Lambs to the Slaughter

by William Kilpatrick
Aug 9th, 2010

I used to scoff at writers such as Sam Harris, Kevin Phillips, and Chris Hedges when they warned that Christians were a major threat to American freedoms. Now, I’m not so sure. Of course, all their talk about Christians imposing a theocracy on America has about as much credibility as the “truther” theory that 9/11 was a U.S. government/Mossad conspiracy. But I wonder now if Christians, in their naivite and in their desire to be thought tolerant, aren’t inadvertently paving the way for an eventual Islamic theocracy.

It seems that quite a number of Christian churches are now involved in “outreach” programs with local mosques. The typical outreach is for a church to invite an Islamic leader to come in and explain Islam to the congregation. Naturally, the imams present Islam as a religion of peace and love. And naturally in their desire to appear loving and accepting, the Christians lap it up. The imams know how to press all the “tolerance,” “outreach,” and “respect” buttons, and the result is that the Christians end up thinking Islam is just another nice, brotherly religion like their own. As a result, they can probably be counted on not to oppose the building of a local mosque, or for that matter not to oppose any Muslim agenda or initiative. Islamic leaders have done a good job of framing their grievances as civil rights issues, and this, of course, has great appeal to the many Christians who see the pursuit of social justice as their main mission. Mentally, many Christians still live in the days of “We Shall Overcome” and lunch counter sit-ins. They think that in supporting and defending Islam they are like the Christians in the sixties who linked arms with civil rights marchers, and sang hymns together.

Lately, Muslim leaders have been taking advantage of the Christian disposition for outreach by offering outreach programs of their own. 20,000 Dialogues is a nationwide interfaith initiative that helps local level imams set up outreach programs, and provides films and speakers to facilitate the dialogue. The current offering is a film titled “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Think.” The film is based on a study of Muslim attitudes conducted by John Esposito of Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and Dalia Mogahed, Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. Like the study, the film massages the polling data to make it appear that Islam is a predominately peaceful religion. the rest

Evangelicals and Their ‘Made-up Ideas’
I was going to waste an inordinate amount of time today responding to an essay in Inside Higher Ed that purports to lecture evangelicals on their “siege mentality” and their “paranoid and frankly made-up ideas” regarding the academy. Then I realized it was so devoid of factual content as to be nothing more than a rant — one whose over-generalizations ironically end up confirming that there is at least one academic at Kalamazoo College (where the writer teaches) who may be incapable of offering objective judgments about his more religiously devout students.

No Right to Remain Silent
So we have no right to remain silent, because we’re not merely offering another opinion. We have something that society desperately needs: the truth about God, sex and homosexuality. If we can’t talk about why homosexual sex is bad for people and violates God’s law, how can we show that Catholics are the ones who really want what’s best for those with homosexual tendencies?