Christophobia* The Church Militant-Part One

“The tyrant was the antagonist, and the world and the human race was the spectators. Reverence for GOD was the victor and gave the crown to its own athletes.”
-4 Mac. 17:14-15-
America’s mainstream media is scared to death of Jesus Christ. After 2,000 plus years the Christian Message is more radical than ever. Christ’s continuing popularity has prompted mainstream publishers and producers to employ a wide array of dirty tricks to vilify Him and His Church in the Marketplace of human thought or action. All this is clear indication that secularists thought police is running scared of Christianity. Anti-Christian hostility is so great in many countries that it’s as though Imperial Rome’s bloody persecutions had gone global.
Why the switches from Christian theory to atheist practice? The national mentality based on Puritan principles was honed during the latter years of the Age of Enlightenment under the aegis of Free Masonry and rationalist Christian thought. Times and situations have changed. Throughout the 19th century until the end of the Great War America was considered a Christian nation. During the ‘intermission’ years between world wars through the Vietnam era of the turbulent 1960’s America gradually devolved into a modern secularist society based on the European model. The causes of these processes are many but time and page space don’t permit elaboration.
Spiritual death leads to a multitude of physical, mental and moral deformities. The current domestic/economic picture illustrates this. The U.S. has adopted similar ruinous programs/policies that sunk Soviet Russia at the end of the Cold War; military overspending, government waste/corruption, fiscal mismanagement and ineptitude among business leaders and government officials exemplify the current administration’s utter incompetence in implementing a viable universal health care program with options, revamping public education instead of merely tossing dollars into failing school systems, internal dissention due to ham-fisted leadership, lingering racism, sexism, an ultra-aggressive anti-family homosexual movement, underfunding space, medical, and other vital research programs, etcetera are maladies symptomatic of a failed morality. If we proceed at our current break neck pace towards national suicide within 50 years the United States of America as we know it will cease to exist.
Globalization is bankrolling a few but marginalizing the many. Pollution-making industries contribute to green housing on a global scale. China and India are “aborting” themselves into oblivion with sex selective abortions coupled with flagrant human rights abuses. Europe is rapidly adopting Islam as the dominant religion due to liberal immigration laws that permit waves of Muslims to proliferate the Continent. The Middle East long time hub of Eastern Christianity is rapidly losing its Christians as radical Islamists kill, torture, rape, and drive them from their homes, businesses and churches. Reader I don’t know your take on this but to me this is cause for extreme concern. The only power on Earth that can combat global/national de-Christianization is you, me and other Christians worth their salt. These two articles will illustrate/demonstrate how a united effort can help us (the Christian Church) reverse the tide and assume our rightful place in the forefront of global affairs and moral thought. We must avoid making similar or new mistakes that enabled the ‘competition’ (secular society) to relegate our holy religion to the backwaters of humanity if not eventual extinction.
The holy apostles spoke to individuals and small groups. Rarely did they command large audiences and neither will you though technological advancements in mass communication have put this within the realm of possibility. Christian podcasts and periodicals are springing up as I type. Christian websites, Christian takes on the various trades and professions are cropping up on the Internet, Christocentric art exhibitions, CD’s, book stores and publications are all the rage. Fellow Christians, the days of sitting on your backside talking but doing nothing are rapidly coming to a close, praise God but it will be an uphill battle. The forces of darkness and indifference will kick and claw at us from all sides every step of the way. The VISTA slogan was right, ‘if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.’
There are many examples of blatant disrespect given to the Way of Christ by the media. Aforementioned in previous articles talk show hosts, comedy clubs, movies, television/radio programs continually hold all things Christian to public/private disdain. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was formed for the express purpose of setting things right between the media and the Church. Go to their website www.catholicleague.org and read for yourself the insults religionists have to endure from the enemy and what CL is doing about it. During the funeral Mass for Saint ‘Mother’ Theresa of Calcutta the narrator cracked jokes throughout the Liturgy. This was quite the contrary to the solemn respect given a week later at the funeral service of Princess Diana; both these good women should have been accorded equal and proper respect they deserved. The question remains; who’s to blame; the answer is Christians. We let these affronts happen with nary a mumbling word of protest as the old spiritual goes. The devil needs no help from us; we’re our own worst enemies. The quadruple evils of Christian in-fighting, race/sexism, inhospitability and apathy are all that’s needed to reconvert America from a nominally Christian country to one that publically pledge allegiance to the god of the dollar bill, power, and stuff. Now that the ‘ho-ho’ (Holiday) season is here you’ll see what I’m saying.
When churches feel the need to manipulate secular authority to enforce religious dogma we got a problem. Reader if we’re true Christians we need no government to enforce our belief system. Unless governments encroach/threaten our religious liberties we should stay out of ‘Caesar’s’ palace and vice-versa. The Founders of this republic were spot on regarding keeping church and state separate. We should do all things for the love of Jesus Christ, the People of God, and to better ourselves.
The old Baptist term ‘Backsliding’ aptly applies to American Christian practice. Backsliding is a multi-denominational disease. It got us in the mess we’re in today. It is due to our weakened condition as the Church of Jesus Christ that our enemies have quadrupled their efforts in bringing about our destruction. I once had a pastor now dead who was willing to risk losing the youth of his entire parish on grounds that he was the authority and didn’t need any help from lay people. The man suspended and later transferred a very talented, well loved, and energetic young assistant to clerical ‘Siberia’ a much smaller and very poor parish on the city’s southern limits! Caught up in his own authority this pastor tried to do it all by himself; it didn’t work. I was led to believe that extreme stress killed him.
Many church leaders are blind to reality. They’ve lost sight of the spiritual warfare taking place within their congregations. They seem indifferent or ignorant to the negativity around them. This shortsighted response to the Christian Call will in quick time hamstring the Universal Church and permit the enemy to further infiltrate, confuse, and attempt to destroy the Christian community. Knowing evil will eventually lose has rendered many so-called Christians apathetic to the spiritual warfare. Despite the fact that God will get the glory on the spiritual battlefield wait on the Lord doesn’t mean to lay back and let God do the work while you watch. You gotta’ show up ready for war!
In many churches the Community of Believers has turned into a Community of Strangers. In part two of ‘Christophobia-Decline of Church attendance in America’ we’ll examine how a once triumphal militant majority during the fateful 1960’s was cowed into a frightened, whimpering shell of their former selves. The main thrust of part two is to help advance the cause of Christ sans the bigotry, sexism, and phony elitism outsiders mistakenly assume to be hallmarks of our religion. The glove is off! Peace and all things good.
*The term ‘Christophobia’ was first used in print by author Rupert Shortt from his book by the same title.
(vamaxwell@yahoo.com)