Unsettled Christianity

Citing such hostility and threats to religious freedom, likes Obamacare’s contraceptive/abortifacient mandate on religious groups, Eric Teetsel of the Manhattan Declaration foresaw the “next level” of threats. “People in this room may end up in prison in my lifetime, maybe sooner,” he speculated of Christians who “won’t render up to Caesar what belongs to God.”

via Young Evangelicals and Politics « Juicy Ecumenism.

English: Pagans kill Christians in Pliska. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course they do because they aren’t United Methodists.

Anyway, Tooley has a post up about four young evangelicals who were panelists at the Value Voters Summit, the yearly meeting of Christian Talibanistas.

That above statement, however, strikes me because I’ve heard that all of my life. I have yet to see Christians who obeyed God thrown in jail. This is fear-mongering, by the way, on the first level. On the second level, it is a martyrdom complex. Not exactly the same thing as, say, flying buildings into airplanes (think about it), but close. Instead, this is a type of “I need to feel important, and the only way to feel important is if people hate me” mentality. On the last level, this is a need to believe they are a part of the underclass, the minority – the oppressed. Nothing like a bunch of well-off white kids feeling oppressed.

We could enumerate the many times Christians have in the past said the same thing about various different social movements or paradigms shifts, but widespread persecution of Christian zeal has not happened in the West since the Catholics on the continent tried to do away with the Protestants and the Protestants in England tried to do away with the Catholics. If you think that died out in the Middle Ages, you are wrong – after all, Catholic Princess Kate had to have the rules changed for her and William to marry.

I have to agree that Christians in the past have taken up social causes, but let’s stop with the anachronism and realize that those who did were the liberals – the tee-totalers, the abolitionists – who fought the entrenched and very Christian X (with X representing the entrenched power structure, say like slavery, long considering a biblical institution in the South). I would also agree  with the premise of Christians becoming involved in social concerns today, but not the extend of the shedding of the Gospel. No offense to anyone, but Welch and the tee-totalers totally ruined the Eucharist when they took out wine.

Related articles

• The Value Voters Summit Was An All-Inclusive Un-American Hate Group (politicususa.com)
• Rick Santorum: ‘Smart People’ Will Never Be On Our Side (VIDEO) – Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gov. Jan Brewer at the Values Voter Summit (americanclarion.com)
• Right Wing’s Islam Obsession (thedailybeast.com)
• Panel Today at Values Voters Summit on Millennials and Politics (owenstrachan.com)

Post By Joel (9,256 Posts)

Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).

Website: → Unsettled Christianity

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