A War By Other Means

For some time now, any reference to the many attempts, inside or outside the halls of power, to eject all manifestations of Christian affiliation, allegiance, and principles from public life has evoked a chorus of derision from the Left. Their usual theme song is that we're just imagining it: "How could there be a war on Christianity when three-quarters of the country is Christian?" At least, that's the tune I hear most often from those dismissive of the charge.

C. S. Lewis once remarked to the effect that the Devil's greatest triumphs have come from persuading people that he doesn't exist. So also with those who would strip us of our religious and philosophical foundations.

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HOT FLASH TO THE PEANUT GALLERY:
America is a Christian nation.
America has always been a Christian nation.
Should it cease to be a Christian nation, it will cease to be America.

Many persons react reflexively against those assertions. "That's exclusionary!" they bellow. "UnConstitutional! It omits all those wonderful Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Rastafarians, and atheists who've helped to make this country great! Why, it might even be illegal!"

Pardon my Belgian, but that's horseshit of the purest distillation. Even those who say such things know it.

America is not a Christian theocracy. America was founded on the Christian ethos, Christianity's code of acceptable behavior:

And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

Note that that does not include all the Hebraic prescriptions and proscriptions from Exodus and Leviticus, which is why I say America is a Christian, rather than a Judeo-Christian nation. Christ's preachments above have been written into our secular law. (Yes, including the parts about adultery and honoring one's parents, though they've proved unenforceable by secular means.) Exodus and Leviticus have not.

Now, for the terminally slow of comprehension: That does not mean that Jews, Buddhists, etc. are unwelcome in this nation; they merely have to conform to the ethos stated above, which binds us all. Muslims have a really hard time doing that, as recent events have indicated. Even so, if they can just grit their teeth and control themselves, the rest of us are bound by law and conscience to tolerate them.

Does anyone object to any of that? If so, make no sudden moves and keep your hands where I can see them.

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Militant atheists, incapable of tolerating religious belief of any sort, are prone to telling the most extravagant lies about Christianity and its key figures. For example, they like to claim that Hitler was a Christian, or that Pope Pius XII was secretly allied with him. It's nonsense, of course, but a lot of them get away with it even so. When refuted by one well educated in history, they fall back on nebulous all-purpose charges. For example, they'll complain that Christianity is "exclusionary," as if the Church should be a come-one-come-all gathering place like Facebook. That the Church proclaims certain doctrines "offends" them, though they're as free to disagree with those doctrines as anyone in America...some of whom self-identify as Christians, too.

A great deal of the animus aimed at Christianity arises from its teachings about sexual fidelity and how Natural Law applies to sexual behavior. That's to be expected in a time in which the purpose of existence has been reduced to a quest for the Ultimate Orgasm. All the same, the Church has no temporal power, nor does it seek such. If Adam wants to shove his joystick up Steve's poop chute, no one will stop him...well, except maybe Steve. And those of us who disapprove of such caperings will feel equally free to do so.

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At my age, I suppose I should be used to idiots and bigots. God must love them too; after all, look at how many He made! But I get volcanically angry about it all when something like this comes along:

Only in Obama's world, where the truth about Islam and Jihad is banned, could such an outrageous insult to mainstream, peaceful religions be permitted by a US Army training instructor.

During the course of an Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief on extremism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism, ultra Orthodox Jews, and the Church of Latter Day Saints were listed among Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunni Muslims, and Nation of Islam as examples of religious extremism. Oddly enough, "Islamophobia" was also listed as a form of religious extremism, and the Westboro Baptist Church was excluded altogether by the instructor who apparently got her information from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Stating the obvious, Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty said, “it is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization.”

Nor is this out of the current pattern:

An Army officer assigned to a U.S. base says he tried to access SBC.net from his government computer but instead got a message that said the site was being blocked by “Team CONUS.” The message he received read:

“The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RECERT-CONUS) due to hostile content.”

Team CONUS is the Department of Defense management and computer network overseer of the military’s Continental U.S. (CONUS) Theater Network Operations and Security Center (C-TNOSC) and Regional Computer Emergency Response Team (RCERT).

“So the Southern Baptist Convention is now considered hostile to the U.S. Army … It just corroborates the recent string of events highlighted by AFA,” the officer wrote in an email to American Family Association (AFA).

(Thank you, Debra Heine, for your exemplary service on this and many other subjects.)

Has "Team CONUS" blocked any Islamic sites, pray tell? Considering that the Koran openly commands Muslims to make war upon non-Muslims, and to use any and every means expedient to do us harm, there might be a teensy bit of logic in that. Yet somehow I doubt that any such blockings have occurred. By the way, who writes "Team CONUS's" marching orders, and under what rationale?

Frankly, given how successful militant atheist activists have been at getting courts to expel ever more harmless Christian displays from public places and events, anyone who doesn't think Christianity is under siege is either a villain or a fool. Never fear: you don't have to be a Christian, or embrace the Christian faith, to agree with me.

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War, Karl von Clausewitz wrote, is a continuation of politics by other means. When governments go from trading words to trading blows, they haven't changed their goals, only the means by which they pursue them. Thus, there's a degree of plausibility in regarding all intergovernmental exchanges as "low-intensity warfare."

My point, which I've been orbiting for more than a thousand words in my usual circuitous fashion, is that not everything a government "makes war on" is another government.

Governments, being wielders of force under a veneer of "legitimate authority," are naturally hostile to competing and countervailing influences. Time was, their response to religious authorities was to attempt to co-opt them into collaboration, creating a mutually reinforcing alliance of Throne and Altar. The American experiment reversed that course, explicitly forbidding "an establishment of religion." Madison was of the opinion that the multitude of religious sects in the new nation would cause them to act as a check upon one another, such that no sect could possibly achieve dominance over all the others. And for a time, it seemed that it would be so: though the great majority of Americans have always been Christians, the profusion of denominations, each with its own twist on Christ's Gospel, has compelled them to tolerate one another as cousins, if not brothers, in a single enveloping faith.

No one expected that a tiny band of infinitely sensitive, perpetually offended militant atheists, incapable of tolerating the visible or audible expression of any faith but their own, would rise to overturn that state of affairs. No one expected that a government bound within the Christian ethos by its own Constitution and the common law would ally itself with them.

No one expected that three-quarters of Americans would find themselves marginalized, labeled as "haters" and "bigots," for following the teachings of the Prince of Peace. Yet it is so.

And though it horrifies me to say so, those at the levers of power find these developments very much to their liking. Our political masters have joined forces with the militant atheists of our era. What our rulers cannot co-opt, they are resolved to destroy.

More anon.