Posted on 05/02/2006 5:18:02 PM PDT by NZerFromHK
Two days before Christmas, I was in a store in Vermont buying a last-minute gift when the owner’s twentysomething daughter walked in. “Thanks for the sweater, mom,” she said. “Kevin really liked his present, too.”
“But it’s only the 23rd,” said the bewildered lady.
“Mom,” sighed the kid, wearily. “How many times do I have to tell you? We always open our presents on the solstice.”
A couple of weeks later, a neighbor of mine in New Hampshire got married. He’s a biker and a tattooist, and he’s deeply spiritual. So he and his bride were married in the middle of a field in a service filled with imprecations to Odin, Thor and sundry other Norse gods. The congregation of bikers rolled their eyes, which may or may not be a traditional Norse mark of respect.
G K Chesterton made a famous observation that when men cease to believe in God they’ll believe in anything. But the anything they’ll believe in is at least in part environmentally determined. Alice Thomson of The Daily Telegraph in London was recently granted an interview with the Dalai Lama at Dharmsala, the old British hill station in northern India where he lives in exile. En route to his pad, she encountered both a native Tibetan bearing the brutal marks of Chinese torture and, at one of the luxury hotels that have sprung up for moneyed pilgrims, a “rotund Austrian biscuit heiress” who turned to Buddhism after her stomach staple failed to take.
My North Country neighbors can’t afford air tickets and a suite in Dharmsala. So, given those constraints, solstice worship and Norse deities seem a reasonable fit with the landscape of northern New England. But they’d be a tougher sell in, say, Glasgow or Rotterdam. So what would work in the densely populated parts of western Europe? I’ve been a demography bore for years now – pointing out how aging childless French, Belgian and Dutch populations are surrendering their turf to young fecund Muslims – but, at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion.
Herbert Asquith is not the most famous British Prime Minister to American ears, but he’s the one who took his country into the Great War, which is the one that ended the Caliphate and delivered the Arab world into British hands. His great-granddaughter, Emma Clark, is now a Muslim. She’s a landscape artist, and has designed an “Islamic garden” at the home of the Prince of Wales. The Honorable Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, the former Director-General of the BBC, is also a Muslim and is known as Yahya Birt. The Earl of Yarborough is a Muslim, and goes by the name Abdul Mateen, though whether he can get served in the House of Lords’ tea room under that moniker is unclear.
The above “reverts” – as Islam calls converts - are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer. As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered”. The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts”, but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public.
Where’s Christianity in all this? Judging from the name he took, Pope Benedict foresees dark days ahead and his job as being to save European Catholicism. But who will save Protestantism in Europe? The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, declared during the Afghan campaign that the USAF pilot and the suicide bomber are morally equivalent - both “can only see from a distance: the sort of distance from which you can’t see a face, meet the eyes of someone, hear who they are, imagine who and what they love. All violence works with that sort of distance.” He’d go into it all in more detail, I’m sure, but his Potemkin church is too busy selling off its buildings. On the BBC the other day, in a desperate attempt to cut himself a slice of the Gaia-worship self-flagellation action, he demanded government “coercion” on everything from road speed, cheap air travel, etc, “if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions of people to die.”
Environmentalism doesn’t need the support of the church, it’s a church in itself. But Britain and Europe could use a vigorous, confident, believing Protestantism right now, and Dr Williams is earthbound in every sense. Faith abhors a vacuum.
If there is nothing that one would die for, one wonders what one is living for?
In Europe, it's as if Western culture is intent on suicide...
Er, Scotland.
I wouldn't worry about it.
The UK gave up religion a long time ago. They all get in the way of free speech and proper democracy. Far better to be a totally secular, politically advanced country. Religions just get in the way of the running of day to day life. And anyway, they are just another form of control orchestrated by wealthy to the poor. People will get it, but not for another 500 years or so. So does that the UK is that far ahead of the times?? Hmmm, we're doing ok then.
"The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore."
If you shot a few in the head when they jeered you as an infidel whore they would stop. As a group they only seem to understand force. Apply it to them.
Pfff! Great! So we'll have a whole nation full of really big churches pandering to the spoiled children of meat-and-potatoes Americans proffering all of the Biblical content of a paperless fortune cookie. Look, I'm sorry to rip on the image, but "Been there. Done that. HATED it." There's nothing so repulsive as insipid "churchianity". We'd be better off if all the congregants relocated to their nearest ballparks for peanuts, hot dogs and a pleasant afternoon of baseball. At least they'd be getting something that would really stir them up.
What we are witnessing is a polarization of the globe from which none will escape, which will put an end to any vain notions of noble neutrality. Every person Christianity fails to impress with the Gospel of Jesus Christ will become, by default, an adherent of The Restored Caliphate.
All of this warns that the prayers of Christendom must no longer be those skeletal structures fobbed off as "grace" at so many dinner tables; the day of such foolish luxuries -- if ever there were such -- has fled forever beyond the western horizon. Prayer cannot be empty, contrived, unthinking, dispassionate and bland. Prayer must touch the face of God or it is no prayer at all. Prayer must be understood as the single, central, vital mode of connectivity between the Christian and The One Who stands ever ready to both hear and answer. Prayer must be viewed as THE LIFELINE without which doom is assured. It must be fervent, impassioned and continual; characterizing the daily life of The Body as breathing characterizes the life of the physical body.
Start scouting your team, now. You've exactly TWO from which to choose.
What it tells is that the British and Dutch governments are refusing to protect their citizens against criminal behavior, so the citizens are having to defend themselves the only way they can - by accepting dhimmitude, the Islamic equivalent of paying protection money to local mobsters.
Great! We now know another destination for missionaries from Hong Kong to preach the gospel. Many already are spreading the gospel among Hong Kong Chinese students studying in Britain and the Chinese living in Britain's large cities' Chinatowns. Now we know we should broaden the focus to everyone as well. Anything less will not do in a land that used to produce 3/4 of all missionaries in the 19th centuries, and which produced dedicated servants of the Lord such as Hudson Taylor or C.H. Spurgeon.
"Name one place in the world where people will stand up to these Islamic people and win."
If you do, they kill you.
bump
Intruguing way to put it, no doubt. Always the same pattern, though: tweak the original and market that under the banner of "just like ___ only better". Talk about caveat emptor. LOL!
RE: ...all persons are born Muslims.
Makes for an interesting comparison of Islam's "You're one of us unless you choose not to be," over against Christianity's "You're not one of us unless you truly choose to be." And that fits exactly with my earlier contention that people will choose Christ or 'default' to the faith that, from the Muslim perspective, they were born into; the scenario being that the Caliphate will take a very dim view of people NOT following the faith they were born into, i.e. Islam, and will not countenance any sort of 'third' option(s).
A Steyn classic. Spot-on.
Yeah perhaps. I wouldn't bet on it. We have found that having a religion kind of gets in the way of decision making and reasoning, cos the rules that govern you under a religion were written by Joe Bloggs and Sidney Smith. I'm not going to organise my life around what they want me to do. I will use my reasoning to decide the best course of action.
Of course, everyone is entitled to having a religion, but in the end, everyone will see that its not necessary.
You are mentally ill.
I hope not, that would suck...
Optimistic perhaps.....
It would be ironical if China were to become a place of Christian growth. The oppression has made the Catholic Church in China a vibrant body. As commubnism as an ideology wanes, Christianity will likely expand to fill the spiritual vaccum.
This is one of the hallmarks of Gnosticism - redefine the opposites so that good is bad, top is bottom, holy is profane. Which only makes it easier to make sure that only the select few know the difference.
What a clever and accurate way to describe the Anglican church.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.