80 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
80 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
Toxic Christianity, round two
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<p>In the October 15th <a href='http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/'>Best of the Web</a>, James<br />
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Taranto asks:</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>So let’s see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican<br />
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Church is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent<br />
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people [by Palestinian terrorists] is a sign of “serious moral goals,”<br />
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while the liberation of millions [of Iraqis] from one of the world’s<br />
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most vicious dictatorships is, as he has put it, “immoral and<br />
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illegal.”</p>
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<p>Is this really what Christianity is all about?</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Well, since you asked…yes, indeed it is.</p>
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<p>To understand why, you first have to confront what Dr. Rowan<br />
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Williams is actually doing. He is aligning himself with Islamic<br />
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terrorists against individual Christians and against the liberation of<br />
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Iraq from an Islamizing dictator by a predominantly Christian<br />
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nation.</p>
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<p>Now, why would the head of the second most prestigious of all<br />
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Christian denominations do that? What is it in Christianity that<br />
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could make him so confident in the morality of this position? What is<br />
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it about the U.S.’s actions that make it so threatening?</p>
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<p>A clue to the problem is that though the U.S. is demographically a<br />
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mostly Christian nation, the effect of U.S. cultural hegemony is a<br />
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secularizing one. American popular culture severs the bonds of fear<br />
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and ignorance that hold people unquestioningly to their ancestral<br />
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relgions. The American vision of each individual as an autonomous<br />
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being who derives his rights from his humanness, from the simple fact<br />
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of his capacity to assert them, is deadly antithetical to any<br />
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religious tradition that vests moral authority in a transcendant<br />
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God.</p>
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<p>The Founding Fathers of the U.S. understood this antipathy full<br />
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well. The pro-forma nods towards the distant god of the Deists in the<br />
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Declaration of Independence and U.S. Consitution failed to conceal the<br />
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fact that the Founding Fathers were freethinkers, agnostics and<br />
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atheists almost to a man. As George Washington and John Adams<br />
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explained to the Knights of Malta in 1787 “The United States is in no<br />
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way founded upon the Christian religion”. It could not have been so<br />
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founded without a fatal conflict with its aspiration to be a nation of<br />
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freedom.</p>
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<p>The Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be dismissed as a fringe figure<br />
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as some are (incorrectly) wont to do of Pat Robertson. His enmity<br />
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towards the U.S.’s anti-terror strategy, his willingness to line up<br />
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with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden after no more than a pro-forma<br />
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disclaimer of terrorist means, proceeds directly from this fundamental<br />
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conflict. It is diagnostic of a deep sickness, an abiding evil in the<br />
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heart of Christianity itself — the exaltation of obedience, the<br />
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denial that humans can have any worth other than through the<br />
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condescension of God.</p>
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<p>Nietzsche called this one correctly. Christianity, which purports<br />
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to be the religion of love, is only sporadically anything of the kind.<br />
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It is primarily a religion of slavery and submission. Christian<br />
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individualism, when it exists at all, is legitimized only by obedience<br />
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to God. In a Christian worldview there is always someone to be<br />
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obeyed, whether visible cleric or invisible Nobodaddy. You must<br />
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submit; the only argument is about to whom your obedience is owed, and<br />
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what humans under what circumstances may transmit the orders of God.<br />
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Without that sinew of obedience the entire world-view<br />
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disintegrates.</p>
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<p>To a Christian cleric, a properly terrified and obedient Muslim is<br />
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less of a threat than a person who has rejected the God of the<br />
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Abrahamic faiths. The Muslim is still within the system of<br />
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submission. Only a handful of symbols separate him from the Christian;<br />
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the basic program is the same. Therefore, from the point of view of<br />
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the operators of the religious obedience machine that is Anglicanism<br />
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(or almost any other Christian denomination) Osama bin Laden is a more<br />
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natural ally than any freethinker.</p>
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<p>Am I accusing Dr. Rowan Williams of being part of a conscious<br />
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totalitarian conspiracy? No; he is something far more dangerous<br />
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— a leading figure in an <em>unconscious</em> totalitarian<br />
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conspiracy, one which denies its own nature just effectively enough to<br />
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fool others as well. That conspiracy encompasses every tyrant<br />
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who has ever told human beings that their path to happiness lay<br />
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in the exaltation of some authority, whether God or the State.</p>
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<p>It is in this context that Dr. Williams’s statement makes perfect<br />
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and consistent sense. For him, better a thousand terrorist acts than<br />
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even one human being waking up to discover that he need not after all<br />
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fear the wrath of God.</p>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&commentid=106625086280895587">Blogspot Comments</a></p>
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