If you're not inclined to read this whole thing, at least listen to this short audio link:
www.courtzero.org/cbc.mp3
In modern American politics, we play a lot of word games. An odd combination of political correctness and political code words more often than not make listening to the nightly news or to a political speech require a decoder ring to know what is really being said. Many phrases used to support political points of view dont really mean what they pretend to mean, and I think that by now almost all of us knows that. Thats a problem, but I think that there is a bigger problem; that is, that we too often simply ignore the plain words of those who do not speak in code.
In frightening contrast, it strikes me sometimes that true radicals, of the really dangerous sort, tend to be astonishingly forthright and candid. For instance, there was once a very bad dictator whose name is generally considered synonymous with Evil, and whose name is trotted out far too often in commentary these days, so I wont mention his name. Instead, Ill mention the book he wrote in 1925 and 1926, called Mein Kampf, which translates into My Struggle. The authors translated original working title was, interestingly, Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. In that book, the dictator I shall not name promised to eradicate the Jews. And he promised to use poison gas to do it. He just came out and said it; he put it in print for the whole world to see and gave the world more than a decade to do something about it. Yet, the appeasers of the West simply ignored his plain language, (until he removed all doubt by way of a rather dramatic display of intention that he called Blitzkrieg), threatened societies instead declared that the political code words and diplomatic mangling of common sense had produced peace in our time.
That dictator is only the most convenient example of this phenomenon, because people rembember his and name and becaused he happened to have written that book, but modern history is just bubbling over with prominent people who are quite open about their intentions to destroy and oppress people, but who are nearly always ignored until it is too late. Another example would be bin Laden, who is really a very candid fellow. He has never been shy about his plans, and for years before September 11th he told everyone who would listen that he intended to do great physical, social, and spiritual harm to the citizens of the United States and disclosed a fair amount of details on how he planned to do it. In fact, if reports are accurate, he still continues to issue audio tapes from time to time, which are never even translated and explained to the public, about his future plans to harm us. Even after 9/11/2001, we dont seem to be inclined to listen and actually give the man credit for being forthright about what he intends to do.
All of that discussion is prologue, as the real purpose of this article is to explore whether or not religious freedom in America is in jeapordy. To be more forthright, our subject is whether or not Christians will soon be oppressed and persecuted in the land of In God We Trust, in the land of the 1st Amendment.
Christian believers are aware that Christ promised that his followers would be persecuted. That promise came true for early Christians who faced lions and such in the Roman colliseum early on, but that is long past and we here in the U.S. can blithely think of that as a bit of history, and not as a precedent. The question, then, is whether or not that promise of persecution is unfolding now, or if it is still off in the future, at least in a way that ought to be of concern for comfortable and complacent American Christians.
We do know that in China, North Korea, the Sudan, Pakistan, and other places, Christians are being jailed and killed for their beliefs. We know that Christian pastors have been prosecuted and imprisoned in western countries like Sweden for reciting the Bible, under hate crimes laws (some of us, more than ten years ago, were concerned that hate crimes cant really ever be anything other than Orwellian thought crimes). We know that the ACLU, with the help of the courts, has hurt the Boy Scouts of America badly in this country for its crime of being an organization with Christian values. We know that many groups have successfully sued the Catholic Church in America to punish them for their views. We know that in Canada pastors are under scrutiny pursuant to that countrys hate crime laws. We know that the ACLU in America has sued to stop baptisms and the displays of crosses or the Ten Commandments anywhere on public land, successfully, over and over again. We know that in the last presidential election, the candidate of one of the major political parties took Catholic bishops to task for expressing their opinions with the approval of the national media, and tried to develop a standard in which a leader must divorce him or herself from his faith when in public life. We know that the trend toward demanding that public figures repudiate Christian faith as having any meaning in their own thoughts has carried over into Senate deliberations over judicial nominees. We know that people are listening to the sermons preached in American churches and that the IRS is taking seriously complaints that preachers are saying things about politics and placing churches under scrutiny to monitor what they preach. We know that judges in America are dictating to churches who they must accept as members. None of these things are the authors hyperbole, but are rather mundane examples of what is going on lately. (For documentation of any of the above, just spend time rooting around at CourtZero)
The question then, is whether or not the trend is toward the promised persecution, or away from it. You can answer that for yourself. To come full circle, I want to highlight for you a portion of a recent commentary that was broadcast on the CBC, which is the Canadian state-run radio and television network (Think PBS/NPR, but with more of an audience). I suggest that the man speaking is a radical. And I suggest that he means what he says, and that we laugh it off at our own risk. Sometimes we have to believe that the radicals mean what they say, and actually plan to implement it (the author is described as a former Canadian War College professor):
Do yourself a favor, and click here to listen to the audio of the Canadian commentary piece from the government-run radio network. Note the calm, reasoned, and intelligent-sounding tone.
www.courtzero.org/cbc.mp3
In modern American politics, we play a lot of word games. An odd combination of political correctness and political code words more often than not make listening to the nightly news or to a political speech require a decoder ring to know what is really being said. Many phrases used to support political points of view dont really mean what they pretend to mean, and I think that by now almost all of us knows that. Thats a problem, but I think that there is a bigger problem; that is, that we too often simply ignore the plain words of those who do not speak in code.
In frightening contrast, it strikes me sometimes that true radicals, of the really dangerous sort, tend to be astonishingly forthright and candid. For instance, there was once a very bad dictator whose name is generally considered synonymous with Evil, and whose name is trotted out far too often in commentary these days, so I wont mention his name. Instead, Ill mention the book he wrote in 1925 and 1926, called Mein Kampf, which translates into My Struggle. The authors translated original working title was, interestingly, Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. In that book, the dictator I shall not name promised to eradicate the Jews. And he promised to use poison gas to do it. He just came out and said it; he put it in print for the whole world to see and gave the world more than a decade to do something about it. Yet, the appeasers of the West simply ignored his plain language, (until he removed all doubt by way of a rather dramatic display of intention that he called Blitzkrieg), threatened societies instead declared that the political code words and diplomatic mangling of common sense had produced peace in our time.
That dictator is only the most convenient example of this phenomenon, because people rembember his and name and becaused he happened to have written that book, but modern history is just bubbling over with prominent people who are quite open about their intentions to destroy and oppress people, but who are nearly always ignored until it is too late. Another example would be bin Laden, who is really a very candid fellow. He has never been shy about his plans, and for years before September 11th he told everyone who would listen that he intended to do great physical, social, and spiritual harm to the citizens of the United States and disclosed a fair amount of details on how he planned to do it. In fact, if reports are accurate, he still continues to issue audio tapes from time to time, which are never even translated and explained to the public, about his future plans to harm us. Even after 9/11/2001, we dont seem to be inclined to listen and actually give the man credit for being forthright about what he intends to do.
All of that discussion is prologue, as the real purpose of this article is to explore whether or not religious freedom in America is in jeapordy. To be more forthright, our subject is whether or not Christians will soon be oppressed and persecuted in the land of In God We Trust, in the land of the 1st Amendment.
Christian believers are aware that Christ promised that his followers would be persecuted. That promise came true for early Christians who faced lions and such in the Roman colliseum early on, but that is long past and we here in the U.S. can blithely think of that as a bit of history, and not as a precedent. The question, then, is whether or not that promise of persecution is unfolding now, or if it is still off in the future, at least in a way that ought to be of concern for comfortable and complacent American Christians.
We do know that in China, North Korea, the Sudan, Pakistan, and other places, Christians are being jailed and killed for their beliefs. We know that Christian pastors have been prosecuted and imprisoned in western countries like Sweden for reciting the Bible, under hate crimes laws (some of us, more than ten years ago, were concerned that hate crimes cant really ever be anything other than Orwellian thought crimes). We know that the ACLU, with the help of the courts, has hurt the Boy Scouts of America badly in this country for its crime of being an organization with Christian values. We know that many groups have successfully sued the Catholic Church in America to punish them for their views. We know that in Canada pastors are under scrutiny pursuant to that countrys hate crime laws. We know that the ACLU in America has sued to stop baptisms and the displays of crosses or the Ten Commandments anywhere on public land, successfully, over and over again. We know that in the last presidential election, the candidate of one of the major political parties took Catholic bishops to task for expressing their opinions with the approval of the national media, and tried to develop a standard in which a leader must divorce him or herself from his faith when in public life. We know that the trend toward demanding that public figures repudiate Christian faith as having any meaning in their own thoughts has carried over into Senate deliberations over judicial nominees. We know that people are listening to the sermons preached in American churches and that the IRS is taking seriously complaints that preachers are saying things about politics and placing churches under scrutiny to monitor what they preach. We know that judges in America are dictating to churches who they must accept as members. None of these things are the authors hyperbole, but are rather mundane examples of what is going on lately. (For documentation of any of the above, just spend time rooting around at CourtZero)
The question then, is whether or not the trend is toward the promised persecution, or away from it. You can answer that for yourself. To come full circle, I want to highlight for you a portion of a recent commentary that was broadcast on the CBC, which is the Canadian state-run radio and television network (Think PBS/NPR, but with more of an audience). I suggest that the man speaking is a radical. And I suggest that he means what he says, and that we laugh it off at our own risk. Sometimes we have to believe that the radicals mean what they say, and actually plan to implement it (the author is described as a former Canadian War College professor):
Quote:And in this way, the words separation of church and state, if they ever meant anything in the first place, would come to mean, on our continent, that the government would license and regulate religion. Thats what the man said; I suggest we believe him.
I envisage a congress meeting to hammer out a code that would form the basis of legislation to regulate the practice of religion there would then be registered religious practitioners. To carry the analogy to its conclusion, no one could be a religious practitioner without this qualification.
A key item would have to be a ban on claims of exclusivity. It should be unethical for any RRP to claim that theirs was the one true religion and believers in anything else or nothing were doomed to fire and brimstone. One might also expect prohibition of ritual circumcisions, bans on preaching hate or violence, the regulation of faith healers, protocols for missionary work, etc.
Now what is the point of proposing this? I do it because I am worried that the separation between church and state is under threat. Religion is important in our lives, but it can become a danger to society when people claim that the unalterable will of God is the basis for their opinions and actions. Yes religion can be a comfort and a guide, but we cannot take rules from our holy books and apply them to the modern world without democratic debate and due regard for the law.
Do yourself a favor, and click here to listen to the audio of the Canadian commentary piece from the government-run radio network. Note the calm, reasoned, and intelligent-sounding tone.
