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This Month's Scripture Verse:

1 But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep..
II Peter 2:1-3

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Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Why Many Religiously Conservative Christians Support Trump

Unfortunately for the Church and the Gospel, Christians in these latter centuries have been repeating certain unbiblical patterns of behaviors.  And here we must be cautious about saying that. We all sin to varying degrees and we are all capable of committing gross sins as individuals. Thus when we see other Christians sin, we need to treat them with the same grace and mercy as we have been and are treated by God when we commit our own sins.

But individual sins is not what is being referenced here. The subject here is the behavior of the dominant branch of the Church in a given country. For example, prior to the respective revolutions in France, Russia, and Spain, the respective dominant branch of the Church sided with wealth and power. And one of the results of that was that when the revolutions came, the Church, along with the state, was seen as an enemy of those revolutions and thus it not only suffered unnecessary persecution, the reputation of the Gospel was significantly harmed. 

One only needs to read Vlad Lenin's words as he described the Christian religion as the opiate of the people. For in saying that, Lenin was speaking from observation, not from any ideological deduction. And, btw, the behavior of Christians that made the Church an enemy of Lenin and his hijacking of the revolution was also observed by Rosa Luxemburg. Only she pleaded with the Church to support the workers rather than to support those who oppressed them.

In this part of the 21st century, the repeated behavior of the Church that we are focusing on here is not the dominant branch of the Church in a given country as it supports wealth and power, even though we could do that. Rather it is the free choice of the Church to support authoritarian rulers because those rulers are offering them protection from  perceived threats. Three places where has been occurring are Syria, Egypt, and the U.S.

Now in Syria and Egypt, the very existence of the Church has been threatened by violent anti-Christian forces who want to eliminate the existence of the Church in their areas.. And thus the Church's support for brutal dictators is somewhat understandable though  problematic. But in the U.S., Church support for the authoritarian leader who is protecting it is even more questionable. That is because the authoritarian leader protecting the Church in the U.S. is not protecting the Church from any violent threat to its existence. Rather, the authoritarian leader who is protecting the Church in the U.S. is protecting the Church from having remained fallen from a place of supremacy in society and culture. This authoritarian leader is promising the Church to be restored to its role of supremacy over society. This kind of protection is evident from William Barr's recent address to the law students at Notre Dame.

In the U.S. the dominant branch of the Church is a coalition of conservative Catholics and conservative evangelicals. And since the legalization of same-sex marriages by decision of the Supreme Court, many leaders in the dominant branch of the American Church has seen that decision as the South saw the loss at Appomattox. These leaders now see the Church as being on the losing side of the culture wars that have been fought in the U.S. since who knows when. For some of us were unaware that there were culture wars being fought here until these leaders complained about that Supreme Court decision.

What was being fought for in the Culture Wars here was the place of supremacy in the culture to have the greatest influence over society. And many of these conservative Christian leaders have described the Church's current plight as hanging on by a thread. Why? Because many of these leaders seem to believe that either the Church has a place of supremacy over society, or the Church's very existence in being threatened by secularists and progressives.

Thus when Donald Trump came, these religiously conservative Christians saw their champion and defender. And because he was their champion and defender, they saw no contradiction between his tough talk and intolerance of others with what is taught in the Christian faith. They see him as defending the Church's existence because he has caused them to believe, whether it is true or not, that he will restore their place of supremacy over culture and society and thus will save the Church from being destroyed.

And so though the Church's support for tyrants in Syria and Egypt is wrong but understandable, the Church's support for the authoritarian leadership of Donald Trump is even more problematic. Why? It is because he is not defending the Church from being violently destroyed and eliminated here, it is because he and the Church are making a deal for the Church to eventually garner the power it once had here in America. Such a deal is contradicted by what is taught in the New Testament.

Unfortunately, in seeking to regain its place of supremacy over American society, the Church has forgotten its past sins when it reigned over society. And by doing so, it has forgotten much of what the New Testament tells us about how to treat others. And forgetting that is the true threat to the Church's existence.
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Monday, April 25, 2016

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Monday, June 30, 2014

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Monday, June 23, 2014

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Friday, June 20, 2014

How Increased Security For The Church Can Be A Trap

In Star Wars Episodes V and VI, "it's a trap" became trademark statement. Princess Leia yells it when Luke finds his friends who were being held hostage by Darth Vader. It is also said in dismay by Admiral Ackbar during the attack on the 2nd Death Star. Both traps were signaled by bad circumstances and yet both situations were alluring. In part 2 of an interview, Dr. David Curry, from the group Open Doors USA, which is an advocacy group for Christians who are persecuted, unwittingly described a trap for Egyptian Christians in an interview published in the Christian Post (click here). Unlike the described traps from Star Wars, the trap for the Egyptian Christians was set in a relatively positive set of circumstances, the reduction in persecution. He attributed this reduction to government efforts to protect Christians.

 It isn't that I am for the persecution of Christians, I am not. After all, I am a Christian. And because of having grown up in a country where Christians were not only protected, but privileged, I don't have much stomach for persecution and suffering. However, should Egyptian Christians align themselves with the government too closely in order to return the favor, then what could happen to them is what happened to Syrian Christians who aligned themselves with Bashar al-Assad's government. Just as when the Arab Spring turned revolution broke out, Syrian Christians were attacked for being too strongly associated with a dictator who violently suppressed the rights of others, any movement against the current Egyptian regime could see Christians being attacked as well for being allies of the Egyptian government.

 Curry is careful to not provide a political analysis of the current Egyptian regime though such is partially described in a previous post on this blog (click here). The current Egyptian regime has not only been overly harsh against the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that governed Egypt as tyrants themselves, they have imprisoned thousands of the peaceful revolutionaries too as it has made protesting illegal. In fact, the current regime has violated the rights of so many Egyptians that the Obama Administration is cutting back in delivering promised military aid, something that has never occurred before even when Mubarak was Egypt's leader.

 But it is not like Syrian and Egyptian Christians are the only ones vulnerable to traps, so are Christians from the West. Only for us, the lure is different, the lure is prosperity. We have enjoyed such a wonderful prosperity that we have learned to overlook how that prosperity extracts its toll from others. We have become anesthetized by comfort. Thus, we have lent the Christian name to the inhumane side of our prosperity.

 To only be concerned with the welfare of one's own group is to volunteer to be nearsighted. And the unfortunate part of being nearsighted is that we cannot clearly see the dangers that lurk on the horizon. So we live in a false sense of security, we have fallen for a trap.

 Now that reasoning is based on self-interest and we are called to be better than that. For Christians to represent God, we are to be interested in principles and morals and should thus object to the unfair treatment of anyone, even our enemies. Such a stand has already been taken by some of the revolutionaries in Egypt who both protested the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and yet opposed the human rights violations against the same Brotherhood who viewed them as enemies.

 If we Christians are going to display the love of God which He constantly shows to us, then we can never be content with being treated fairly. Rather, we need to speak out against all oppression and injustice even when doing so risks the privileges and comforts that have come our way. After all, didn't Jesus let go of His lofty position to come and die for us?




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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Evidence That Demands A Change In US Foreign Policy

If you want to know how bad the present situation in Egypt is, then read the following article from Forbes (click here). According to this article, regarding freedom and human rights,  today's situation  is worse than it was under Mubarak. But contrary to the author's opinion, what is happening in Egypt just might be a successful example of the America's foreign policy, not a failure. Why? It is because our foreign policies from the past have not revolved around freedom and human rights as much as they have around pleasing customers and retaining a measure of regional control. The question becomes what will our future policies focus on. 

 Just to review our history in the region, we helped the British replace a democratically elected Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953.  Did we shed a tear or hear any screams when the Shah's secret police arrested and tortured dissidents or was all made obscure by the flow of cheap Iranian oil and the sale of Western goods and weapons to Iran?

 And we supported Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s.  This was true even when he used WMDs on the Iranians and on his own people and we continued to sell him materials for those weapons. It wasn't it until he invaded Bush's rich friends in Kuwait that we called him a Hitler. Yes, Hussein was always a monster; but he was a monster in moderate's clothing, according to both Reagan and Bush. It wasn't until he seized Kuwait that he shed his clothing.

 And even if we don't count Israel's brutal occupation of the Occupied Territories, haven't we always supported the dictators in Saudi Arabia? Have we ever shown any significant disapproval of the reign of the Saudi Arabia's royal family? Where was our outrage when Saudi Arabia helped in violently putting down the protests in Bahrain? 

 It is in the Middle East's well-oiled dictatorships where America's foreign policy priorities are best displayed. As long as these dictators buy our products, help us with the flow of oil, and don't wander outside of the parameters we have set for them, then all is quiet on the Mid-East front. But as Mosadegh, Morsi, and Saddam, people of vastly different moral characters, have shown is that once one ventures outside of those parameters, there can be a heavy price to pay. 

On the one hand, part of what has been written above must be moderated by the recent restriction in military aid to Egypt. Concerns over the mass death sentences given to those in the Muslim Brotherhood and the suppression of rights of dissidents are the reasons aid has been restricted. Almost one-third of military aid has been restored though. Part of the resumption of that aid was in order to maintain some military privileges as well as for the sake of our military contractors (click here). But we should also note Obama's welcoming phone call to President Isis of Egypt. Certainly he mouthed concerns about rights (click here). Here, the real leverage point in motivating Egyptian dictators is found in controlling the flow of military aid. 

 So the above cited article in Forbes tells it like it is about Egypt, that is for the most part. Where the author possibly erred was to presume that American foreign policy in the region, under the leadership of either major political party, has had any concern for freedom and rights. In the past, it hasn't. There seems to be some current concern for rights in Egypt, though that caring about rights has not spread to many other countries (see previous Newsweek link). That is because for the most part, the main goal of American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as any other part of the world is to secure customers and establish and/or maintain control.

 Finally, what can all of this tell us about Iraq? Currently, Northern Iraq is under attack by the Islamic State Of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This is a Sunni Muslim group that grew out of Al-Qaeda and who seeks to establish a Caliphate in Iraq and Syria based on a radical approach to Islamic law. Its tactics are described as brutal. And it opposes both Syria's President Assad as well as the Shi'ite based government in Iraq  (click here). We should note that according to the Time magazine just linked to, Iraq has brought some of this conflict on themselves for their treatment of Sunni Muslims. Chelsea Manning includes in this mix Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's killing or torturing legitimate political dissidents all of which was protected by our military (click here). So our choice in Iraq is between 2 brutal leaders with one being far more cold-hearted than the other.

 With the conflicts emerging between dueling tyrants, we see American policy's chickens coming home to roost. In fact, an analogy between the moral debt we owe for past support of dictators can be compared to mankind's survivability based on the pollutants we've released into the environment. Have we already passed the tipping point? Possibly. But it does no harm to reverse course and give ourselves a fighting chance to make it. So the days of supporting obedient tyrants must be over. And whether they are over will be demonstrated not just by how we conditionally withhold or restore aid to Egypt, it will be seen by how we interact with all of the other tyrants in the Middle East and the world. Will we continue to support tyrants to make them customers or to gain a measure of control over them, or will we work for justice by opposing all tyrants regardless of what they have to offer us?


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Monday, June 16, 2014

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