A rabbi's warning to U.S. Christians

A rabbi's warning to U.S. Christians

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
WND Exclusive Commentary
January 13, 2007

I am certainly not a Churchill. I am not even a Revel. I am having enough trouble just trying to be a Lapin. But I am issuing a very serious warning about deep consequences, just as they did. It is a warning about the earliest stages of what could become a cataract of disasters if not resisted now.

During the 1930s, Winston Churchill desperately tried to persuade the English people and their government to see that Hitler meant to end their way of life. The British ignored Churchill, which gave Hitler nearly 10 years to build up his military forces. It wasn't until Hitler actually drew blood that the British realized they had a war on their hands. It turned out to be a far longer and more destructive war than it needed to be had Churchill's early warning been heeded.

In 1983, a brave French writer, Jean-Francois Revel, wrote a book called "How Democracies Perish." In this remarkable volume, he described how communism's aim is world conquest. For decades he had been trying to warn of communism's very real threat. Yet in January 1982, a high State Department official said: "We Americans are not solving problems, we are the problem." (Some things never change.) A good portion of the planet fell to communism, which brought misery and death to millions because we failed to recognize in time that others meant to harm us.

Heaven knows there was enough warning during the 1980s of the intention of part of the Islamic world to take yet another crack at world domination. Yet instead of seeing each deadly assault on our interests around the world as a test of our resolve, we ignored it. We failed the test and lost 3,000 Americans in two unforgettable hours.

I am not going to argue that what is happening now is on the same scale as the examples I cite above, but a serious war is being waged against a group of Americans. I am certain that if we lose this war, the consequences for American civilization will be dire.

Phase one of this war I describe is a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come.

There is no better term than propaganda blitzkrieg to describe what has been unleashed against Christian conservatives recently.

Consider the long list of anti-Christian books that have been published in recent months. Here are just a few samples of more than 30 similar titles, all from mainstream publishers:

"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America"

"The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us"

"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason"

"Piety & Politics: The Right-wing Assault on Religious Freedom"

"Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism"

"Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America"

"Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right"

What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam. Does anyone seriously think America is more seriously jeopardized by Christian conservatives than by Islamic zealots? (Yep, that loonytunes loudmouth, Rosie O'DonnelI, said something to that effect on the popular TV show, "The View" - RJ) fear that many Americans believe just that in the same way that many pre-World War II Westerners considered Churchill a bigger threat than Hitler.

Some may say that today's proliferation of anti-Christian print propaganda is nothing to become worried about. To them I ask two questions:

First, would you be so sanguine if the target of this loathsome library were Jewish? Just try changing the titles in some of the books I mention above to reflect anti-Semitism instead of rampant anti-Christianism and you'll see what I mean.

Second, major movements that changed the way Americans felt and acted came about through books, often only one book. Think of Rachel Carson's 1962 error-filled "Silent Spring" that resulted in the pointless banning of the insecticide DDT and many unnecessary deaths. Other books that caused upheavals in our nation were Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," many of Ayn Rand's books and of course "Uncle Tom's Cabin." ("Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich is another...I confess reading it as student at university & being mightily impressed by it....but since I'm older & bit wiser, I know now it was a lot of propaganda & hot air & unproven assumptions....the truth is the opposite - RJ)

No, I would advise you not to underestimate the power of books to alter the behavior of the American public, and I fear for an America influenced to detest Christianity by this hate-filled catalog.

It is not just books but popular entertainment also that beams the most lurid anti-Christian propaganda into the hearts and minds of viewers. One need only think of who the real targets of the recent hit movie "Borat" are. The brilliant Jewish moviemaker Sacha Baron Cohen, as his title character, using borderline dishonest wiles, lures some innocent but unsophisticated country folk, obviously Christians, to join him in his outrageously anti-Semitic antics. Cohen then triumphantly claims to have exposed anti-Semitism. In fact, he has revealed nothing other than the latent anti-Christianism of America's social, economic and academic secular elites.

Even the recent PBS documentary, "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence," managed to do more attacking Christianity than defending Judaism.

Richard Dawkins, an Oxford University professor, is one of the generals in the anti-Christian army of the secular left. American academia treats him with reverence and hangs on his every word when he insists that "religious myths ought not to be tolerated."

For those with a slightly more tolerant outlook, he asks, "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children?" He suggests that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs. Needless to say, he means Christian beliefs, of course. Muslim beliefs add to England's charmingly diverse cultural landscape.

The war is against those who regard the Bible to be God's revelation to humanity and the Ten Commandments to be His set of rules for all time. Phase one in this war is to make Christianity, well, sort of socially unacceptable. Something only foolish, poor and ugly people could turn to.

We have seen how a carefully constructed campaign pretty much made it socially unacceptable to drink and drive. For years, there had been stringent laws against drunk driving. They achieved little. In the end, the practice was all but eliminated by groups allied with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and their effective ways of changing the way Americans thought about it.

We have seen how a carefully constructed campaign has pretty much made it socially unacceptable to smoke. In the face of a relentless campaign (dare one call it propaganda?), Americans became docile and forfeited the right to make their own decisions. Nobody was willing to stand up to the no-smoking tyrants. Nobody even asked whether health was sufficient grounds for freedom to be reduced. Now, entire cities and even states have banned smoking, not only in public places but even in privately owned restaurants.

Tyranny comes when citizens are seduced into trading freedom for the promise of safety and security.

Considerably more intellectual energy is being pumped into the propaganda campaign against Christianity than was ever delivered to the anti-smoking or anti-drunk-driving campaigns. Fervent zealots of secularism are flinging themselves into this anti-Christian war with enormous fanaticism.

If they succeed, Christianity will be driven underground, and its benign influence on the character of America will be lost. In its place we shall see a sinister secularism that menaces Bible believers of all faiths. Once the voice of the Bible has been silenced, the war on Western Civilization can begin and we shall see a long night of barbarism descend on the West.

Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the West is doomed.

Which is why I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, devoted to Jewish survival, the Torah and Israel am so terrified of American Christianity caving in.

Many of us Jews are ready to stand with you. But you must lead. You must replace your timidity with nerve and your diffidence with daring and determination. You are under attack. Now is the time to resist it.

Related special offer:

"Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion"

---Scholar, author and Jewish community leader Rabbi Daniel Lapin is president of the national organization Toward Tradition .

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America's Secular Jihadists

By Chuck Colson
BreakPoint
1/12/2007

Atheists on the Offensive

Just a few months ago, I thought it was insulting to be called a "theocrat." I was wrong. "Theocrat" is almost a compliment compared to what the Left is calling Christians now.

According to a New York Times review, we Christians are fascists-that's what the Nazis were. And if we're not stopped, we'll try to take over America. It's an illustration of how vicious the invective has become against faithful Christians.

"Of course there are Christian fascists in America," writes Rick Perlstein in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. How else, for example, to explain the cadres who took former Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument on tour?

Perlstein was reviewing the latest in the recent crop of hate books about the Christian faith, this one titled, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, written by Chris Hedges. He details all the wacky killings, like the Aryan brotherhood over the last twenty-five years, and then concludes by saying that Christians are about to do the same thing. Talk about guilt by association.

The really dangerous thing here is that, by writing this kind of stuff, they are likely to embolden some nut to start shooting pastors and Christian leaders.

Perlstein was honest enough to admit that there has been no violence from Christians lately-but he reminds us that there used to be, and may be again, driven by all those violent Left Behind books.

Gee, what a backhanded compliment! We're not as bad as we used to be-or will be in the future.

American Fascists is just the latest book in a long line of anti-Christian literature to hit the best-seller lists-all reviewed and promoted by the New York Times. Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, suggests that the government may have to stop parents from sharing their religious beliefs with their kids, calling it a form of child abuse.

What's behind this witch hunt? Two things.

First, it's an effort to drive Christians out of public debates, like abortion and same-sex "marriage," and sadly, there are signs it might be working.

Second, as Sam Schulman noted last week in the Wall Street Journal, atheists are trying to move heaven and earth (so to speak) to destroy belief in God.

In the Victorian age, it was atheists who were gentlemen, rather civilized, though held in low public regard. Today, atheists are trying to turn the tables: turning religious faith into "a cause for personal embarrassment."

To the new atheists, religious belief is both misguided and contemptible, "the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote," Schulman writes. Belief in God is "a form of stupidity"-or so they say.

But the faith these atheists present is a parody of the faith that thousands have given their lives for, and for causes like ending the slave trade and human rights causes today. Look over the history of Western civilization, as Rodney Stark, the great sociologist, writes, and you'll see that Christianity has been the source of all the great reforms and advances of Western civilization.

The best response to these attacks, of course, is just a loving assertion of the truth and a renewed effort to silence the critics by doing good.

And in the midst of these best-selling books that try to embarrass us out of our faith, we ought to remember the words of the Apostle Paul: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for all those who believe."

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=5965

If the Pope can go to Turkey, Can the ABC go to Texas?

If the Pope can go to Turkey, Can the ABC go to Texas?
A MOTION FROM THE RUSTBELT AS OUR MEETING APPROACHES
Being sure the obvious is said

By Bishop Paul Marshall
1/14/2007

I have always been captivated by the realism about human interaction found in the seven undoubtedly Pauline Epistles, our earliest testimony to Christianity: for Paul, the living out of the gospel is always a matter of imperfect personalities and events, redeemed and being redeemed, giving and embracing comment and correction on the way. Spirits are to be tested, and behavior in the Body addressed.

Compare Paul's own report of his conflict with Peter over the latter's suspension of eating with Gentiles, and his report of what went on at the Jerusalem summit with Luke's much smoother and curial account of relations at a "council," and we begin to see more clearly the apostle's consistency behavior and his point of view about leadership. For good or ill, most people acknowledge that Paul led the formation of the Christianity we know.

It is wise to consider on the meta level his operational principles of directness in truth-telling. Let us also consider his directness in truth-acting: circumcision decisions on Timothy and Titus are radically different because how those decisions related to Gospel truth at certain places in certain times.

With St. Paul, we must dare to look at and respond to the vessels and the circumstances, all of which struggle to bear the Gospel. Being more modestly gifted than my apostolic namesake, I will limit my theological observations while trying not to avoid naming the issue and person that concerns me in the Church as much as President George Bush does in the orbis terrarum, and I assure you that do I write to him often.

The most un-biblical part of traditional Anglicanism is its politeness, its charm, its unwillingness to confront and hold accountable those who have sought and accepted positions of supreme leadership. We in the Episcopal Church often brag about our Church's failure to address slavery as though that were a virtue and not a disgrace. The Church held together while humans died in chains and even bishops (both north and south in the beginning) traded in human flesh. We now have put the British emancipator William Wilberforce in our calendar but do not make his commemoration one of fasting and lament for our heritage of cowardice in the name of togetherness. The words and deeds of Paul and even more certainly of our utterly tactless Lord Jesus suggest that charm is less important than candor or provocative questioning, that real love in times of disagreement is often something quite uncomfortable. It seems no accident that historically we are enthralled by John, whom we cannot understand, rather than Paul, whom we can but would prefer not to.

That said, my subject, with both regret and trembling, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, but only in the very limited sense of his functioning toward our house and to some extent our Church. That is a tiny and limited subject and I do not intend it for a discussion of the content of the myriad ministries in which he is engaged. As one too old to have anything to gain or lose, I will try to say what may be obvious to others but risky for them to voice. I hasten to add that this is not a matter of condemnation: he needs no witness from me to his reputation as a pious and good man, great in so many ways, and someone whom I overall admire as writer, teacher, and moral voice in the UK. I believe with all my heart that his intentions are at least a good as any of ours. I write of a perceived chain of mistakes in policy and deed, mistakes, not evil. I have made perhaps more than my share of system mistakes, so I know one when I see one.

It will, however, not do to say, as one persistent soul on HOBD frequently does, that because Rowan is so smart and knows things we do not, he must be right in his approach to us. I stopped believing that about leaders during Vietnam, which this is not, of course.

A Gestalt bouquet: I am sadly impressed that my friend and neighbor Bob Duncan, peace be to him, and a few of his supporters, have had more time with Rowan Williams than has our entire House, or even our Church gathered in Convention. The long-distance intervention in our process during the last moments of the Columbus convention has made us a laughing-stock. (Katharine wonderfully rolled with that without losing her integrity, a marvelous first inning.) The public words of welcome he gave to our new primate would have made a Laodicean proud for their restrained enthusiasm. The widely-publicized Lambeth Palace photograph of Rowan, Frank, and Katharine all standing as far away from each other as the camera lens would allow has not been without its effect on many among us. A dismal icon of formal communion without a hint of affection or connection has been sent to the entire inhabited world.

The perceived distancing did not begin with Gene Robinson. My neuralgia on the question of the ABC's witness and function has been growing since his disastrously insensitive comments on 9/11 -made in New York!- which were alone nearly communion-breaking for lay people in grief, and which have never been effectually mended. People in my own diocese who lost loved ones in that attack have never recovered from the insensitive academic speculation of their galactic leader asking those covered in blood, ashes, and strewn body parts to reflect on the bombers and "why they hate" the US. It is an important question, but one painfully misplaced in time and space. It would have been pastorally wise, if the relationship in Christ were really valued, for Lambeth to work endlessly to overcome that perfectly valid but tragically inept obiter dictum, but no. Curates know that moments of grief are to be ministered to for what they are and save the dazzle for much later in the process.

This situation of alienation was regrettably worsened by his remarkable distancing of himself from a church that has followed his own carefully thought-through teachings on sexuality, teaching that he only last year suddenly dismissed as a sin of his academic youth. The appointment to the Windsor drafters of North American representatives wonderfully devout but historically disinclined to advocate vigorously for the position of their church was not his sole responsibility, but the buck sure stops there. Like many of you, I have submitted to all, not some, of the demands of the Windsor report as a reluctant gesture of good will to the Communion and sacrifice of principle for the sake of those who may be weaker brethren. Cannot that be reciprocated? And so on and so on.

By Rowan's subsequent actions and inactions the situation has for me now reached a proportion manageable only by the combination of prayer and surrender to the belief that God will work this out through the usual means - crucifixion and resurrection. But before we get ready for life alone, we deserve to hear from him, in the room with us, an explanation of his distance and intentions. We are all busy, and we show up where we believe it is important to go. Let's hope we become important. [An oddly parallel situation on the other side: just recently the Bishop of Durham has roundly attacked evangelical bishops in the UK for acting on doctrinal points of view he has abundantly fueled for years. If we dare to teach, we must accept the possibility that we will be heard and believed by those for whom the life of the church is more concrete and less speculative than academics ever imagine.]

The situation of the shunning of North American bishops would be painful under any circumstances. The pain is more intense here because it comes from the withdrawal of a human who was friend, teacher, and colleague to many in this church - with no notice that either his opinions or commitments were in flux. The archbishop has appeared to my knowledge only once in the US since 2003, and that was the briefest of visits to raise money for a function of the Communion. He cancelled a date for a joint meeting with Canadian and US bishops with no real excuse, and has made no effort to reschedule what could have been a fellowship-redeeming encounter. Our relationship to the one who is expected to be first in a world-wide college of bishops is distant, confused, and multiply-triangulated. We are ceaselessly told by those who would destroy our church that the ABC endorses this or that crudely divisive action or position. Questions to Lambeth on these occasions are sometimes met with silence and sometimes with stunning equivocation. This distance, confusion, and triangulation ought not to be. One of the basics of episcopal - or parish - pastoral care is that one gets with and stays as close as possible to those who may be seen to be problematic. The Pope went to Turkey. Can the Archbishop of Canterbury not come to meet us just once at a regular or special meeting in any city he would care to name?

A very highly-placed COE figure told me personally last September that he thinks Rowan has been "badly advised" in what this person admitted was callous treatment of the US and Canadian churches. I rejoice in the hint that Rowan may wish have an authentic connection with us, but I cannot accept that report of bad advice as sufficient mitigation: as a bishop I alone am responsible for my actions. I connect with my churches not with my words as much as by being among them. Leaders are leaders because they show up when it is not pleasant to do so.

All of this said, it seems necessary to report my perception that the nadir in Rowan's overall relationship to the US, Canada and perhaps South Africa has been the appointment of a virtual lynch mob to draft the Covenant that will by all reports attempt turn a fellowship into a curial bureaucracy in which the worst elements of the great and oppressive Colonizer and of the Resentful Colonized will as meet as a scissors to the denigration of significant number of God's people who were almost equal in Christ for one brief shining moment. Are North America, South Africa and many other parts of the Communion (not to mention "much cattle") of such little value in the grand scheme? Does anyone think that the COE itself will not split if a continent and a half are among those permitted to be set adrift?

So we must always talk about him, not to or with him. Like so many of you, I have been disheartened by the succession of "second gentlemen" from the COE who have addressed our House in Rowan's stead while over-insisting that that they were not at all doing so. No bishop of the left, right, or center, was taken in, and our colleague from Missouri pointed this out on one occasion with deft words that the Sage of Hannibal, MO, himself would envy. Even our steadfastly bucolic local papers here in rustic Pennsylvania would not be deceived by such over-wrought protestations of mere coincidence or fortuitous invitation. By these speakers, one of whom just happened to have a specific list of a dozen or so things we had to do, all but the most anxious of us have been inevitably alienated. How can it help bonds of affection for Communion leadership to so overtly and maladroitly play us for chumps? There is a kind of contempt for our intellect there whose sting almost matches the pain of the overall strategy of isolation.

Having now had three successive messages delivered to us by what some UK friends describe as "fully accredited members of the British Olympic Patronizing Team," I take this (perhaps not entirely welcome to her) opportunity to thank Katharine for her outstanding integrity and clarity of focus since her election, and accordingly to urge her that no foreign bishop whatsoever be given the privilege of addressing the House of Bishops of this Church until the ABC can personally enter this country and speak to the House himself and deign to entertain the level of frank questioning that his counterpart the Prime Minister might have to endure among those he leads and serves. We all do get cable news and know what the wonderful British tradition of questioning in the house can helpfully add to common life.

As I began, I end. My text is Paul's reminder to Peter that he USED to eat with Gentiles until he found it unhelpful to his plan for the church. After decades of close fellowship, Rowan has steadfastly chosen the comfortable path of being Peter when we need Paul, and unless he can make an overwhelming Gospel case for it, I cannot help but anticipate that he will be remembered as having chosen a path that was not courageous or well-defined and actually fostered schism. I cannot now imagine what it will take for him in the long run to re-create good relations with the US and Canadian houses, but hope that the effort will be made should we somehow be allowed to remain in communion.

For now, I call on our own amazingly composed and delightful Leader to require heightened integrity on ABC's part and to remind him that without _pares_ there is no _primus_ _inter_ which he may by any significant sense claim to preside.

I do not, cannot, ask the ABC to agree with us: we are a body of bishops who hold many views and we could be wrong about any number of our positions and actions. I do not ask that he endorse the actions of this Church, even if they can claim that they were to some extent his idea. He doesn't have to receive communion. He doesn't have to eat or hang out with us. He certainly ought to meet us face to face and accept accountability for his breath-taking words and actions us-wards. He needs above all to square what he has said and done in terms of congruence with what we can know of the ministry of the fleshly Messiah.

No more messengers; no more cell phone calls to defeat the integrity of this Church's polity. If Rowan really believes what the Lambeth press office says he believes about us, it is past time for him to say it to our faces, and have the goodness to listen to the response of those who have to live with the results of his choices. This would be, I believe, fair play and look very more like the New Testament.

Reluctantly yours,

Paul Marshall
Bishop of Bethlehem

Interesting Article at VirtueOnline

 

Here is an interesting article I have found at VirtueOnline:  http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5329