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August 03, 2005
Heirs of the Sixties
While Jesus said that the peacemakers are blessed, today’s supposed peace movement is no place for the followers of Christ. For those who criticize America’s involvement in Iraq—not strategic or tactical decisions, but the right and need for action—are not seeking to make peace but to make nice. And to alter evil by taking its hand.
While pacifism is a legitimate theological template, although difficult for me to understand in the face of the vile evil of our age, I do not believe Christians can defend identification with and verbal support of the enemies of freedom and faith. How can we understand the Left’s utter fascination with and sympathy for Islamic terrorists and the ideology of oppression that is at its core?
It is reminiscent of the Religious Left’s alignment with the Marxists of earlier decades. The self-described “penitent former liberal” who writes thoughtfully at the Blue Goldfish blog said:
“The evil spirit demanding a response of that age in the early 1970s was that of the Marxist tyranny known as communism. And from the Christian Left, there was - indeed - enabling, useful foolishness, appeasement, apologies, and complete denial.”
And this quote from Richard John Neuhaus:
At the height of Mao’s cultural revolution in which as many as thirty million died, the National Council of Churches published a booklet hailing China as an admirably “Christian” society. In 1981, 60 Minutes did an hour-long program on the National Council of Churches’ support for Marxist causes, and I spoke with Morley Safer about religious leaders who had become “apologists for oppression.” That was the end of some important friendships, or at least I thought they were friends. I was then a much younger man, learning slowly and painfully what many had learned before. Allegiance to the left, however variously defined, was a religion, and dissent was punished by excommunication.
Today, the liberals desire to oppose the Republican administration has morphed into the absurdity of defending and excusing the utter evil of Saddam and al Queda and developing an apologetic for addressing the oppression of poor Middle Eastern Muslims as the way to stop the ideology of terror that is producing the bomb throwers of our time.
The anti-war activists of today’s Religious Left are the heirs of yesterday’s NCC Marxist sympathizers. They have no footing in the church of Jesus Christ.
Posted by Jim at August 3, 2005 07:54 AM
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Comments
Amen. Peace is not simply defined as the absense of war. Amazing that some want to define pre-war Iraq, with its rape rooms and mass graves, as "at peace".
Posted by: Doug Payton at August 3, 2005 09:23 AM
Given the frequent lobbing of anti-aircraft munitions at jets patrolling the No-Fly Zones mandated after the 1991 conflict, I don't think they can use the "absence of war" definition for "at peace" either.
Posted by: eLarson at August 3, 2005 04:26 PM
While pacifism is a legitimate theological template, although difficult for me to understand in the face of the vile evil of our age, I do not believe Christians can defend identification with and verbal support of the enemies of freedom and faith. How can we understand the Left’s utter fascination with and sympathy for Islamic terrorists and the ideology of oppression that is at its core?
I identify myself as a pacifist. I was drafted as a conscientious objector and served a two-year tour of duty as a medical corpsman in the sixties. And I tire of being labeled with a broad brush as being sympathetic with terrorism. The very idea is a contradiction and not worthy of serious conversation, yet it has become everyday grist in popular writing. You are by no means alone in your opinion. If anything, it represent what I see as a disturbing trend confusing criticism of war policies with criticism of those sworn to execute those policies. The use of the terms "religious left" and "religious right", which I also find offensive, illustrate the polarization that is taking place.
My beliefs may be inscrutable to others, but for me they are a good deal more than a "legitimate theological template." I realize that during wartime societies become, like a hive of bees, a population of warriors. But unless some remnant of a population carries the social genes of forgiveness and reconcilliation, the aftermath of any conflict will be peace through genocide.
I remember a story I heard about a college professor in the fifties who started a class by closing the door, going to the windows and closing the shades, gathering his class closely around him at the front of the room and whispering quietly "Russian mothers love their babies." After that he told the students to take their seats. He raised the window shades and the class began as normal.
Today I feel more and more like whispering.
Posted by: Hoots at August 4, 2005 07:54 AM
Hoots,
My apologies to you if I was not clear enough about pacificism, which I belief is a valid theological position, although not mine. And I salute you for your service as a conscientious objector in the 60s. You were obedient to the call of your country, while standing firm on the tenets of your personal faith. But your principled pacficism seems to me to be a far cry from the anti-war activists who seem more sympathetic to radical Islam than the protection of the freedoms that allow you to resist war and me to express my views freely.
Posted by: Jim Jewell at August 6, 2005 01:54 PM