Lying Missionaries and Brutalised Victims of Their Times: A Revisionist Historian Spins the Gnadenhutten Massacre

When sections of the American public were forced to admit that it was American soldiers that committed the horrific massacre at My Lai in 1968, some attempted to justify their actions on account of their brutalisation. In other words, the sheer brutality and normalised violence that characterized their setting dehumanized the soldiers and thus, their culpability was at least in part lessened. They too became victims as it were and instead of being punished and answering to justice they were to be pitied and forgiven.

Inbox: Romans 9 and Paul's Affection for Israel as a Justification for Patriotism

I was asked concerning Romans 9 and Paul's affection for the Jewish people. Apparently this passage is used by some Dominionists to justify ethno-nationalist agendas or forms of patriotism, suggesting that Paul effectively endorsed such thinking by his expressions for the Jewish people.

Flags in the Church

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/11/the-history-of-national-flags-in-churches

The debate over flags in the Church is riddled with problems and clouded by false assumptions. There is a problem with the sanctuary model to begin with, the idea that a building is somehow a 'holy' place, a 'sanctuary' or that the front of the structure is some kind of focal point – a leftover of the unbiblical altar-theology of Romanism.

The Moscow Abomination, Sacralist Worldview and Memorial Day (Part 2)

From the anti-sacralist Two Kingdom standpoint of New Testament Christianity, the aforementioned thin line between Church and State is in fact an insurmountable wall.***

Christians do not celebrate war. They do not take up the sword. They do not seek revenge and they do not put themselves in service to mammon. As such, Christians are necessarily divorced from the cultural mainstream and cannot have any part in the political apparatus. Life of course is complicated and saints have at times found themselves in difficult situations and have been pulled into realms and spheres that they did not seek. These realities are part of life in a fallen world. But this is quite different from a mode of thinking that not only embraces these categories but sanctifies and glorifies them.

Four types of Christian, Four Gospels and the Adulteration of the Visible Church (Part 2)

The Socio-Cultural or Pronoun Error and Christian Antithesis  

Despite the stumbles and setbacks, Protestants continued in their attempts to create a new version of Christendom. In the centuries following the Reformation and Age of Reason, the nation state came to the fore and reached full flower during the Enlightenment. The concepts and categories of the period became deeply ingrained and citizen-nationalities were ultimately wed to the older concept of Christendom.

Cracks in the Atlantic Wall

What were once subtle signals of fissures in the Atlantic alliance are becoming more pronounced. I refer here to Atlanticism, the belief that Europe and America have a mutual need, values and destiny. This is a deeper and more pervasive concept that transcends military alliances like NATO. This relationship involves not just military but cultural and economic alliances.

The Day of Lies

This Sunday will effectively be the July 4^th Sunday, the day in which the National holiday is commemorated. In the Patriotic liturgy that has overtaken American Evangelicalism we might call this a high holy day.

But in truth it is a day of darkness, a day of evil, a day of lies.

Memorial Day: A Lamentation

Memorial Day was born out of the US Civil War. All wars deal heavily in propaganda but a civil war can be the most vicious in this regard and perhaps the most emotional and subject to future sentimentality. The US Civil War and its many myths is no exception. It was only a lesson in what was to come.

Imperial Narratives, Urban Planning and Architecture

The movie Downfall (Der Untergang) contains many fascinating scenes but there's one in particular that recently came to mind. In the movie Hitler is pondering a magnificent scale model of the Berlin he imagined, the Berlin that he dreamed up with his architect Albert Speer. This Berlin was not just the Berlin of Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns but a new Ultra-Imperial Berlin, the "Welthauptstadt Germania" the city of not just a European power but a world empire. It was a city that would exhibit art and culture from around the world.

Addendum to the Fifth Republic

This is a follow-up discussion to the previous essay:

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-us-fifth-republic.html

In that article I posited the following scenario:

Narratives and Villains in Kruse's: One Nation Under God

I recently finished Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. It was a worthwhile read and I certainly would recommend it. Like all secular writers he does not fully understand the nuances of Christian theology and thinking but in terms of the political narrative and some of the back-story, he does a fine job. Some have argued the book is something of a non-sequitir, that he doesn't really prove that Corporate America invented the Christian Right narrative. Admittedly there are problems with this kind of cut and dry explanation and yet he raises the question within the book itself and admits that there certainly was a 'Christian' identity prior to the 1930's. Yet, he demonstrates a shift occurred in light of the New Deal and the subsequent Cold War that re-cast and re-infused the whole notion of a 'Christian America' and that the movements worked to tie in these somewhat romanticised narratives in with specific economic policies and an expression of civil religion that was not previously seen.

I don't wish to review the whole book but there were a few points that were of particular interest to me.

Baptist Polity, The American Flag and Idols in Worship

A local Baptist Church recently and perhaps unknowingly called a Calvinist to occupy their pulpit. He's a good man and I've enjoyed conversing with him. To my very pleasant surprise he also revealed to me that he had removed the 'flags' from the front of the auditorium. The flags of course would refer to the American and so-called Christian flags that are almost ubiquitous in American Churches.

John MacArthur, Romans 13 and Christian Attitudes Regarding Law Enforcement Officials

John MacArthur's latest newsletter addresses the current rash of protests and the growing complaint with regard to the police. Citing Ferguson as an example, MacArthur felt compelled to address the issue of obedience to the government and the important role played by the police.

He cites Romans 13 as the passage which delineates the role and responsibilities of government and how God uses it to administer justice and righteousness on earth.

Mohler's Moral Logic

Speaking of Moral Logic let us consider another of Mohler's moral judgments. Why Mohler? Well, he's considered a respected leading figure in Conservative Christianity. He appears on CNN and NPR. He runs one of the top seminaries in the country and one affiliated with the largest Protestant denomination no less.

The Altar Call of 1776: Charles Finney meets Smith and Wesson

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/287311237/kentucky-southern-baptists-draw-crowds-with-gun-giveaways

Since the innovations of Charles Finney in the 19^th century the Evangelical world has been plagued by different versions of a marketed gospel.

Finney's idea was that if you just created the right kind of conditions and presented the gospel the right way...then any sensible person would become a Christian.

The Veneration of Militarism and the Ethics of Patriotism

Recently we were at my niece's high school graduation. The valedictorian was absent because she had already joined the United States Air Force. She is training to be a Linguist and as I recall the entry windows to that field are very limited. If you miss the window, you may have to wait a year or more to enter the programme again.