UNFORTUNATELY, YES: “Are Christians Contributing to Unbelief?”

Could it be that our own actions are causing the religiously inclined but nonetheless lost to doubt the existence of God? Is it possible that we are pushing people toward unbelief by virtue of our approach to culture and engagement with the world? Has Christianity become so politically defined that true faith and the person of Jesus Christ is obscured in the minds of many? Is it possible that Christians are conducting themselves in such a way that the spiritually seeking are looking everywhere else but to Christ? Of course, I don’t know for sure but I certainly think it is possible-and that is enough to make me examine myself in light of these questions. It should cause us all to examine ourselves.

I’M NOT: “U.S. conservatives on the defensive after Oslo killings.”

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OF COURSE IT DOES: “Atheist group wants to stop World Trade Center cross.”

“The WTC cross has become a Christian icon,” said Dave Silverman, president of the atheist group. “It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross. It’s a truly ridiculous assertion.”

If he understood what happened after the Cross, he might think differently.

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STATIST THUGS CAN’T STAND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: “Chinese pastor sentenced to labor camp.”

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ANDREW BEHRING BREIVIK: “CHRISTIANIST”? NO!

When details of Breivik’s motives emerged last Friday, a headline on the New York Times’s website trumpeted that the killer was a “Christian extremist” (it was shortly changed to “Right-wing extremist”). Andrew Sullivan, eager to tie Breivik’s ideology around the necks of American Christian conservatives, quickly took to calling Breivik a “Christianist” — Sullivan’s term of opprobrium for politically engaged conservative Christians. And so it goes.

But readers of Breivik’s manifesto will see that he is not a Christian in any meaningful theological sense. Rather, he sees the faith much as the Nazi leadership did: as a European tribal religion that can be instrumentalized to provide the basis for an ethno-cultural war against the Other — in this case, Muslims. Breivik writes:

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.

Though al Qaeda, Hamas, and other Islamist organizations advocate Islam as the basis for the political and cultural organization of society, they do so because they believe Islam is true. Not so with Breivik and Christianity. He explicitly identifies himself as against “Christian fundamentalist theocracy”” (“everything we do not want”), and says he welcomes atheists and even Norse pagans into his neo-Crusader fold, because their beliefs are culturally significant to Europe.

But why let facts waste an opportunity to smear the blood of dead Norwegian kids on one’s culture-war adversaries?

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NO (SEE ABOVE): “Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist?” For the affirmative case, however, read Mark Juergensmeyer:

Is this a religious vision, and am I right in calling Breivik a Christian terrorist? It is true that Breivik—and McVeigh, for that matter—were much more concerned about politics, race, and history than about scripture and religious belief; with Breivik even going so far as to write that “It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)).”

But much the same can be said about Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and many other Islamist activists. Bin Laden was a businessman and engineer, and Zawahiri was a medical doctor; neither were theologians or clergy. Their writings show that they were much more interested in Islamic history than theology or scripture, and imagined themselves as re-creating glorious moments in Islamic history in their own imagined wars. Tellingly, Breivik writes of al Qaeda with admiration, as if he would love to create a Christian version of their religious cadre.

If bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist, Breivik and McVeigh are surely Christian ones. Breivik was fascinated with the Crusades and imagined himself to be a member of the Knights Templar, the crusader army of a thousand years ago. But in an imagined cosmic warfare time is suspended, and history is transcended as the activists imagine themselves to be acting out timeless roles in a sacred drama. The tragedy is that these religious fantasies are played out in real time, with real and cruel consequences.

IMHO, the problem with this kind of analysis is that the relationship of Christianity to politics is different than the relationship of Islam to the same. The New Testament was written by “losers,” that is, people who were oppressed by the Powers-That-Be. The Koran, on the other hand—or at least the later surahs—was written by the Powers-That-Be, i.e., Muhammad, when he governed Medina and Mecca. Consequently, the New Testament is not a political blueprint. Rather, it is a spiritual blueprint for the church. The Koran, on the other hand, is a political blueprint for the political community, in which religion plays a central and authoritative role.

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STEPHEN PROTHERO ON DOROTHY DAY: “Catholics will accept a saint who had an abortion?” St:

Day’s case raises a parallel question. Can you be a saint if you have committed the original sin of contemporary Catholicism?

My money says yes.

Partly that is because of the Christian teaching of forgiveness. But mostly it is because of the tendency of Catholics to diverge from the official party line on questions such as homosexuality, birth control and abortion.

But Dorothy Day didn’t “to diverge from the official party line on questions such as homosexuality, birth control and abortion.” After her conversion, she upheld it. So what exactly is Prothero’s point? Mark Shea points out that Catholic pro-lifers are more, not less, likely to accept Day as a saint:

One wonders where Prothero has been all these years. Has he never heard of the enormous popularity of the cult of Mary Magdalene, popularly regarded as a reformed prostitute? Has he never heard of the celebrated baptism of Norma McCorvey (aka “Roe” of Roe v. Wade) by Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life? Does he know nothing of the huge welcomes and celebrations given such figures as Abby Johnson or Carol Everett, former “abortion providers” who repented and have become lionesses of the pro-life movement? Has he never heard of the various post-abortive ministries run by gung ho pro-lifers who spend all their time rejoicing over the one sheep who returns more than the ninety and nine who were not lost? I cannot think of a single group of people more likely to celebrate a post-abortive saint than orthodox Catholic pro-lifers.

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NAME-CALLING IS THE “NEW” ARGUMENT: “Philosophy, Marriage, and Moral Grandstanding”:

No serious philosopher would deny, in so many words, that to demonize opponents is to betray the vocation of philosophy. But some academic philosophers are so bound to the cause of redefining civil marriage that they would marginalize dissenters with epithets and analyze them as specimens of psychological pathology. Chappell, though he goes on to ask serious questions, is at pains to deny that he deems our argument worth engaging. For him, it is, like misogyny, merely unreasonable, subrational, and bigoted.

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I DO SO EVERY DAY: “Thanking God for that smokin’ hot wife.”