a side note: the woman in question has taken a tough line on illegals heretofore, sounding quite a bit like me at times, on the subject of the invasion. All it took was a few hearts-and-flowers stories about the poor peasants who 'have nothing', and she is suddenly full of sympathy for the illegals.
This encapsulates the average White American's response to the invasion. We are too prone to feel sympathy and pity for the poor illegals -- did you know they 'have nothing' in their countries? -- and to put our own interests last.
Our young people, as I said, are being inculcated with racial guilt, guilt over our supposed wrongs toward the have-nots of the world, and guilt for our prosperity and comfort. Protestants have not traditionally believed in self-flagellation and 'mortification of the flesh' as Catholics once did, but this is the modern equivalent, this racial guilt and a sense of enduring obligation to the downtrodden and the aggrieved have-nots of the world. So these kids will work and save money to go again next year to take care of the perpetual basket-cases of the world and thus do penance for their sin of being born White and born in a prosperous, comfortable country.
Maybe they are much better Christians than I, but then I don't pretend to be an exemplar in that regard.
At times I struggle with the question of whether I am a bad Christian or a bad human being because I am not inclined to such self-sacrifice and I don't believe we are compelled as Christians to embrace self-immolation, giving our home away to aliens, or sending our children into harm's way to make ourselves feel more virtuous.
This sending of our young to these dangerous and crime-ridden countries seems to me rather like the Old Testament stories of 'passing children through the fire', sacrificing them to the idol Moloch. That these local kids came back without having been physically harmed is beside the point; they are being indoctrinated into the multicult, which is Moloch in 21st century guise.
Again, I keep coming back to this idea of post-modern 'Christianity' as a cult of niceness, a mere empty shell of its former self.
Too many Christians today have no concept of goodness, knowing only 'niceness', which is an anemic, simpering caricature of Christian goodness. Niceness wishes only to think only good of everyone, even those who are evil, and those who are enemies of God. Niceness does not want to offend or exclude anyone. Niceness will tell flattering lies rather than unflattering truths. Niceness does not hold truth in high regard, as goodness does.
Niceness will not make tough decisions, or execute justice when needed; niceness wants only to accommodate everyone, please everyone, and make everyone 'equal', even though that flies in the face of justice. Niceness is a stranger to justice, and prefers it that way.
Niceness thinks that it is virtuous to give preference to those who least merit it, or least deserve it. Niceness seeks recognition for being self-abnegating and for appeasing evil -- in fact, niceness does not acknowledge that evil exists -- except in the case of those who violate political correctness.
In fact, political correctness is one of the most recognizable faces worn by 'niceness'; the emphasis is on falsehoods and obfuscation in the name of being 'sensitive.'
May the Lord preserve us from 'nice' people. Nice people are seldom good people.
Goodness includes within itself hardness when appropriate; true goodness is not weak and feeble, but strong and fearless, willing to actively oppose evil, to confront it.
Goodness recognizes evil where it exists, and calls it by its name. Niceness refrains from judging or confronting, except when condemning those who speak unflattering and uncomfortable truths.
Goodness takes a stand, discerning and judging. Niceness takes a neutral position, so as not to judge, much less to 'condemn.' Even worse, sometimes niceness aids and abets evil, and expects praise and approbation for its 'tolerance' and 'broadmindedness' or 'compassion.'
If goodness were like the impostor, niceness, it would long ago have been extinguished altogether from lack of willingness to oppose evil.
Niceness is held in higher regard, sadly, by most Christians today, than goodness and righteousness.
It seems niceness is at bottom a part of pride: the desire to be seen by all as tolerant and accepting. It's a kind of conspicuous display of 'virtue', the kind of public posturing which caused the Pharisees to be condemned for their pride and hypocrisy.
I do understand the exasperation expressed by so many people who see the role played by this counterfeit Christianity in the destruction of the West. I suppose it's understandable that there is dismay, given the way much of Christianity has gone off the rails, adopting a psychology-based, pop-culture-ized, universalistic, one-world, no-borders belief system while continuing to call it Christianity.
This 'new and improved' Christianity knows nothing of the God of the Bible, having created a god in their image, a god who does not condemn, and does not punish, but instead is an indulgent, tolerant, all-accepting friend and buddy. Their 'god' is unfailingly nice, always the lamb and never a lion. The god of niceness is not the 'consuming fire' or the Just Judge of the Bible. That was the God of our Fathers, who was not only perfectly good but perfectly just. 'Goodness and severity' combined. As we believed in that God, our society then embodied 'goodness and severity', at least to the extent that any flawed human society can. Now we have lost the 'severity' or strength, and have thus exchanged goodness for its useless counterfeit, niceness.
God, according to the Bible, commands that we not only cleave to the good, but abhor evil. Abhor. That is a strong word, but it is not in the vocabulary of the 'niceness' cultists, hence their bland and vapid response to evil
The Christianity which has become the fad of today, with its show business style and its feel-good trappings and catchphrases, is another gospel, and it preaches a god who is only half a god, a god of bland niceness, all mercy and forgiveness and no justice.
And even many non-Christians or outright atheists actually worship this hollow idol of niceness, so it can't be blamed on Christians alone.
Whoever is ultimately to blame, and we can point fingers everywhere, the niceness will surely be the end of us; it's what brought us to where we are now, surrounded in our own country, like Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians.
Speaking of that analogy, Pat Boone's recent article about immigration used that same metaphor, which I've also used here on the blog.
I suppose it's an obvious metaphor; we are Gulliver, tied down by the Lilliputians surrounding us. And it may be that we simply don't know our own strength. It's our own false perceptions that are tying us down, including our false ideas about niceness and the real article, goodness.
We need only to look through the fog of our present era back to earlier times, when we knew and thought and believed with more clarity and strength than we do in our present bound, helpless condition.
The old strengths are still available to us, if we can only break free of our mental and spiritual bonds.
Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Hypocrisy, Multicultists, Political Correctness
0 comment Saturday, August 30, 2014 | admin
I like this piece; it expresses many of the same thoughts I have had about "political correctness" which is merely one of the more smarmy and obnoxious manifestations of liberalism.
The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.
Nor do I have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.
This is leftism's great strength: It's all white lies.''
It is true that conservatism, real conservatism, is grounded in a realistic attitude toward life, and in an honest appraisal of flawed human nature. In that sense, many of today's 'conservatives' and Republicans have abandoned that realism and have, perhaps unwittingly, bought into the liberal view of the world and of people. The liberal view is generally a utopian, wishful-thinking ideology. It tends to divide people up simplistically according to how closely they conform to liberal morality: those who engage in the pretense and flattery that we call "political correctness" are of superior character, while those who do not are classed as "mean-spirited" and hateful. Many Republicans and self-styled conservatives share the liberal predilection for quashing any frank speech which steps on the wrong toes; if we speak harshly but truthfully about illegal immigrants, we might be called "hateful" by a Republican almost as often as a Democrat. We have seen how skillful many Republican politicians are at pandering to various protected groups, and how they are just as practiced at uttering 'white lies' as are the Democrat politicians.
So the culture of white lies, craven flattery, and rose-colored glasses is not confined to one political party.
As a Christian, I am aware of how the Bible warns us against "flattering lips" and a lying tongue:
They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
- Psalms 12:2
The Bible also tells us repeatedly that we are not to be respecters of persons, and that includes giving preference to the poor or to the rich; we are not told that respecting the persons of 'victim groups' is permissible, any more than respecting the person of the rich or the famous.
Of course if someone is truly a victim, they are entitled to justice and sympathy where appropriate, but thanks to liberalism and its warped "compassion", everybody, including the most heinous criminals, is portrayed as a victim. Terrorists and mass killers have their vocal champions among the Politically Correct because of this twisted notion of 'victimhood.'
So our society, in its obsession with exalting 'victims', has become enmeshed in lying, distorting, and dissimulating.
But because it is all done in a "good cause", to spare someone's feelings, or to rectify some claimed injustice, however distant in time, it is seen as moral and noble. Thus the evils of lying and hypocrisy are called good.
These issues came to mind whenever our President or some other official spoke fawningly and flatteringly about Islam as a "Religion of Peace." Secretary of State Rice spoke of the "benevolence that is at the heart of Islam." When I discussed this with fellow Christians, who personally did not buy the 'religion of peace' cant, they justified the flattery and guile as being simply "diplomatic." But if lying and dissimulating is wrong, do we call it right because the need for "diplomacy" outweighed the commandment to be truthful?
Usually when I asked this question, somebody would respond, "well, do you expect the President to say Islam is a false, evil religion? He can't say that." No, he can't say it publicly, but are those the only choices? Being honest does not necessitate that we insult or confront or provoke everyone with blunt candor, but it certainly requires that we not truckle or flatter, especially when the object of our flattery is not the least deserving of praise or compliments.
We are living in an age when mealy-mouthed 'niceness', a bland, limp-wristed desire to placate and mollify, is considered the highest virtue. But I am left to wonder: is the motivation fear? Are we afraid of those we flatter and fawn over? Do we think that our niceness will disarm them and lead them to spare us, or do we simply want to ingratiate ourselves and buy goodwill and benevolence? Or is it a pharasaical desire to appear morally superior, like the Pharisee in the Gospels who loudly thanked God that he was not like other men, a sinner?
Do even the liberals believe their flattery and "white lies" or is it just a pose? Or are they speaking the lies as "affirmations", believing that saying it enough will make it so?
I have heard it said countless times by many people of all political opinions that Christianity is the cause of almost every social ill of our times; leftists, of the atheist or anti-Christian variety, think Christianity leads to xenophobia and persecution, and they gleefully cite the Inquisition, the Crusades, and of course the 'witch trials', slavery, and every other crime of history. Then, I have ultra-liberal Christian acquaintances, who see Christian doctrines as the basis for their pacifist, multiculturalist, all-'tolerant', 'progressive' ideology. According to them, the Bible supports open borders, mass immigration, socialism/globalism, the whole gamut of leftist ideas.
Here,Fjordman's latest essay seems to indict Christianity:
A Christian Background for Political Correctness?
As a non-Christian, I have been complimenting Christianity for contributing immensely to many of the positive aspects of our culture. But precisely because Christianity has so profoundly shaped our culture, isn�t it plausible that it may also, at least indirectly, have contributed to some of the flaws that currently ail us as well?
According to the blogger Conservative Swede, whom I have debated this issue with at some length, Christian ethics is more unfettered in modern liberalism than it is in Christianity itself. The West, and Europe in particular, is sometimes labeled as "post-Christian," but this is only partly true. We have scrapped the Christian religion, but we have still retained some of the moral restraints associated with it, which have been so mired into our cultural DNA that we probably don�t even think about them as Christian anymore. Yet our humanitarian ideas are secular versions of Christian compassion, and it is Christian or post-Christian compassion that compels us to keep feeding and funding the unsustainable birth rates in other cultures, even actively hostile ones. Likewise, there are elements of Christian thought, such as universalism, that could be seen as the inspiration behind our one-world Multiculturalists.
[...]
One major component of Western self-loathing is the idea that we should we be punished for crimes, perceived or real, committed by our ancestors before we were even born. It could be argued that this idea has its roots in Christian thinking, in the concept of original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, but where all their descendants are subject to its effects. Christian ethics have proved more durable than Christian beliefs. Even when we have supposedly left the religion behind, we still believe we have to make atonement for the sins of our forefathers, but since we no longer believe that Christ has made that sacrifice for us and washed away our sins, we end up sacrificing ourselves instead.
This proves that unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''
There are quite a few conservatives, of the secular sort, who blame Christianity for the West's decline and possible demise; some of these people are very bitterly anti-Christian, and suggest that the West can only survive if we renounce the 'weak' religion of Christianity. Fjordman is not as extreme as those critics, but I think he somewhat caricatures Christianity, and takes the modern, liberal version of Christianity as the norm, or the standard.
Some of the extreme critics of Christianity as the supposed destroyer of the West assert that we should find a new religion which will serve us better; some even suggest that we go back to the pre-Christian religions of Europe. Now supposing that it were even possible to reconstruct the old religions of Europe, which I doubt, this idea seems wrong-headed. The underlying idea is that a religion is simply a man-made institution or belief system which is meant to serve us: if it does not serve some purpose of our own, we simply shop around for a religion that suits us better, or tinker together a religion of our own. This presupposes that there is no God, a God who is and who exists, with a nature of his own. In effect, this is essentially an atheistic attitude: the idea that God exists only insofar as we construct him or conceive of him, and thus we can make a religion that is useful to us.
Fjordman cites the Christian doctrine of original sin, and blames it for our present 'guilt complex' in the West. To be fair, the doctrine of original sin does not mean that I am guilty for the personal sins of my ancestors. And Christians believe everyone, of every race and nation, is equally a sinner, but the leftist idea of Western guilt convicts Westerners only; according to the popular PC belief, only Western white people carry ancestral guilt. Western white nations are endlessly castigated for slavery, while the liberals never condemn the present-day slavery in the Third World, or the past guilt of the Arab nations in the slave trade. Liberals, influenced by Rousseau and his 'noble savage' idea, seem to see Third World peoples as innocent and childlike, capable only of being victimized, of being sinned against but not sinning. 'Victim' groups are seemingly exempted from accountability, much as we exempt minor children.
The modern idea of a uniquely Western guilt and the need for 'atonement' via self-abasement is not intrinsic to Christian belief.
I would say, and have said, that Christianity in past centuries did not emasculate the West; far from it. Were it not for the efforts of Charles Martel, El Cid, John Sobieski, and the efforts of the Crusaders, Islam would long ago have swallowed up Europe. Our Christian forebears had firm defenses against invaders; they did not understand Christianity as requiring that they welcome mass invasion by 'strangers', as today's Open Borders fanatics believe. They did not generally believe that Christianity demanded pacifism and passivity; certainly there were some who championed such ideas, but they were not the dominant group in Christendom.
Our Christian ancestors, who practiced a "muscular Christianity" that has all but vanished, were not guilt-ridden doormats to the world as we in the West are; did they misunderstand their Christian faith for all those centuries? Are we moderns and post-moderns the first to "understand" the supposed message of self-destruction inherent in Christianity? I would say, in our secular and confused age that we are the ones who have a corrupted form of Christianity. Christianity does not call on us to lay down before our enemies and offer our necks for the chopping block.
Those who say that Christianity is to blame for the West's enfeebled condition are missing the obvious fact that, were it not for the efforts of their Crusader ancestors, Europe as we have known it would never have come to be.
Christianity in our modern times has been, like our society as a whole, in a state of imbalance. As Fjordman mentions,
..unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''
But the overemphasis on the feminine aspects is not representative of historic Christianity.
It's no accident that liberal Christians tend to exclude the Old Testament; David, in the Old Testament, calls God a "man of war." The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for war as well as a time for peace.
I am not a theologian or even much of a Bible scholar; I claim no authority on the subject, but simply as a daily reader of my Bible I know that there is wholeness and balance in the Biblical message; there is a place for strength and for the more masculine virtues, as well as the gentler and softer ones.
If the West falls, thanks to our dissolving borders and to the Islamic onslaught, Christianity is not the culprit; it is too easy to scapegoat Christianity. Our forefathers for 1300 years withstood Islam and they defended their territories and their way of life successfully. And they did so as Christians. The modern-day distortions of Biblical teachings, and the secularized perversions thereof, called 'leftism' are to blame for our present loss of nerve and will.
I continue to think that if the West fails to rediscover its historic faith and purpose, there will not be much of a future for the West.
The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.
Nor do I have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.
This is leftism's great strength: It's all white lies.''
It is true that conservatism, real conservatism, is grounded in a realistic attitude toward life, and in an honest appraisal of flawed human nature. In that sense, many of today's 'conservatives' and Republicans have abandoned that realism and have, perhaps unwittingly, bought into the liberal view of the world and of people. The liberal view is generally a utopian, wishful-thinking ideology. It tends to divide people up simplistically according to how closely they conform to liberal morality: those who engage in the pretense and flattery that we call "political correctness" are of superior character, while those who do not are classed as "mean-spirited" and hateful. Many Republicans and self-styled conservatives share the liberal predilection for quashing any frank speech which steps on the wrong toes; if we speak harshly but truthfully about illegal immigrants, we might be called "hateful" by a Republican almost as often as a Democrat. We have seen how skillful many Republican politicians are at pandering to various protected groups, and how they are just as practiced at uttering 'white lies' as are the Democrat politicians.
So the culture of white lies, craven flattery, and rose-colored glasses is not confined to one political party.
As a Christian, I am aware of how the Bible warns us against "flattering lips" and a lying tongue:
They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
- Psalms 12:2
The Bible also tells us repeatedly that we are not to be respecters of persons, and that includes giving preference to the poor or to the rich; we are not told that respecting the persons of 'victim groups' is permissible, any more than respecting the person of the rich or the famous.
Of course if someone is truly a victim, they are entitled to justice and sympathy where appropriate, but thanks to liberalism and its warped "compassion", everybody, including the most heinous criminals, is portrayed as a victim. Terrorists and mass killers have their vocal champions among the Politically Correct because of this twisted notion of 'victimhood.'
So our society, in its obsession with exalting 'victims', has become enmeshed in lying, distorting, and dissimulating.
But because it is all done in a "good cause", to spare someone's feelings, or to rectify some claimed injustice, however distant in time, it is seen as moral and noble. Thus the evils of lying and hypocrisy are called good.
These issues came to mind whenever our President or some other official spoke fawningly and flatteringly about Islam as a "Religion of Peace." Secretary of State Rice spoke of the "benevolence that is at the heart of Islam." When I discussed this with fellow Christians, who personally did not buy the 'religion of peace' cant, they justified the flattery and guile as being simply "diplomatic." But if lying and dissimulating is wrong, do we call it right because the need for "diplomacy" outweighed the commandment to be truthful?
Usually when I asked this question, somebody would respond, "well, do you expect the President to say Islam is a false, evil religion? He can't say that." No, he can't say it publicly, but are those the only choices? Being honest does not necessitate that we insult or confront or provoke everyone with blunt candor, but it certainly requires that we not truckle or flatter, especially when the object of our flattery is not the least deserving of praise or compliments.
We are living in an age when mealy-mouthed 'niceness', a bland, limp-wristed desire to placate and mollify, is considered the highest virtue. But I am left to wonder: is the motivation fear? Are we afraid of those we flatter and fawn over? Do we think that our niceness will disarm them and lead them to spare us, or do we simply want to ingratiate ourselves and buy goodwill and benevolence? Or is it a pharasaical desire to appear morally superior, like the Pharisee in the Gospels who loudly thanked God that he was not like other men, a sinner?
Do even the liberals believe their flattery and "white lies" or is it just a pose? Or are they speaking the lies as "affirmations", believing that saying it enough will make it so?
I have heard it said countless times by many people of all political opinions that Christianity is the cause of almost every social ill of our times; leftists, of the atheist or anti-Christian variety, think Christianity leads to xenophobia and persecution, and they gleefully cite the Inquisition, the Crusades, and of course the 'witch trials', slavery, and every other crime of history. Then, I have ultra-liberal Christian acquaintances, who see Christian doctrines as the basis for their pacifist, multiculturalist, all-'tolerant', 'progressive' ideology. According to them, the Bible supports open borders, mass immigration, socialism/globalism, the whole gamut of leftist ideas.
Here,Fjordman's latest essay seems to indict Christianity:
A Christian Background for Political Correctness?
As a non-Christian, I have been complimenting Christianity for contributing immensely to many of the positive aspects of our culture. But precisely because Christianity has so profoundly shaped our culture, isn�t it plausible that it may also, at least indirectly, have contributed to some of the flaws that currently ail us as well?
According to the blogger Conservative Swede, whom I have debated this issue with at some length, Christian ethics is more unfettered in modern liberalism than it is in Christianity itself. The West, and Europe in particular, is sometimes labeled as "post-Christian," but this is only partly true. We have scrapped the Christian religion, but we have still retained some of the moral restraints associated with it, which have been so mired into our cultural DNA that we probably don�t even think about them as Christian anymore. Yet our humanitarian ideas are secular versions of Christian compassion, and it is Christian or post-Christian compassion that compels us to keep feeding and funding the unsustainable birth rates in other cultures, even actively hostile ones. Likewise, there are elements of Christian thought, such as universalism, that could be seen as the inspiration behind our one-world Multiculturalists.
[...]
One major component of Western self-loathing is the idea that we should we be punished for crimes, perceived or real, committed by our ancestors before we were even born. It could be argued that this idea has its roots in Christian thinking, in the concept of original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, but where all their descendants are subject to its effects. Christian ethics have proved more durable than Christian beliefs. Even when we have supposedly left the religion behind, we still believe we have to make atonement for the sins of our forefathers, but since we no longer believe that Christ has made that sacrifice for us and washed away our sins, we end up sacrificing ourselves instead.
This proves that unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''
There are quite a few conservatives, of the secular sort, who blame Christianity for the West's decline and possible demise; some of these people are very bitterly anti-Christian, and suggest that the West can only survive if we renounce the 'weak' religion of Christianity. Fjordman is not as extreme as those critics, but I think he somewhat caricatures Christianity, and takes the modern, liberal version of Christianity as the norm, or the standard.
Some of the extreme critics of Christianity as the supposed destroyer of the West assert that we should find a new religion which will serve us better; some even suggest that we go back to the pre-Christian religions of Europe. Now supposing that it were even possible to reconstruct the old religions of Europe, which I doubt, this idea seems wrong-headed. The underlying idea is that a religion is simply a man-made institution or belief system which is meant to serve us: if it does not serve some purpose of our own, we simply shop around for a religion that suits us better, or tinker together a religion of our own. This presupposes that there is no God, a God who is and who exists, with a nature of his own. In effect, this is essentially an atheistic attitude: the idea that God exists only insofar as we construct him or conceive of him, and thus we can make a religion that is useful to us.
Fjordman cites the Christian doctrine of original sin, and blames it for our present 'guilt complex' in the West. To be fair, the doctrine of original sin does not mean that I am guilty for the personal sins of my ancestors. And Christians believe everyone, of every race and nation, is equally a sinner, but the leftist idea of Western guilt convicts Westerners only; according to the popular PC belief, only Western white people carry ancestral guilt. Western white nations are endlessly castigated for slavery, while the liberals never condemn the present-day slavery in the Third World, or the past guilt of the Arab nations in the slave trade. Liberals, influenced by Rousseau and his 'noble savage' idea, seem to see Third World peoples as innocent and childlike, capable only of being victimized, of being sinned against but not sinning. 'Victim' groups are seemingly exempted from accountability, much as we exempt minor children.
The modern idea of a uniquely Western guilt and the need for 'atonement' via self-abasement is not intrinsic to Christian belief.
I would say, and have said, that Christianity in past centuries did not emasculate the West; far from it. Were it not for the efforts of Charles Martel, El Cid, John Sobieski, and the efforts of the Crusaders, Islam would long ago have swallowed up Europe. Our Christian forebears had firm defenses against invaders; they did not understand Christianity as requiring that they welcome mass invasion by 'strangers', as today's Open Borders fanatics believe. They did not generally believe that Christianity demanded pacifism and passivity; certainly there were some who championed such ideas, but they were not the dominant group in Christendom.
Our Christian ancestors, who practiced a "muscular Christianity" that has all but vanished, were not guilt-ridden doormats to the world as we in the West are; did they misunderstand their Christian faith for all those centuries? Are we moderns and post-moderns the first to "understand" the supposed message of self-destruction inherent in Christianity? I would say, in our secular and confused age that we are the ones who have a corrupted form of Christianity. Christianity does not call on us to lay down before our enemies and offer our necks for the chopping block.
Those who say that Christianity is to blame for the West's enfeebled condition are missing the obvious fact that, were it not for the efforts of their Crusader ancestors, Europe as we have known it would never have come to be.
Christianity in our modern times has been, like our society as a whole, in a state of imbalance. As Fjordman mentions,
..unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''
But the overemphasis on the feminine aspects is not representative of historic Christianity.
It's no accident that liberal Christians tend to exclude the Old Testament; David, in the Old Testament, calls God a "man of war." The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for war as well as a time for peace.
I am not a theologian or even much of a Bible scholar; I claim no authority on the subject, but simply as a daily reader of my Bible I know that there is wholeness and balance in the Biblical message; there is a place for strength and for the more masculine virtues, as well as the gentler and softer ones.
If the West falls, thanks to our dissolving borders and to the Islamic onslaught, Christianity is not the culprit; it is too easy to scapegoat Christianity. Our forefathers for 1300 years withstood Islam and they defended their territories and their way of life successfully. And they did so as Christians. The modern-day distortions of Biblical teachings, and the secularized perversions thereof, called 'leftism' are to blame for our present loss of nerve and will.
I continue to think that if the West fails to rediscover its historic faith and purpose, there will not be much of a future for the West.
Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Political Correctness, Western Civilization
0 comment Friday, August 29, 2014 | admin
From the Telegraph, a surprisingly favorable article about American evangelicals, in the wake of the Harold Camping ''rapture'' scare of the last few days.
All the sneers and jokes in the mass media about the 'end of the world' that wasn't are a sharp contrast to the way they treat non-Christian 'prophecies.' The so-called Mayan Calendar prophecies about 2012 come to mind. There has been endless discussion of this Mayan prediction as we approach the fateful year. Even some professing Christians seem to be concerned about this supposed impending doom.
The media also devote a lot of space -- and respect -- to new-agey things like the writings of Nostradamus, a purported 'seer.' Nostradamus was a priest, so he is not in the same category as the third world shamen who are so revered by the new age followers and leftists in general. But the methods he used to make his predictions involved what the church would call occultism: scrying, for example.
How many TV documentaries have been made about Nostradamus? I think most Americans today know more about his prophecies than those of the Bible.
I've read his quatrains, years ago, before I was a Christian.Even then, I could see that his quatrains were so cryptic and so vague that one could read almost anything in them. They end up being like Rohrschach ink-blots, showing you what's in your own mind, absolutely subjective.
Be all that as it may, Camping's false prophecies should never have received the coverage they did, but the media couldn't resist it. So much potential for jokes and cheap shots at crazy Bible-thumpers up in the hills. They love that kind of thing. They couldn't let it go to waste.
But Camping and his predictions should have been ignored by the media. From a Christian viewpoint, his predictions about 'the end of the world' or the 'return of the Lord' are wrong simply because Christians believe that no one knows exactly the date or the time of these things. Therefore, anybody who claims to know the date or the hour is a charlatan, a fraud, a false prophet, a false shepherd. Any Christian who fell for this, shame on you for not knowing better.
Personally I don't know anybody who took it seriously, though no doubt there are some.
But the world has its share of gullible and undiscerning people, who are prey for all the wolves in sheep's clothing. That's a sad commentary on the world today, and it applies to the secular sphere as much as the religious.
Meantime, the media will make as much hay out of this 'failed prophecy' as they can, and many nonbelievers will be even more hardened against Christianity because they now think it's been discredited entirely.
The linked article alludes to 'Rapture parties' among nonbelievers, and sad to say, such people are partying because I think, deep down, some of them wonder at times if the Christian message is true. They exhibit a ''certain fearful looking for of judgement'' and that's not a pleasant state to be in. So now that they have gotten a reprieve as it were, and have been reassured that this world is all there is, they will go on with their lifelong party and go back to somnambulism for now.
I think that everybody senses that we are on the brink of something, but most hope to sleep and party their way through it.
All the sneers and jokes in the mass media about the 'end of the world' that wasn't are a sharp contrast to the way they treat non-Christian 'prophecies.' The so-called Mayan Calendar prophecies about 2012 come to mind. There has been endless discussion of this Mayan prediction as we approach the fateful year. Even some professing Christians seem to be concerned about this supposed impending doom.
The media also devote a lot of space -- and respect -- to new-agey things like the writings of Nostradamus, a purported 'seer.' Nostradamus was a priest, so he is not in the same category as the third world shamen who are so revered by the new age followers and leftists in general. But the methods he used to make his predictions involved what the church would call occultism: scrying, for example.
How many TV documentaries have been made about Nostradamus? I think most Americans today know more about his prophecies than those of the Bible.
I've read his quatrains, years ago, before I was a Christian.Even then, I could see that his quatrains were so cryptic and so vague that one could read almost anything in them. They end up being like Rohrschach ink-blots, showing you what's in your own mind, absolutely subjective.
Be all that as it may, Camping's false prophecies should never have received the coverage they did, but the media couldn't resist it. So much potential for jokes and cheap shots at crazy Bible-thumpers up in the hills. They love that kind of thing. They couldn't let it go to waste.
But Camping and his predictions should have been ignored by the media. From a Christian viewpoint, his predictions about 'the end of the world' or the 'return of the Lord' are wrong simply because Christians believe that no one knows exactly the date or the time of these things. Therefore, anybody who claims to know the date or the hour is a charlatan, a fraud, a false prophet, a false shepherd. Any Christian who fell for this, shame on you for not knowing better.
Personally I don't know anybody who took it seriously, though no doubt there are some.
But the world has its share of gullible and undiscerning people, who are prey for all the wolves in sheep's clothing. That's a sad commentary on the world today, and it applies to the secular sphere as much as the religious.
Meantime, the media will make as much hay out of this 'failed prophecy' as they can, and many nonbelievers will be even more hardened against Christianity because they now think it's been discredited entirely.
The linked article alludes to 'Rapture parties' among nonbelievers, and sad to say, such people are partying because I think, deep down, some of them wonder at times if the Christian message is true. They exhibit a ''certain fearful looking for of judgement'' and that's not a pleasant state to be in. So now that they have gotten a reprieve as it were, and have been reassured that this world is all there is, they will go on with their lifelong party and go back to somnambulism for now.
I think that everybody senses that we are on the brink of something, but most hope to sleep and party their way through it.
Labels: Anti-Christianity, Christianity, Media Bias
0 comment Monday, August 18, 2014 | admin
I think it's easy to guess how this unfortunate story will be used by our media and our current regime.
As we can see in this op-ed piece, all of us on the right are going to be tarred for the shooting of the notorious abortionist, George Tiller. The piece suggests that any of us who oppose abortion, including and especially ''late-term'' abortion, are as guilty as the man who pulled the trigger.
With Tiller slaying, abortion foes lose their moral standing
By midafternoon Sunday, authorities had a 50-something man in custody in connection with the murder of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller, killed while serving as an usher at his church.
So far, we know little about the suspect, other than that he was driving a blue Ford when the cops stopped him outside Gardner.
However, the motive for the crime we can all surmise, given the vitriolic rhetoric aimed at Tiller these past couple of decades by anti-abortion activists.
And if we�re right about that, then we know the identities of his accomplices.
They include everyone who has ever called Tiller�s late-term abortion clinic a murder mill.
Whoever called Tiller "Tiller the Killer."
Groups that fomented hate toward a man who, rightly or wrongly, believed he was serving a noble purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions.
Hate. Not heated opposition. Not strong disagreement.
But blind hatred.
The kind of hate that would prompt some maniac to take a gun into a church and shoot a man to death in front of friends and family.
His accomplices know they have blood on their hands, which might explain why they were quick to issue statements expressing disapproval of Tiller�s murder.
When we consider, however, that the left does not accord those of us on the right any moral standing to begin with, I suppose we haven't lost anything really. But we can be sure that this story will be milked for all it's worth to further criminalize the right.
This AP article mentions that the suspected shooter has an Internet history of expressing anti-abortion views. It should give us pause to notice how quickly, in cases like this, someone's Internet history is scrutinized and mined for anything to make them look guilty.
As of now, however, we don't know for certain what the motive was for this shooting, though the AP story certainly makes the suspect look guilty, as does this AP story, which ties him to 'anti-government' groups. It's almost like he was sent from Central Casting to fill the role of the 'terrorist' militiaman, as described by our 'homeland security' people. He even, according to the article, has a 'Christian fish symbol with the word Jesus inside' on his car. Imagine that!
At Vox Day's blog, there is quite a lengthy thread on this incident with many people expressing little sympathy for Tiller.
Vox himself questions what kind of church would welcome this man with his abortion practice. That thought had occurred to me, too, but it seems that he must attend a very liberal, abortion-accepting church. For the church be able to turn a blind eye to someone's having aborted 60,000 babies, as he claims to have done, is rather staggering.
This website documents the long-running protests in Wichita against this doctor's clinic, and the procedures being done there. If you read through the site, you will read of some of the practices which one of Vox Day's commenters alluded to in the thread linked above -- such as the 'extra services' offered, like baptism of the aborted babies, handprints and footprints, etc. How ironic is that? It certainly suggests a kind of brazenness at the very least.
There is also the political question of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's connections to Tiller.
The Sebelius nomination has been stridently opposed by pro-life advocates who have cited her personal and financial ties to the abortion industry, in addition to her pro-abortion record. However, their concerns were not aired in Sebelius' first two confirmation hearings.''
Still, I stop short of condoning the killing of abortionists, no matter how reprehensible we find their activities. This seems to be one of those situations where the Scripture ''vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'' applies.
It is really regrettable that this incident will not only prove futile in stopping late-term abortions, but will further stimulate the left's witch-hunt against the right. The shooter was a godsend for the left. He embodies everything they hate: a White male, Christian, pro-lifer, anti-government ''militia type," if we are to believe the reports. And the crime was committed with a gun.
The end result will be a more militant left-wing jihad against the right, and against guns in particular. It will probably result in a further curtailment of our freedom of speech and assembly, and more surveillance on the Internet and elsewhere.
This incident was made to order for the left.
As we can see in this op-ed piece, all of us on the right are going to be tarred for the shooting of the notorious abortionist, George Tiller. The piece suggests that any of us who oppose abortion, including and especially ''late-term'' abortion, are as guilty as the man who pulled the trigger.
With Tiller slaying, abortion foes lose their moral standing
By midafternoon Sunday, authorities had a 50-something man in custody in connection with the murder of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller, killed while serving as an usher at his church.
So far, we know little about the suspect, other than that he was driving a blue Ford when the cops stopped him outside Gardner.
However, the motive for the crime we can all surmise, given the vitriolic rhetoric aimed at Tiller these past couple of decades by anti-abortion activists.
And if we�re right about that, then we know the identities of his accomplices.
They include everyone who has ever called Tiller�s late-term abortion clinic a murder mill.
Whoever called Tiller "Tiller the Killer."
Groups that fomented hate toward a man who, rightly or wrongly, believed he was serving a noble purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions.
Hate. Not heated opposition. Not strong disagreement.
But blind hatred.
The kind of hate that would prompt some maniac to take a gun into a church and shoot a man to death in front of friends and family.
His accomplices know they have blood on their hands, which might explain why they were quick to issue statements expressing disapproval of Tiller�s murder.
When we consider, however, that the left does not accord those of us on the right any moral standing to begin with, I suppose we haven't lost anything really. But we can be sure that this story will be milked for all it's worth to further criminalize the right.
This AP article mentions that the suspected shooter has an Internet history of expressing anti-abortion views. It should give us pause to notice how quickly, in cases like this, someone's Internet history is scrutinized and mined for anything to make them look guilty.
As of now, however, we don't know for certain what the motive was for this shooting, though the AP story certainly makes the suspect look guilty, as does this AP story, which ties him to 'anti-government' groups. It's almost like he was sent from Central Casting to fill the role of the 'terrorist' militiaman, as described by our 'homeland security' people. He even, according to the article, has a 'Christian fish symbol with the word Jesus inside' on his car. Imagine that!
At Vox Day's blog, there is quite a lengthy thread on this incident with many people expressing little sympathy for Tiller.
Vox himself questions what kind of church would welcome this man with his abortion practice. That thought had occurred to me, too, but it seems that he must attend a very liberal, abortion-accepting church. For the church be able to turn a blind eye to someone's having aborted 60,000 babies, as he claims to have done, is rather staggering.
This website documents the long-running protests in Wichita against this doctor's clinic, and the procedures being done there. If you read through the site, you will read of some of the practices which one of Vox Day's commenters alluded to in the thread linked above -- such as the 'extra services' offered, like baptism of the aborted babies, handprints and footprints, etc. How ironic is that? It certainly suggests a kind of brazenness at the very least.
There is also the political question of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's connections to Tiller.
The Sebelius nomination has been stridently opposed by pro-life advocates who have cited her personal and financial ties to the abortion industry, in addition to her pro-abortion record. However, their concerns were not aired in Sebelius' first two confirmation hearings.''
Still, I stop short of condoning the killing of abortionists, no matter how reprehensible we find their activities. This seems to be one of those situations where the Scripture ''vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'' applies.
It is really regrettable that this incident will not only prove futile in stopping late-term abortions, but will further stimulate the left's witch-hunt against the right. The shooter was a godsend for the left. He embodies everything they hate: a White male, Christian, pro-lifer, anti-government ''militia type," if we are to believe the reports. And the crime was committed with a gun.
The end result will be a more militant left-wing jihad against the right, and against guns in particular. It will probably result in a further curtailment of our freedom of speech and assembly, and more surveillance on the Internet and elsewhere.
This incident was made to order for the left.
Labels: Abortion Pro-Life, Anti-Christianity, Christianity, Leftism, Media Bias, Second Amendment
0 comment Tuesday, August 12, 2014 | admin
These days, in all the debate and rancor over mass immigration and ethnic division, Christians are getting battered from both sides: I have heard many people who are opposing multiculturalism and the breakdown of nations condemn Christianity as the cause of the West's self-immolation. And then the Open Borders fanatics and the multicultists have pummeled Christians with our Bible, telling us that God wants us to open wide our gates and welcome the immigrant, illegal or legal. Michael Gerson's article in the Washington Post, (H/T Lawrence Auster at VFR), excoriates Christians who are 'nativists' for their 'national chauvinism' and 'rage.'
Those of us who are Christians, with a traditional perspective sometimes find it difficult to give Biblical answers to the liberals like Gerson, who are brazenly Bible-thumping in support of their political agenda. I think they believe they can shame us out of our 'nativism,' and sadly, maybe their tactics succeed with many Christians who tend to go along with social trends. And believing in a soppy egalitarianism and universalism is popular these days, especially for many ostensibly conservative Christians who have fallen in with the 'emergent church' movement.
But here is one Christian perspective on the Bible and immigration. Rev. Childress talks about the religious activists' support for illegal immigrants based on their interpretation of the world 'sojourner'. For example, there are Biblical passages which God enjoins the people of Israel to welcome the sojourner:
The Bible is full of stories of sojourners, strangers without homes, whom God called people to protect. The Israelites "God's chosen people" were themselves sojourners for 40 years after the exodus from Egypt as they entered the promised land. God did not let the Israelites forget that they had been without a homeland for such a long time; the ethic of welcoming the sojourner was woven into the very fabric of the Israelite confederacy. It was more than an ethic, it was a command of God. 'Do not mistreat or oppress a stranger; you know how it feels to be a stranger, because you were sojourners in the land of Egypt' (Exodus 23:9)." p. 1
As these excerpts point out, the Bible in a great many places uses "sojourner" to refer to those who are in a location which is not their original homeland. However, it is clear that while a sojourner shares some characteristics with an immigrant, the two are in very different pursuits.
Using the term sojourner as a kind of proof-text for political statements about immigration clouds the issue because many people of faith find it hard to "argue against the Bible." Paul W. Lewis, an author on Christian engagement of social issues and a former missionary, admits "I have been greatly bothered by the way some people have used the term 'sojourner' to back up their own idea about immigrants. It was a totally different situation back then. We could also use the word 'traveler' today."
Childress says that the class of people called 'sojourners' were mainly temporary guests or travelers, in some cases refugees who were fleeing some troubles in their homelands. These sojourners who would be more like today's 'refugees' were not expected to stay permanently. In fact, even in our country, refugees were at one time in our history considered only temporary guests until they could be repatriated to their homelands. It's odd how even in my lifetime the attitude has changed; it used to be a given that most people, given a choice, would prefer the land of their birth. It was just assumed that a people would be happiest and most suited to their homelands, among others of their own people. At what point did we discard that most basic human assumption? Don't we all feel, deep down, that home is the preferred place to be? We have so many proverbs and folk-sayings which indicate our attachment to 'home.'
Be it ever so humble... and 'East or West, home is best.' And in the past it was implicit that home meant not just the house we live in, which may not be a permanent address, but our homeland, and for many of us our home state, our hometown, where our attachments are. What happened to that regard we once had for the natural ties which bind us to our people and our homeland? Now, everybody, regardless of political leanings, seems to accept this liberal notion that people are innately nomadic, searching for the cushiest and easiest conditions. Home and kin are now regarded as trivial; what matters is, apparently, A Better Life, which it seems can only be found in our country. How did we come to this? We Americans are in the unfortunate position of living in a country which is seen as the world's cornucopia, the dispenser of goodies and Better Lives for the whole world. There is no longer any need or desire, apparently, for anybody in the less prosperous countries to better themselves there, or to improve their homeland; far better to get an airline ticket to America, or pay a human smuggler a bundle of money to bring them to the Promised Land. This situation is not what the Bible is talking about in those passages about 'sojourners.'
Our country is THE destination of choice for most of the world's covetous have-nots. And the last time I looked, the Bible forbids us to covet our neighbor's goods. Poor people don't get a pass on that; coveting is not justified by being less fortunate, and stealing and defrauding are also sins. Yet we excuse the coveting, stealing, and bearing false witness and defrauding of the illegals because they are poor. This is not Biblical; we don't have two sets of commandments, one for the wealthier and one for the poorer people. Wrong is wrong, and there is no respect of persons. And before somebody brings up the issue of charity, Americans can and do give a great deal of money not only by foreign aid, but via private charitable groups. We do our share for all the poor countries, and it is not our fault that their leaders often steal the aid or misuse it. It is not justice to demand that we take in all the world's peoples who are less well off than we are.
However, the open-borders zealots, religious and secular, always seem to imply, as I've said here before on this blog, that America has some kind of monopoly on 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'a better life', and that it is our responsibility to spend our substance and our young people's blood to make other people free, regardless of their capability for it. And it is our obligation, so they imply, to essentially hand our country over to the masses of immigrants because we alone have the keys to the 'better life' and the 'American dream'. And it would be greedy and selfish to want to keep all freedom and prosperity to ourselves. So we are being forced to turn our country over to all who would come here, or otherwise we stand accused of greed and selfishness, as well as 'racism' and 'xenophobia.'
Rev. Childress says:
...Our religious rhetoric and practice often imply that only the United States offers the kind of life that's worth living in the world today. That's a national arrogance which can bear no positive effect.''
He is right, unfortunately. The neocons are just as guilty of that 'national arrogance' and self-flattery as are the liberal left. The left, as much as they denounce America, paradoxically think the whole world should come here. This country is not the only place where people can live decent lives; people can and do live good lives in their own countries. We are being duped into believing that we hold the keys to the whole world's prosperity and happiness and freedom. Wrong! And realizing that it is just not true would take the weight of the world off our shoulders. We are not responsible for making everybody rich, or for giving them the 'American dream' or for bringing them democracy all wrapped up neatly and deposited in their laps.
America is the best country on earth -- for Americans, for those Americans who love her, that is. But America is not required to gratify the wishes of the whole world; America cannot be all things to all people.
Yet another Christian commentator, Steve Marr approaches the illegal immigration question from a justice perspective. After all, although Marr does not say this, the Bible tells Christians to obey the laws of the land. If our illegal invaders are such devout, religious Christians as their apologists claim they are, they are disobeying God's command to follow the laws of the land. And if some leftist Christians aid and abet the illegals, and encourage 'civil disobedience', they are disobedient to God's laws too.
Many open-borders zealots, both secular and religious, claim or imply that the illegals are 'starving' in their countries, and come here out of 'desperation' or hunger or the 'need to feed their families.' To them I issue this challenge: show me evidence, solid evidence, of starvation or famine in Mexico and Central America. And the fact is, Mexico's poverty is always cited, but factually speaking, Mexico is not one of the poorer nations, being rich in natural resources, including oil. The problem in Mexico is that the upper classes control a great percentage of the wealth. This fact notwithstanding, it has been determined that many illegals had jobs in Mexico, and left those jobs to come here. They are not 'forced' to come here, contrary to what they and their defenders say.
This Christian commentator takes a conservative approach, and cites the Biblical fact that God sets the bounds of nations, Yet at the end, the writer gives in to liberalism and what sounds very much like a Politically Correct sermon on 'hatred' towards immigrants of other races.
When considering this issue, from a Christian perspective, I ask the same question I ask on most issues: are we wiser than our forefathers? My answer is almost always NO. How is it that today's Christians can see things in the Bible which our ancestors for the last 2000 years never saw? Did previous generations of Christians ever imagine that God wanted us to surrender our countries to any and all invaders in the name of kindness or charity? Did any past generations imagine that the Bible tells us to lay down our arms and passively let ourselves be conquered? Did our forefathers believe that God wanted to erase borders and create a single world system in which all peoples mingled willy-nilly together? If all these things are found in the Bible, why did our ancestors fail to realize that and abolish borders and nations 2000 years ago? Are we wiser than our forefathers?
I think too many people, even people who claim to be conservative, have this very radical liberal notion that we are the first enlightened generation in the history of humankind. Our ancestors were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and generally ignorant, whereas we, we are the wisest and most enlightened and 'tolerant' generation in recorded history. Now the fact that our world is so chaotic and troubled does not seem to create any doubt about our wisdom and enlightenment. And the fact that in many ways, past generations lived much safer, saner, serener lives than ours, does not trouble these people. We still persist in thinking we are the moral betters of our ancestors. Again, this is arrogance.
If our ancestors, who were generally much more Biblically literate and plain old commonsensical than we are did not see fit to establish multicultural societies, then that should give us a hint that we are on the wrong track. But our upstart generation is like a know-it-all adolescent, thinking himself wiser than his backward parents.
Here's another thought on the Bible and nations: God seemed to have divided us into nations, after the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11, as a way of keeping people from uniting in rebellion. Nations are a kind of system of 'checks and balances' to keep flawed human beings from excessive concentration of power. Most conservatives, religious or not, sense that the greater the concentration of power in the fewer hands, the greater potential for tyranny and evil.
Nations, kindreds, peoples, tongues: the Bible talks about these units of humankind. Nowhere in the Bible is it recommended that these things be abolished or that they are bad. The idea that such ordering of humanity is wrong and that the divisions and separations should be broken down is pure leftism; it has nothing to do with the Bible.
And if we allow millions upon millions of people into our country under the guise of charity or altruism, or whether we imagine they can help our economy, the fact is, the American people are disregarded and left vulnerable in such a situation. Multiculturalism and division within only weaken us. And it was Jesus Christ, not Abraham Lincoln, who first said that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Those of us who are Christians, with a traditional perspective sometimes find it difficult to give Biblical answers to the liberals like Gerson, who are brazenly Bible-thumping in support of their political agenda. I think they believe they can shame us out of our 'nativism,' and sadly, maybe their tactics succeed with many Christians who tend to go along with social trends. And believing in a soppy egalitarianism and universalism is popular these days, especially for many ostensibly conservative Christians who have fallen in with the 'emergent church' movement.
But here is one Christian perspective on the Bible and immigration. Rev. Childress talks about the religious activists' support for illegal immigrants based on their interpretation of the world 'sojourner'. For example, there are Biblical passages which God enjoins the people of Israel to welcome the sojourner:
The Bible is full of stories of sojourners, strangers without homes, whom God called people to protect. The Israelites "God's chosen people" were themselves sojourners for 40 years after the exodus from Egypt as they entered the promised land. God did not let the Israelites forget that they had been without a homeland for such a long time; the ethic of welcoming the sojourner was woven into the very fabric of the Israelite confederacy. It was more than an ethic, it was a command of God. 'Do not mistreat or oppress a stranger; you know how it feels to be a stranger, because you were sojourners in the land of Egypt' (Exodus 23:9)." p. 1
As these excerpts point out, the Bible in a great many places uses "sojourner" to refer to those who are in a location which is not their original homeland. However, it is clear that while a sojourner shares some characteristics with an immigrant, the two are in very different pursuits.
Using the term sojourner as a kind of proof-text for political statements about immigration clouds the issue because many people of faith find it hard to "argue against the Bible." Paul W. Lewis, an author on Christian engagement of social issues and a former missionary, admits "I have been greatly bothered by the way some people have used the term 'sojourner' to back up their own idea about immigrants. It was a totally different situation back then. We could also use the word 'traveler' today."
Childress says that the class of people called 'sojourners' were mainly temporary guests or travelers, in some cases refugees who were fleeing some troubles in their homelands. These sojourners who would be more like today's 'refugees' were not expected to stay permanently. In fact, even in our country, refugees were at one time in our history considered only temporary guests until they could be repatriated to their homelands. It's odd how even in my lifetime the attitude has changed; it used to be a given that most people, given a choice, would prefer the land of their birth. It was just assumed that a people would be happiest and most suited to their homelands, among others of their own people. At what point did we discard that most basic human assumption? Don't we all feel, deep down, that home is the preferred place to be? We have so many proverbs and folk-sayings which indicate our attachment to 'home.'
Be it ever so humble... and 'East or West, home is best.' And in the past it was implicit that home meant not just the house we live in, which may not be a permanent address, but our homeland, and for many of us our home state, our hometown, where our attachments are. What happened to that regard we once had for the natural ties which bind us to our people and our homeland? Now, everybody, regardless of political leanings, seems to accept this liberal notion that people are innately nomadic, searching for the cushiest and easiest conditions. Home and kin are now regarded as trivial; what matters is, apparently, A Better Life, which it seems can only be found in our country. How did we come to this? We Americans are in the unfortunate position of living in a country which is seen as the world's cornucopia, the dispenser of goodies and Better Lives for the whole world. There is no longer any need or desire, apparently, for anybody in the less prosperous countries to better themselves there, or to improve their homeland; far better to get an airline ticket to America, or pay a human smuggler a bundle of money to bring them to the Promised Land. This situation is not what the Bible is talking about in those passages about 'sojourners.'
Our country is THE destination of choice for most of the world's covetous have-nots. And the last time I looked, the Bible forbids us to covet our neighbor's goods. Poor people don't get a pass on that; coveting is not justified by being less fortunate, and stealing and defrauding are also sins. Yet we excuse the coveting, stealing, and bearing false witness and defrauding of the illegals because they are poor. This is not Biblical; we don't have two sets of commandments, one for the wealthier and one for the poorer people. Wrong is wrong, and there is no respect of persons. And before somebody brings up the issue of charity, Americans can and do give a great deal of money not only by foreign aid, but via private charitable groups. We do our share for all the poor countries, and it is not our fault that their leaders often steal the aid or misuse it. It is not justice to demand that we take in all the world's peoples who are less well off than we are.
However, the open-borders zealots, religious and secular, always seem to imply, as I've said here before on this blog, that America has some kind of monopoly on 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'a better life', and that it is our responsibility to spend our substance and our young people's blood to make other people free, regardless of their capability for it. And it is our obligation, so they imply, to essentially hand our country over to the masses of immigrants because we alone have the keys to the 'better life' and the 'American dream'. And it would be greedy and selfish to want to keep all freedom and prosperity to ourselves. So we are being forced to turn our country over to all who would come here, or otherwise we stand accused of greed and selfishness, as well as 'racism' and 'xenophobia.'
Rev. Childress says:
...Our religious rhetoric and practice often imply that only the United States offers the kind of life that's worth living in the world today. That's a national arrogance which can bear no positive effect.''
He is right, unfortunately. The neocons are just as guilty of that 'national arrogance' and self-flattery as are the liberal left. The left, as much as they denounce America, paradoxically think the whole world should come here. This country is not the only place where people can live decent lives; people can and do live good lives in their own countries. We are being duped into believing that we hold the keys to the whole world's prosperity and happiness and freedom. Wrong! And realizing that it is just not true would take the weight of the world off our shoulders. We are not responsible for making everybody rich, or for giving them the 'American dream' or for bringing them democracy all wrapped up neatly and deposited in their laps.
America is the best country on earth -- for Americans, for those Americans who love her, that is. But America is not required to gratify the wishes of the whole world; America cannot be all things to all people.
Yet another Christian commentator, Steve Marr approaches the illegal immigration question from a justice perspective. After all, although Marr does not say this, the Bible tells Christians to obey the laws of the land. If our illegal invaders are such devout, religious Christians as their apologists claim they are, they are disobeying God's command to follow the laws of the land. And if some leftist Christians aid and abet the illegals, and encourage 'civil disobedience', they are disobedient to God's laws too.
Many open-borders zealots, both secular and religious, claim or imply that the illegals are 'starving' in their countries, and come here out of 'desperation' or hunger or the 'need to feed their families.' To them I issue this challenge: show me evidence, solid evidence, of starvation or famine in Mexico and Central America. And the fact is, Mexico's poverty is always cited, but factually speaking, Mexico is not one of the poorer nations, being rich in natural resources, including oil. The problem in Mexico is that the upper classes control a great percentage of the wealth. This fact notwithstanding, it has been determined that many illegals had jobs in Mexico, and left those jobs to come here. They are not 'forced' to come here, contrary to what they and their defenders say.
This Christian commentator takes a conservative approach, and cites the Biblical fact that God sets the bounds of nations, Yet at the end, the writer gives in to liberalism and what sounds very much like a Politically Correct sermon on 'hatred' towards immigrants of other races.
When considering this issue, from a Christian perspective, I ask the same question I ask on most issues: are we wiser than our forefathers? My answer is almost always NO. How is it that today's Christians can see things in the Bible which our ancestors for the last 2000 years never saw? Did previous generations of Christians ever imagine that God wanted us to surrender our countries to any and all invaders in the name of kindness or charity? Did any past generations imagine that the Bible tells us to lay down our arms and passively let ourselves be conquered? Did our forefathers believe that God wanted to erase borders and create a single world system in which all peoples mingled willy-nilly together? If all these things are found in the Bible, why did our ancestors fail to realize that and abolish borders and nations 2000 years ago? Are we wiser than our forefathers?
I think too many people, even people who claim to be conservative, have this very radical liberal notion that we are the first enlightened generation in the history of humankind. Our ancestors were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and generally ignorant, whereas we, we are the wisest and most enlightened and 'tolerant' generation in recorded history. Now the fact that our world is so chaotic and troubled does not seem to create any doubt about our wisdom and enlightenment. And the fact that in many ways, past generations lived much safer, saner, serener lives than ours, does not trouble these people. We still persist in thinking we are the moral betters of our ancestors. Again, this is arrogance.
If our ancestors, who were generally much more Biblically literate and plain old commonsensical than we are did not see fit to establish multicultural societies, then that should give us a hint that we are on the wrong track. But our upstart generation is like a know-it-all adolescent, thinking himself wiser than his backward parents.
Here's another thought on the Bible and nations: God seemed to have divided us into nations, after the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11, as a way of keeping people from uniting in rebellion. Nations are a kind of system of 'checks and balances' to keep flawed human beings from excessive concentration of power. Most conservatives, religious or not, sense that the greater the concentration of power in the fewer hands, the greater potential for tyranny and evil.
Nations, kindreds, peoples, tongues: the Bible talks about these units of humankind. Nowhere in the Bible is it recommended that these things be abolished or that they are bad. The idea that such ordering of humanity is wrong and that the divisions and separations should be broken down is pure leftism; it has nothing to do with the Bible.
And if we allow millions upon millions of people into our country under the guise of charity or altruism, or whether we imagine they can help our economy, the fact is, the American people are disregarded and left vulnerable in such a situation. Multiculturalism and division within only weaken us. And it was Jesus Christ, not Abraham Lincoln, who first said that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Labels: Christianity, Illegal Immigration, Multiculturalism, Open Borders
0 comment Saturday, August 9, 2014 | admin
Recently on this blog I've written about the role of Christianity in the decline of the West, and now Robert Spencer has written a book, Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't. John Derbyshire offered his review of the book, and Spencer replied here.
Derbyshire, in his review, first examines the question of moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity, because Spencer describes this as the 'prevailing malady in the West.' Derbyshire expresses impatience with this point of view:
I understand that this bogus equivalence must be very vexing to a committed Christian, but Spencer seems not to understand how wacky all religions seem to the irreligious. All religious faith, after all, depends on magical thinking. To people who eschew such thinking�people who prefer to ground their beliefs in the strict rules of evidence used in modern law and science�Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ.''
To begin with, that last sentence is a non sequitur. Whether or not Derbyshire the scoffer thinks Catholic doctrines are 'preposterous' has nothing to do with the question of the effect of Islam or Christianity on their respective adherents.
And another quibble, which may seem insignificant, is that Derbyshire evidently confuses the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. These are not the same thing, and Derbyshire's evident confusion here shows me that he does not understand the basics, and has not done his homework vis-a-vis Catholicism or Christianity. He makes it clear that he considers Christian beliefs childish and absurd, on a par with the Koranic beliefs, and so he is in a sense making an equivalency on that basis between Mohammedanism and Christianity. If Derbyshire wants to argue Christianity with Spencer or anyone else, the least he might do would be to do some research, and not merely cite creaky anecdotes from friends who attended Christian Brothers schools. But Derbyshire seems uninterested; he's a sophisticated, empirically-minded man of the world and can't be bothered.
Indeed, everybody who grew up in the West, although many may scorn Christianity and the Bible, seem to feel qualified to argue theology or doctrine with Christians although the critics of Christianity may have little or no familiarity with the Bible, except in a second-hand fashion.
But Spencer does a masterful job at pointing out Derbyshire's inconsistencies in his own response.
John Derbyshire seems to think that since, in his view, Islam and Christianity are equally preposterous, they are equally likely to incite violence: "Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ."
Huh? "And so"? One thing is unbelievable, and so is another, and therefore they�re of equal moral value? Come now. I myself find National Socialism no more preposterous than Shakerism � does that mean that National Socialism is no more or less likely to make us better or worse than Shakerism?
[...]
Derbyshire�s review, while marvelously written and delightful to read, is full of inconsistencies. I don�t see how he could possibly find what I reveal about Islam to be "persuasive" if at the same time he thinks that Islamic and Christian doctrine are equally likely to inspire their adherents to commit acts of brutality, since the contrary assertion, as he himself notes, is a major point of my book.
[...]
But I digress. The ringing peroration of Derbyshire�s review is his declaration that while "Islamia has sunk into the grip of a poisonous ideology�the ideology of jihadism�the Christian West (Spencer actually says 'Judeo-Christian,� but that is just a lagniappe) has been seized by an even more destructive ideology: globalization." (Not a lagniappe at all, but that is a discussion for another time.) He claims that "a great enabler of globalization has been the Christian tradition. If all men are brothers, heathens only a little less enlightened than Christians, they why should not a Pakistani, or a Somali, or for that matter a Mexican, come to live in the U.S.A.?"
One may wonder, given this line of reasoning, why Catholic Europe, at the apex of its self-conscious religiosity, didn�t throw open its doors to the jihadist invaders instead of resisting them. One may wonder why the United States, governed in the main by Protestant Christians for the most part throughout its history, maintained relatively sane immigration policies until the 1960s.''
I am glad Spencer makes this last point; I have been arguing it myself whenever this subject comes up, as it does frequently these days. I have never yet heard any of those who are accusing Christianity of weakening the West answer this argument satisfactorily. If Christianity inexorably leads to passivity and universalism, why did this tendency not manifest itself until more than 1900 years after Christianity began?
And I also wonder why, in this age of wholesale Christian apostasy, anyone seriously thinks that we in the West are committing suicide because of our Christian faith. Anyone who says this must believe that Christianity is much more widespread and that it is taken much more seriously than many 'Christians' in this lukewarm age actually take their faith.
But there is a grain of truth there: the only 'Christians' who seem to be full of 'passionate intensity' these days are the leftist kind: the Barry Lynns, the Cardinal Mahonys, et al. The universalist, open-border, self-immolating Christians are the most zealous of all, to judge by their visibility and their determination to force their agenda on everybody. However, despite all the sound and the fury from the Christian left, who are after all the 'religious' wing of the leftist army, they do not represent true, historical, Biblical Christianity. Yet few will be aware of this unless they educate themselves by reading the Bible, first of all, (which does not prescribe a 'one-world' globalist system), and by reading history books, in which they might learn that our European ancestors' Christian faith enabled them to drive back the Mohammedan interlopers, and to push them out of Europe. Christianity then was not incompatible with self-defense or with particularism and love of one's own. It is not incompatible with those things now.
European blogger JKayce at Kayce's Corner writes about Europe's Multiple Personality Disorder, and the rise of Islam in Europe:
We have acquired values that have estranged us from our true selves, values which basically are an expression of internal corruption, and in our pride we blinded ourselves to the corrupt source of our values.
So, now we are confronted with the consequences.
In our foolish idea of tolerance, compassion and love we have allowed the immigration matter to go completely out of hand, to the extent that our societies are disintegrating and people are reverting to yet another corruption, a weak bid: ethnical/racial identification.
The hollowing of the Christian faith whereby it degenerated into a dogmatic institution thriving on the conformity principle, even marrying the dogma of various Christian churches to the State ideology so that the idolatry is made complete, has rendered typical Christian institutions impotent and fossilized reminders of the past. The decline of Christianity is culturally based and rooted in this very principle of conformity, and it is the logical result of the culmination of a process which has been at work for many decades prior to its current demise.
Thus the inevitable outcome as embodied in the empty churches on the European continent is merely a symptom of the spiritual bankruptcy and corruption which preceded this.
When Mosques take the place once occupied by Churches it is really God asking us:
"What is the rock of your foundation?
Where is your claim of superiority based upon?
If your love and tolerance brings forth your own demise, how can you maintain its superiority?
[...]
I strongly feel that the most important reason why Islam is growing so strongly is due to the spiritual bankruptcy of Europe by which Europe does not have the spiritual armament necessary to combat the spirit of Islam.
Although often it is said that Europe has a Christian identity, it is overlooked that Europe suffers from a Multiple Personality Disorder. There is no one prevailing Christian identity, but instead we see a plethora of identities, often with conflicting and opposite interests.
So where is Europe able to get its spiritual strength from to wrestle with the spirit of Islam?
A house divided against itself cannot hold up.''
JKayce is right; the weakness of Europe, and the rest of the West, is not due to Christianity, which is very attenuated and divided within right now; the weakness is due to a fragmenting in which there is no common belief system and strength deriving therefrom.
Some claim that America is in better shape, in part because we still have a strong Christian foundation here. I wonder how true that is? We are suffering from the same division within Christianity and in the larger society, with leftists and even 'conservative' secularists lining up against Christianity.
Still, at least we are having this discussion now, and that in itself is a beginning. Spencer's book is one that I hope to read.
Derbyshire, in his review, first examines the question of moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity, because Spencer describes this as the 'prevailing malady in the West.' Derbyshire expresses impatience with this point of view:
I understand that this bogus equivalence must be very vexing to a committed Christian, but Spencer seems not to understand how wacky all religions seem to the irreligious. All religious faith, after all, depends on magical thinking. To people who eschew such thinking�people who prefer to ground their beliefs in the strict rules of evidence used in modern law and science�Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ.''
To begin with, that last sentence is a non sequitur. Whether or not Derbyshire the scoffer thinks Catholic doctrines are 'preposterous' has nothing to do with the question of the effect of Islam or Christianity on their respective adherents.
And another quibble, which may seem insignificant, is that Derbyshire evidently confuses the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. These are not the same thing, and Derbyshire's evident confusion here shows me that he does not understand the basics, and has not done his homework vis-a-vis Catholicism or Christianity. He makes it clear that he considers Christian beliefs childish and absurd, on a par with the Koranic beliefs, and so he is in a sense making an equivalency on that basis between Mohammedanism and Christianity. If Derbyshire wants to argue Christianity with Spencer or anyone else, the least he might do would be to do some research, and not merely cite creaky anecdotes from friends who attended Christian Brothers schools. But Derbyshire seems uninterested; he's a sophisticated, empirically-minded man of the world and can't be bothered.
Indeed, everybody who grew up in the West, although many may scorn Christianity and the Bible, seem to feel qualified to argue theology or doctrine with Christians although the critics of Christianity may have little or no familiarity with the Bible, except in a second-hand fashion.
But Spencer does a masterful job at pointing out Derbyshire's inconsistencies in his own response.
John Derbyshire seems to think that since, in his view, Islam and Christianity are equally preposterous, they are equally likely to incite violence: "Mohammed�s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God�s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ."
Huh? "And so"? One thing is unbelievable, and so is another, and therefore they�re of equal moral value? Come now. I myself find National Socialism no more preposterous than Shakerism � does that mean that National Socialism is no more or less likely to make us better or worse than Shakerism?
[...]
Derbyshire�s review, while marvelously written and delightful to read, is full of inconsistencies. I don�t see how he could possibly find what I reveal about Islam to be "persuasive" if at the same time he thinks that Islamic and Christian doctrine are equally likely to inspire their adherents to commit acts of brutality, since the contrary assertion, as he himself notes, is a major point of my book.
[...]
But I digress. The ringing peroration of Derbyshire�s review is his declaration that while "Islamia has sunk into the grip of a poisonous ideology�the ideology of jihadism�the Christian West (Spencer actually says 'Judeo-Christian,� but that is just a lagniappe) has been seized by an even more destructive ideology: globalization." (Not a lagniappe at all, but that is a discussion for another time.) He claims that "a great enabler of globalization has been the Christian tradition. If all men are brothers, heathens only a little less enlightened than Christians, they why should not a Pakistani, or a Somali, or for that matter a Mexican, come to live in the U.S.A.?"
One may wonder, given this line of reasoning, why Catholic Europe, at the apex of its self-conscious religiosity, didn�t throw open its doors to the jihadist invaders instead of resisting them. One may wonder why the United States, governed in the main by Protestant Christians for the most part throughout its history, maintained relatively sane immigration policies until the 1960s.''
I am glad Spencer makes this last point; I have been arguing it myself whenever this subject comes up, as it does frequently these days. I have never yet heard any of those who are accusing Christianity of weakening the West answer this argument satisfactorily. If Christianity inexorably leads to passivity and universalism, why did this tendency not manifest itself until more than 1900 years after Christianity began?
And I also wonder why, in this age of wholesale Christian apostasy, anyone seriously thinks that we in the West are committing suicide because of our Christian faith. Anyone who says this must believe that Christianity is much more widespread and that it is taken much more seriously than many 'Christians' in this lukewarm age actually take their faith.
But there is a grain of truth there: the only 'Christians' who seem to be full of 'passionate intensity' these days are the leftist kind: the Barry Lynns, the Cardinal Mahonys, et al. The universalist, open-border, self-immolating Christians are the most zealous of all, to judge by their visibility and their determination to force their agenda on everybody. However, despite all the sound and the fury from the Christian left, who are after all the 'religious' wing of the leftist army, they do not represent true, historical, Biblical Christianity. Yet few will be aware of this unless they educate themselves by reading the Bible, first of all, (which does not prescribe a 'one-world' globalist system), and by reading history books, in which they might learn that our European ancestors' Christian faith enabled them to drive back the Mohammedan interlopers, and to push them out of Europe. Christianity then was not incompatible with self-defense or with particularism and love of one's own. It is not incompatible with those things now.
European blogger JKayce at Kayce's Corner writes about Europe's Multiple Personality Disorder, and the rise of Islam in Europe:
We have acquired values that have estranged us from our true selves, values which basically are an expression of internal corruption, and in our pride we blinded ourselves to the corrupt source of our values.
So, now we are confronted with the consequences.
In our foolish idea of tolerance, compassion and love we have allowed the immigration matter to go completely out of hand, to the extent that our societies are disintegrating and people are reverting to yet another corruption, a weak bid: ethnical/racial identification.
The hollowing of the Christian faith whereby it degenerated into a dogmatic institution thriving on the conformity principle, even marrying the dogma of various Christian churches to the State ideology so that the idolatry is made complete, has rendered typical Christian institutions impotent and fossilized reminders of the past. The decline of Christianity is culturally based and rooted in this very principle of conformity, and it is the logical result of the culmination of a process which has been at work for many decades prior to its current demise.
Thus the inevitable outcome as embodied in the empty churches on the European continent is merely a symptom of the spiritual bankruptcy and corruption which preceded this.
When Mosques take the place once occupied by Churches it is really God asking us:
"What is the rock of your foundation?
Where is your claim of superiority based upon?
If your love and tolerance brings forth your own demise, how can you maintain its superiority?
[...]
I strongly feel that the most important reason why Islam is growing so strongly is due to the spiritual bankruptcy of Europe by which Europe does not have the spiritual armament necessary to combat the spirit of Islam.
Although often it is said that Europe has a Christian identity, it is overlooked that Europe suffers from a Multiple Personality Disorder. There is no one prevailing Christian identity, but instead we see a plethora of identities, often with conflicting and opposite interests.
So where is Europe able to get its spiritual strength from to wrestle with the spirit of Islam?
A house divided against itself cannot hold up.''
JKayce is right; the weakness of Europe, and the rest of the West, is not due to Christianity, which is very attenuated and divided within right now; the weakness is due to a fragmenting in which there is no common belief system and strength deriving therefrom.
Some claim that America is in better shape, in part because we still have a strong Christian foundation here. I wonder how true that is? We are suffering from the same division within Christianity and in the larger society, with leftists and even 'conservative' secularists lining up against Christianity.
Still, at least we are having this discussion now, and that in itself is a beginning. Spencer's book is one that I hope to read.
Labels: Christendom, Christianity, Islam, Jihad, Mohammedanism, Western Civilization