My strong feeling is that the solidarity of Christian denominations is an absolute necessity in our age. Protestants who can’t be bothered to stand for the liberty of Catholic schools might as well sign the amicus brief for gay marriage which proposes to extinguish religious liberty in America; likewise Catholics whose arrogance precludes raising a finger to defend dirty redneck or Latino Pentecostals can, while kindly pounding sand, go ahead and sign a loyalty oath to Pope Tony Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts his red-hatted deputy.
There just isn’t enough room for maneuver anymore. The elite secular class of America is committed to crushing all Christian dissent on certain points of fashionable principle. That they have no actual principles is itself a point of principle.
A careful read of my old friend Dan McLaughlin’s superb series on gay marriage will demonstrate the situation in its full lineaments.
Having been raised in an ecumenical home, I feel these petty preachments of parochialism most keenly. Let us stand together as men. The laughter of Mordor is our only reward when we quarrel.
Comments (13)
Even if we can not always stand together as allies; we can at least stand together as cobelligerents, and not work at cross purposes with each other.
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | June 14, 2015 10:07 AM
The left will tolerate no religious dissent,except of course islam. The god they worship is the State, down through time a magnet for the power hungry and whatever fools think government power is the elixir that cures all. For example, how has it gone since 2009?
Posted by johnt | June 14, 2015 11:52 AM
The disunity among modern Christians is scandalous. However, high-minded ecumenism is difficult to justify when 'Christians' can be in disagreement about, say, whether sodomy is a sin: 'Christian' is rapidly becoming a word without signification. Consequently, I believe it is imperative that Christians attain unity in faith and morals is order to achieve any kind of viable practical unity. Thus, Protestants are called upon to abandon their heretical beliefs and return to the one fold of Rome. Similarly, the orthodox are called upon to re-submit to papal primacy. Certainly Christians can defend one another from the assaults of secularism during the course of their reunification under the Roman Catholic Church.
Posted by Martel | June 14, 2015 2:23 PM
Preach it, Paul! If we do not hang together we shall all hang separately. I have never found it difficult to engage in cordial co-belligerence with like-minded Catholics while admitting our differences. I tend to prefer (most of the time) not to debate those differences, but we all know they are there. This does not preclude our working together with very hearty goodwill and comity. There are certainly those on each side who feel that such comity is not possible, usually because they are burdened in conscience at being called upon to consider those on the other side of the Catholic-Protestant divide to be *Christians*. I think myself that there are levels of co-belligerence, and I do have a stronger tie to those I definitely consider Christians (conservative orthodox Catholics, for example) than with those I do not (such as Mormons) with whom I nonetheless sometimes share social concerns. I think it actually would be possible to engage in such co-belligerence with someone who, while cordial, did not consider me a "real Christian" (whether from the "more Protestant" or "more Catholic" side), though in practice this hasn't come up.
Posted by Lydia | June 14, 2015 3:11 PM
I have no problem working side by side with others whom I would consider non-Christians, such as Mormons, to defeat abortion or gay 'marriage'. I don't see any reason why I (or anyone on the right side of those 2 issues) would not want Mormons working for the same goals, and if working effectively, then therefore working from the same page - with me. And thus me working with them.
All the more reason, then, for Christians to work together. And for Protestants who don't think Catholics are Christian to work with Catholics for their shared goals, as well as Catholics who don't think Protestants are Christians to work the same way. While we are in this world with all its faults, we don't get to choose to be involved only with those who we are certain are on the straight, direct path to heaven.
Posted by Tony | June 14, 2015 8:48 PM
Lydia, it's time. You've had good run here, you've really hit the nail on the head when it comes to the CHIs and other issues, and I've very much enjoyed reading your posts. You've got great theological insight, and make for a true Defensor Fidei. (Heck, your position in the CHI controversy is exactly the Catholic view, whereas Eve Tushnet's is very much NOT.)
It saddens me to think that you might die outside of Holy Mother Church! I'm sure the continuing Anglican thing has been spiritually helpful, etc., but it's still heretical, which means you're not getting real sacraments.
It's time to come home. Same goes for you, Paul. I agree with you and Lydia when it comes to unifying Christians against the secular powers, and I join with her in saying, preach it, brother! Nevertheless, allow me to express myself clearly: the single most effective thing you can do to advance the cause of Chrstian ecumenism is to join the RCC.
Posted by Martel | June 14, 2015 9:24 PM
The seculars are planning a war of extermination. Prof Alex Taborrok of George Mason University:
Should we care if the human race goes extinct?
by Alex Tabarrok on June 3, 2015 at 7:25 am at marginalrevolution.com
Stephen Hawking fears that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Elon Musk and Bill Gates offer similar warnings. Many researchers in artificial intelligence are less concerned primarily because they think that the technology is not advancing as quickly as doom scenarios imagine, as Ramez Naam discussed. I have a different objection.
Why should we be worried about the end of the human race? Oh sure, there are some Terminator like scenarios in which many future-people die in horrible ways and I’d feel good if we avoided those scenarios. The more likely scenario, however, is a glide path to extinction in which most people adopt a variety of bionic and germ-line modifications that over-time evolve them into post-human cyborgs. A few holdouts to the old ways would remain but birth rates would be low and the non-adapted would be regarded as quaint, as we regard the Amish today. Eventually the last humans would go extinct and 46andMe customers would kid each other over how much of their DNA was of the primitive kind while holo-commercials advertised products “so easy a homo sapiens could do it”. I see nothing objectionable in this scenario.
Aside from greater plausibility, a glide path means that dealing with the Terminator scenario is easier. In the Terminator scenario, humans must continually be on guard. In the glide path scenario we only have to avoid the Terminator until we become them and then the problem is resolved with little fuss. No human race but no mass murder either.
More generally, what’s so great about the human race? I agree, there are lots of great things to point to such as the works of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Grothendieck. We should revere the greatness of the works, however, not the substrate on which the works were created. If what is great about humanity is the great things that we have done then the future may hold greater things yet. If we work to pass on our best values and aspirations to our technological progeny then we can be proud of future generations even if they differ from us in some ways. I delight to think of the marvels that future generations may produce. But I see no reason to hope that such marvels will be produced by beings indistinguishable from myself, indeed that would seem rather disappointing
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The unanswered question is where do the American Christians stand on this war on the human race aka "the substrate on which the works were created."
It is not a lone eccentric. His views are widely common among the seculars and the research program he outlines is well-funded by the Govt.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | June 14, 2015 11:44 PM
Bedarz,
No need to worry. (Strong) AI is a joke. Computers will never attain the conceptual capacities of human beings, since humans have immaterial intellects that alone can grasp universals. Read JR Lucas for details.
Posted by Martel | June 15, 2015 12:32 AM
Professor Carl Trueman provides a partial answer to Martel's concern that Christians achieve unity in faith
and morals in order to achieve any kind of viable practical unity.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/05/vivent-les-differences
Posted by Thomas Yeutter | June 15, 2015 5:24 AM
"This does not preclude our working together with very hearty goodwill and comity."
Ecumenism is so misunderstood. In the, DECREE ON ECUMENISM (UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO),
issued at Vatican II, the Church was clear that theological differences should not be swept under the rug, but should be addressed by experts. On the practical side, however, Chapter II has this to say:
All Christians worthy of the name hold that certain social actions are always and everywhere wrong: abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia. We hold them wrong by a common baptism that unites us in the life of Christ. That we stray from this life, in little ways and great, in no way removes the mark we bear for Christ before the world. Before one can be a light to the world however, that light must be ignited and we are set ablaze by our common baptism. Though the lenses through which that light pours may be fitted differently among Christian groups (much to our shame), there should be no doubt that there is a light begging to get through.
I have thought about this for years. Prof. Peter Kreeft wrote a book called, Ecumenical Jihad, where he, basically, says that we should stand together on what we can and then fight amongst ourselves after we have converted society. I have to disagree to some extent on this. Praxis follows belief and how one approaches the ills of society depends on how one believes that God wants you to approach them. We all agree that euthanasia is wrong, but how shall we fight it? What about the place of suffering? Some see it as an enemy to be overcome; some see it as a redemptive sharing in the suffering of Christ on the Cross. Quit simply put, some Christian groups do not have an understanding of redemptive suffering and so, praxis following belief, will mean that some groups look on death as a failure to believe strongly enough to heal the sickness. Of necessity, their approach to illness will be different than a group that, while not requiring extraordinary treatment, places the matter more entirely in God's hands.
In other words, there is only a limited reach where Christians, as a whole, can stand firm, but on those issues we must stand firm. The principle reason that marriage is under attack, today, is, I say this sadly, because there is no unity among Christians as to the definition or stability of marriage. How can we stand together against the world when we cannot stand together amongst ourselves? It is not the world who has dropped the ball. It is we who have failed and by the witness of our disunity have given permission to the world to move the line of human relations farther and farther from the truth.
Let us stand firm together and die together, but let us not so water down the faith that it is no longer worth dying for. The issue of divorce is a stone's throw away from same-sex marriage, because marriage isn't worth much if it can be dissolved by burning the marriage license, so to speak and why, then, shouldn't the world just hold marriage to be nothing more than a contract, a legal fiction, and not the union of two fleshes into one? It is the very inconsistencies between modern Christians which, in computer terms, acts as an exploit that lets all of the malicious code of the world to be run. Yes, by all means we must stand together, but we must always be aware that until there is genuine unity within the Body of Christ, in terms of ecumenical witness, we are running a buggy program.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | June 15, 2015 1:15 PM
I think something very important that we can do is to cross-pollinate each other in good ways. For example, many Protestants are rediscoverintg the natural law through their co-belligerence with Catholics on social issues. As the name implies, the _natural_ law is by no means the _property_ of one denomination or even of Christians alone, yet the Catholic theorists have kept it alive in a consistent, theoretical form. This is a good corrective to the tendency of some Protestant denominations to hold that a thing is wrong because and only because "God said so" with no broader understanding of the human person and human nature and no expectation that God's laws will seem to us anything other than arbitrary (a dangerous approach).
Posted by Lydia | June 15, 2015 1:41 PM
Chicken, I believe that if we are striving to work side by side with other Christians of good will on marriage and life issues, and are at the same time striving to live the life of Christian perfection God call us to, that combination will itself tend to unify Christians toward the one truth. True, we will need to be cautious and diligent in making sure that the particular pathway in which we are working to defeat evil is not itself deformed by false notions of the truth (such as false notions of marriage). So a deformed sense of ecumenical togetherness can damage our good efforts - no, we should not place "working together" above the truth. But it is easy to avoid that, there are plenty of ways we can simply let our voices and our works join together with other Christians without fear of deformity.
Posted by Tony | June 15, 2015 6:19 PM
The disunity among modern Christians is scandalous.
No it isn't.
Posted by Ilion | June 18, 2015 12:53 PM