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Saturday, December 18, 2010

The Leftism of Western Churches

Tolerate everything and you stand for nothing.

by StFerdIII

 

Roland Shirk wrote a good overview of the 'Dhimmitude of the Western Church'. [Shirk must be a pseudonym being an Arab word meaning roughly 'impossible'.] His analysis is quite appropriate. Far from being 'right wing' which is just a pejorative term used by really-smart-people and the media; most Western Churches in their joyful and complicated set of sects and groups are 'progressive' meaning Communalist, Socialist and anti-Semitic. Many are profoundly concerned about Arabs and Islam in the ancient Jewish land of Samaria, and their so-called 'rights', but most could care less about Jews and fellow Christians being butchered in the Middle East, Africa or Asia. The Church is part of our collective problem. As Shirk writes: 

I think that such arguments are extremely important to address, because they strike at the heart of one of the most vexing issues in the fight against Islamic supremacism: The resistance of conservative Christians to enlist in our ranks. We needn't spend much time wondering why we can't win over lax, worldly leftist believers who have internalized the suicidal, anti-Western ideology of Multiculturalism (brilliantly summed up by Robert Spencer in his contribution to a new book of essays aimed at college students, Disorientation). ....

No, the thing that troubles me is the slowness of solid, doctrinally serious Christians to wake up to the civilizational, existential threat posed by the presence in our midst of highly fertile, politically committed devotees of the World's Most Intolerant Religion™. Surely, to some degree, they have simply been beaten down, by 40 years of elite and pop cultural catechesis about the evils of the Christian past. Just as Communist dupes in the West played down the brutalities of the Soviet Union--where commissars bragged about how they killed more dissenters in a single day than the Inquisition did in 300 years--so multiculturalists habitually exaggerate the crimes of the Christian West, and whitewash those of other cultures. I challenge anyone to find accounts of the Islamic conquests of the Mediterranean or the Balkans that are as candid and critical as every recent text on the conquests of Mexico or Peru.”

I have written before making these obvious and quite similar observations. The Western Church during the Christian Scholastic period, and in the Catholic wars for self-preservation against Islam from 1095 to 1571; was sure of itself, proud, dedicated and contrary to myth well-educated and vital in funding Western industrial, agricultural and military innovations. It tended towards absolutism which made the Protesting Revolution both inevitable and long-term. Long before Luther – some 300 years in fact – movements to securely separate Church and State had developed, many leading to civil and military conflict including the irruptions led by Wycliff and Hus. But when confronted by a totalitarianism which had never accepted reason and believed that all of life was managed by a large, impersonal, dictatorial polydeistic thing called 'Allah', the medieval Church was absolutely essential, as the bulwark, and the galvanizing force to save Europe from Islam. That fact is indisputable.

But it is not just against the cult of Submission that the Church[es] is [are] failing. It is in every aspect of life. What too many Churches are teaching is nothing else other than regressive Marxism and Socialism. In some Churches even atheism or a denial that Christ was a singular inspiration or example of a divine essence is being forwarded. The Churches are self-immolating.

The Church – a broad category covering dozens of sects – is a pale image of what it once stood for. The key messaging of the Church has been lost. It is simply a fact that the modern Western world would not exist, without the teachings of the Jews and early Christians. The entire moral ethos of our world is based on Judeo Christian concepts. The Book of Matthew for example and the Golden Rule is the highest form of ethical teaching, matched only by Zen Buddhist idealism. Ideas about justice, equality, individual worth, aiding the poor, private property and natural law rights which ensure that the person is not the slave of any temporal ruler, all come from the JC tradition.

Even taking into account the infractions, evils and oppression of many Church structures throughout history the benefits of JC culture cannot be contested. There is a reason why the Western world is rich and Islam is not. There is a reason why slavery was destroyed by the Americans and British Navy and still flourishes in parts of Asia, Africa, Islam and Brazil. There is a reason why the Church's capital investment in the medieval European economy allowed Europeans to overtake in technology, wealth and innovation their geo-competitors. JC ideology was fundamental in the development of our modern world at every level in society, morality, and the political-economy.

And yet where is the Church today ?

Is it pro-capital ? No

Is it pro-America ? Outside of the US southern bible belt, No.

Is it pro-market ? No

Is it standing up for natural law rights ? No

Does the church support Israel, and persecuted Christians in Islamic states ? No

Does the church support the individual against the powers of the state ? No

Does the church engage in historical rewriting, blaming Whites, Jews and Europeans for the ills of the world ? Most certainly.

The 'Church' broad as that term is, is now part of the problem. The Church has unified itself with statist ideology.

The Church is indeed pushing Left-wing dogma at every turn. This is not true of all Churches and all Church leaders of course. The current Pope Benedict XVI has been accurately and forthrightly critical of Islam, rightly claiming that Islam by its own theological teachings has rejected reason and rationality and that enlightened metaphysics can only be achieved through knowledge and understanding. He should be applauded and supported for saying the obvious. But it seems to me, that he is a lonely outpost of courage surrounded by fakirs and cowards.

Melanie Phillips in her book 'The World Turned Upside Down' relates in graphic detail, the abysmal cultural relativity and anti-semiticism which is standard policy at the Anglican Church of England, itself a strange mixture of Catholicism and Protestant 'reform'. She sources and lays bare the same phenomena sweeping the US Protestant Churches and supra-organizations such as the National Coalition of Churches and others who engage in nothing less than the demonization of Israel and the West; whilst openly supporting Islam and the Arabs. Further as she and others point out the Church – that broad based term that is by necessity rather opaque – is embracing all manner of Cultural Marxist intellectual junk including Gay marriage, abortion, liberation theology, feminism and any program which desires the destruction of the family, normative values, and true culture. As Shirk states:

Secular or anti-religious values may be promoted, but ours may not. Atheists may act on their ethics and metaphysics, but ours are merely to be tolerated, so long as they remain our private, eccentric opinions. The nature of marriage must be redefined along purely secular, contractual lines. Public education will be lavishly funded by our taxes, but we may not grab back some of our tax money in the form of vouchers, to pass along our own values to our children. Home-schooling (often the only alternative to secular, sexually explicit education) will be restricted or outright forbidden (as it was in many states before Christians fought back). Human life itself will be defined according to the utilitarian convenience of sexually liberated secularists, to keep abortion as back-up birth control. In place of the tolerant Christianity that gave moral support to our founding and growth as a nation, multiculturalism will serve as the new state religion; racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance will be repressed as pornography once was.”

And that is the crux of the issue. Statism demands a state religion. Multi-cults don't survive, only mono-cults survive. See the Hapsburg empire for more details. Multi-cults can only endure if the state imposes a despotism of manufactured ties which bind all the parties together. See the Ottoman empire for more details. This despotic unenlightened governance comes today in the form of Cultural Marxism and multi-culturalism. These irrational theories that all cultures are the same; all ideas wonderful; all cults such as Submission, Kwanzaa, Wiccanism etc. are equal; and that truth, reality, and the world of the 5 senses is optional, is dominating Western society.

The truly sad feature is that most Churches are actively promoting this nonsense as the new religion. They do it perhaps to appeal to a broader public and attract attendees and financial support. Perhaps they believe that the message of Christ was one of pacific socialism and cultural relativity. Maybe they push cultural Marxism to assuage overwrought consciences burdened with historic guilt over Christian 'crimes'. Who knows. But whatever the reason, it is an illness a sickness that invades the mental, the psychological, the cultural and the societal and that illness is a major threat to our entire existence.