{"id":1748,"date":"2006-04-01T12:31:23","date_gmt":"2006-04-01T19:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/war-on-christians-is-alleged\/"},"modified":"2006-04-01T12:41:25","modified_gmt":"2006-04-01T19:41:25","slug":"war-on-christians-is-alleged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/war-on-christians-is-alleged\/","title":{"rendered":"‘War’ on Christians Is Alleged"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t be the only one creeped out about how Evangelical Christians have completely immersed themselves in a war-mindset. It makes them a great tool for fascism. mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

‘War’ on Christians Is Alleged<\/a>
\nConference Depicts a Culture Hostile to Evangelical Beliefs
\nBy Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer<\/p>\n

The “War on Christmas” has morphed into a “War on Christians.” …<\/p>\n

Among the … speakers [at the two-day conference in Washington on the “War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006”<\/strong>] were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.<\/p>\n

To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia, or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.<\/p>\n

To some outsiders, it illuminated the paranoia of the Christian right. …<\/p>\n

“This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians <\/em>who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position,”<\/strong> said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.<\/p>\n

White evangelicals make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and 85 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. But three-quarters of evangelicals believe they are a minority under siege and nearly half believe they are looked down upon by most of their fellow citizens, according to a 2004 poll. …<\/p>\n

In a luncheon speech yesterday, DeLay took issue with the “chattering classes” who think there is no war on Christians.<\/p>\n

“We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity<\/strong>,” he said. [mjh: let me be the first to call Christianity a first-rate superstition]<\/span><\/p>\n

I watched part of Ron Luce’s Battle Cry on the Christian channel 23 (you’d be shocked how much time I spend on that channel — my wife certainly is — but I feel you’ve got to know what this particular group is up to; besides, it’s always cool to see TDJakes). Battle Cry addresses teenagers as being attacked by their culture and forced to sit in a pen with pigs (me, maybe you). It uses hip-hop and skateboard culture to reach the youngins. Reminds me of that King of the Hill episode when Bobby joins a bunch of Christian skateboarders. mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Evangelical teens rally in S.F.<\/a> Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer<\/p>\n

“This is more than a spiritual war,” [Ron] Luce, [whose Teen Mania organization is based in Texas,] said. “It’s a culture war.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Military metaphors abound in Luce’s descriptions of the struggle.<\/strong> He tells young people of how “an enemy has launched a brutal attack on them.” At a pre-Battle Cry<\/em> rally Friday afternoon on the steps of City Hall, Luce told his mostly teenage audience that “terrorists of a different kind”<\/strong> — advertisers — were targeting them and that they were “caught in the middle of the battle.” [mjh: “Terrorists”? Aren’t we overusing this term?]<\/span><\/p>\n

“Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?” he asked, and the young people roared “yes!” and some waved triangular red flags flown from long, medieval-looking poles.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t be the only one creeped out about how Evangelical Christians have completely immersed themselves in a war-mindset. It makes them a great tool for fascism. mjh ‘War’ on Christians Is Alleged Conference Depicts a Culture Hostile to Evangelical Beliefs By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer The “War on Christmas” has morphed into … Continue reading ‘War’ on Christians Is Alleged<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}