Christian terrorism?
The logic of those who claim that Breivik was the Christian equivalent of a Muslim terrorist leaves a lot to be desired.
Are there Christian clerics clamoring for the murder of Young Socialists in Europe, in order to preserve the continent for Christiandom, and protect it from the Muslim invasion? If there are, I certainly haven’t heard of them. And Breivik himself wrote the following about his religious beliefs in his lengthy manifesto:
“A majority of so called agnostics and atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians without even knowing it,” [Breivik] wrote.
“If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian,” he wrote.
Breivik’s initial explanation comes in a segment of the manifesto entitled “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom – reforming our suicidal church.”
Later in the manifesto, when attempting to justify his “martyrdom operation” Breivik did not see himself as being religious.
“I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment,” he wrote in a section of the manifesto.
“Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength,” he wrote.
“I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well,” he wrote.
So, Breivik seems to see Christianity as part of a Western culture he is interested in preserving, rather than being a Christian himself. His terrorist act was, of course, contrary to every teaching of Christianity and every statement of every Christian cleric—sanctioned by none, and condemned by all.
Compare and contrast this to Islam’s reaction to its own jihadis. It is split. All too many Muslim clerics sanction and glorify terrorists’ deeds and suicide bombers’ martyrdom—and encourage more of the same, all directly in the name of Islam. The contrast with Christianity could not be greater. But there are many people—and some of them are quoted in the article I linked to in the first paragraph of this post—who would like to argue otherwise, and hope that readers will be too stupid and/or ignorant to notice the difference.
I don’t think you’ll find many Christian churches funneling money to wannabe bombers either. I am sick of hearing about the crusades, too. I am not going to wear sackcloth and ashes for something that happened centuries before I was born. No one is asking for reparations from the pirates of Tripoli for their European hostages. Norway did its best to help put Obama in the WH. Should they help pay off some of his debt.
This is perfectly logical Neo. If the Left really believed Christianity was going after their heads and their children’s heads… they would bow knee to Christianity and beg to lick up whatever they are allowed to. Instead, they attack Christianity and beg on their knees in front of Islam. Because they know.
They know that Islam really will kill them and their children if they get out of line.
The Crusades?
Heh. People have listened to too much Leftist propaganda and revisionism on the crusades.
The Crusades, the first and the last, were, in a nutshell, wars that the Pope decided to lead because too many Christians or Jews were being killed or robbed or kidnapped while going on pilgrimage. That’s about it.
It wasn’t for money, because nobody got any money out of it. It was a sacrifice, a noble way to earn your salvation through good works. You weren’t going to come back. Most likely you were going to die. And that’s how it was advertised. There were no conscripts. It was a 100% volunteer army. And the Christian military order of knights, like the Templars, had swords which were so dull, they were mostly cutting through people by pure faith and strength alone. And that’s why they refused a ransom. They expected to live by the sword and to die by the sword. For such a death is glorious and will reward them with heaven.
This was a war of belief. It was not a war about much of anything else you were told it was about.
Of course, two can play that game. If they want to talk about Crusades, we can easily talk about the Hagia Sophia.
Two can play that game, but usually the West does not because the West has military firepower…. paid for by the US of course.
Ah what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deify luxury.
I Think I’ve finally got it.
McVeigh-Breivik mayhem part and parcel of global Christian/right wing/Republican hate mongering.
Muslim mayhem attributed to trouble assimilating to natives’ failure to assimilate to Islam.
Finally I understand what’s goin’ on.
Religion enjoys a peaceful coexistence with other religions in the US because no one religion trumps the other .. Thanks to our secular constitution .. which resides at the top. The mention of the word God in founding documents refers to deism .. Deism is not Christianity, Islamic or Jewish.
Breivic in his manifesto correctly states, that since the 18th century a new spiritual malady arises in European Christian culture: the sickness of the ‘édeologies’. That is: intellectual systems not produced to come closer to the Truth, but to achieve political power. Overthrowing the powers that be, taking power yourself with an ideological system as ammunition.
Ever since the 18th century conservative Christians were abhorred by this line of thought and action. They defined themselves as anti-revolutionary and refused to accept the crazy superstition that after an enormous, deliberately produced disaster and collapse a beautiful new dawn would arise. Most horrid European revolutions, beginning with the atrocious French one, followed this muster except of course of the real heavenly dawn following.
These conservatives wanted steady, patiently worked out improvements, not the craziness of violent revolution. And these people were very much strengthened in this reasonable belief and attitude by their firm Christian belief in God and their belief that no man nor any group of men should ever take the place of God. Intentionally murdering innocents for long term political improvements, they rightfully saw as man wrongfully usurping the place of God.
Brievic said he abhorred ideologues as the Nazi’s, the Leninists etc. He called himself ‘a cultural conservative’. But what he actually did was turning reasonable, commonsensical conservative thought into its opposite: an ideological powerinstrument bent on unleashing mayhem and civil war that would eventually (in 2083!) result in ‘The Declaration of European Independence’.
He became the oxymoron of a ‘conservative leninist’. Some neoconservatives, in of course a lighter degree, also show signs of this contradiction. They usually are ex-marxists turned conservative, taking too much of their old habits into their new spiritual home.
I am an oldfashioned conservative. I want myself and all other people to do their little share in pushing for the good and resisting evil, where and whenever we are at our little place in history with the little light God has given each of us. And I am not crazy enough to think that my little mind (or any other human mind) is capable to grasp the Grand Design of History and act on that.
I leave that to God.
I see “Onyo” has been reset- assuming this is the same commentor by a similiiar name that I debated with here on a previous thread- who made a similiar claim in the past, until I quoted the signatory paragraph of the US constitution which references a specific calender system roughly based on a specific Deity’s birth in which the founders signed “in the Year of Our Lord”…the previous “onyo”, then said it was a “concession”.
The Founders established Freedom of Religion for all at the Federal level, but it was clear they leaned toward the Judeo -Christian system, by which deism had been influenced.
Of Freedom of Religion, I would not bet on Islam , if it gains the upper hand, will return the favor, given much of its past and current history.
Sounds like we’re in agreement.
With people like Onyo, you have a “living” Constitution. The clue ought to be taken in that the word “living” is the opposite of the intent and result: death.
And that is indeed what we are seeing: death. Death of freedom, death of our economy, death of our national security, death of our representative politics . . .
Onyo may allege our Constitution is secular. It is not but it certainly may be wrongly interpreted that way and, IT MAY BE MADE THAT WAY!
Progressives seek to use the neutrality that is in the Constitution to impose their hegemony because they allege they are neutral. Simple. All done. I guess that’s it. Forget the Declaration of Independence. Forget the underpinnings of natural law. Forget popular sovereignty which gives the right of lawmaking to the people. And there in lies the rub. The people, like Onyo, can wrest the gem out of its setting, throw away the gem, and set in its place a worthless stone. Because the gem is the religious faith of the people, a faith that requires an inner morality and produces a lawful society. A faith that requires if you do not eat, you do not work.
It would be fun, if there were a place to go to, to leave the fools to their task. They would come, beggars and winded, for help and succor.
Death by “Living Constitutionalism:”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43946055/ns/business-us_business/
Curits said ” Because the gem is the religious faith of the people, a faith that requires an inner morality and produces a lawful society. A faith that requires if you do not eat, you do not work. ”
I suspect you accidentally transposed that, as it should be if the able bodied “do not work, they do not eat”
(when work is available, I might add, as that faith does distinguish between normal times and times of crisis)
They believe they can control the substance by controlling the symbols. They are wrong.
Well, then, by his own words, he is NOT a Christian. Only sees Christianity as a cultural idea.
Not a believing Christian at all.
I’m beginning to understand the whole “luke warm” thing that God so despised. My church stands for almost nothing. It’s a pity.
A man of faith has an endoskeleton.
Without that moral armature, he needs an exoskeleton. And he gets it, one way or another.
But not all endoskeletons are equal, unfortunately.
Characterizing a malefactor as, for instance, a Christian, because he may be one, and then attributing his deeds to Christianity, fails logically, because no nexus between his religious beliefs and his deeds has been established. One could with equal validity make the same attribution to his eye color.
This is where the Red propagandists obfuscate the issue by implicitly invoking moral equivalence between Christians and Muslims when issues of violence arise.
Christianity in its contemporary form does not advocate violence against non-believers, whereas Islam in some of its contemporary forms (Wahabism) does. That advocacy in Islam creates the requisite nexus between religious beliefs and violent deeds.