The Day Christian Accountability Died

Eric Bolling, FOX News

“Reports say radical Muslim jihadists killed thousands of people in the past few months alone. And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion––well, that would be zero.”

The most inept (and illiterate) historians came out of the woodwork the days after President Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast.

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Gasp!! Here was the President telling people that Christianity had actually committed crimes!! How blasphemous, how horrendously untrue, how ... accountable. 

At this point, I wish to issue a disclaimer of sorts about my bias: one of the reasons I abandoned the Catholic faith is because of its whitewashing of its own history. Only within the last few papacies have there been a trifling mention of the atrocities carried on in the Name of God. As a student of history (sometimes erstwhile, but most times sincere, certainly more than David Barton), I became appalled at the crimes perpetrated from the second century on. Millions of murders had been swept underneath the rug of history - much like one of today's Texas textbooks.

The response was swift - and predictable:

“The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said Jim Gilmore, the former Republican governor of Virginia. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States.”

Joe Scarborough:

“Why does he feel the need to go back 800 years?” This stupid, left-wing moral equivalency.

Rush Limbaugh:

There are, in attendance, thousands of Christians of one denomination or another. Fundamentalists, evangelicals, Protestants, Catholics, the whole gamut. Why would you insult them? Why would you attempt to downplay militant Islam.

Not every Christian was "insulted" of course, just the self-righteous ones - the ones he was talking about being on our "high horse."

It Never (Really) Happened!!

When bloviators tell us what is history and what is fiction, it may be wise to think about the agenda of the bloviator. Rick Santorum, for example: (OpEdNews)

"The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom. They hate Western civilization at the core. That's the problem."

Beyond this misstatement, is the one by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (who, btw, demanded a full apology from Obama) claiming that the Inquisition was largely a myth.

Christians never killed in the name of religion. The Crusades were not prompted by religion. The Inquisition was mostly fictional. These were the kind of comments which earlier prompted me to dig up my own research which I called the Christian Crimeline . The crimeline published was partical, leading up  only to the 14th century. Afterwards, however, was when the real blood-letting happened, but it all somehow escaped the history books read by people like Eric Bolling. 

According to people like Bolling, the great Library of Alexandria was never burned (with pagans in it), the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre never happened, the Defenestration of Prague (bringing about the calamitous 30 Years War) never occurred and Christopher Columbus never enslaved Native Americans. 

Right Wing Meltdown: A Study in Paranoia

It was all so wrong on so many levels, but it was the fact that the President even mentioned Christianity next to ISIL that got to them. The responses were paranoid pieces right out of Glenn Beck's book. Context? What context? Note what he said after the infamous comment:

“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said at the breakfast.

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon. From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.

Calling ISIL a "death cult" was, apparently, not enough. 

The Truth Hurts

For all the Christian Crime deniers, there is one undeniable truth: Christianity definitely had a hand in heinous acts throughout history. From Patheos.com comes the first-hand chronicle of the First Crusade. It is a sickening, self-righteous chronicle of blood lust:

Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are normally chanted … in the temple and the porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.

Hyperbole in victory is common, but if even one tenth of the chronicle is true, then the Crusaders made ISIS look timid in comparison.

The Trigger-Happy Have Spoken

The impassioned pleas of Newtown parents for gun control were drowned out by NRA wingnuts at Hartford Connecticut's General Assembly meeting concerning the banning of assault weapons. 

In other words, PARANOIA REIGNED

Transcend Christmas: Get The Guns Off The Streets, The Paranoia Out Of Our Minds, And Put "Happy Holidays" In Our Hearts!

A re-post of one of last year's articles might have been as appropriate for this Christmas article, but too many Americans need to have things current, up-to-date ... and in-your-face. Last year there was a series called Transcending Christmas and the first part ,Transcending Christmas: Will The Christian Right Kill The Christmas Spirit? The Christmas Truce of 1914 Shows Why. pointed out that during the Christmas Truce of 1914, men actually laid down their guns, walked across enemy lines and allowed peace to reign for one day during the most devastating war man had ever seen.

When those men laid down their guns, however, what they were actually setting aside was their fear, their paranoia that they would be killed by their fellow man.




The Real Reason Behind The Sandy Hook Slaughter?

One of the easiest emotions to pass on to a son or daughter is ... fear: fear of everything and everyone. Sometimes overprotective parents can relay fear, and overprotective parents who are themselves fearful may be double doses of paranoia. Newtown's Nancy Lanza was fearful of her former husband, of Adam's school and even of Adam himself. And while she may have had an "interest" in guns, the presence of an assault rifle indicates the possibility of a survivalist mentality. She even tutored Adam in use of the assault rifle, triggering a paranoia that would eventually be out of control. The possibility that Adam would use the gun for lethal purposes was, in Nancy's mind, a risk she had to take to protect herself from the outside world's intent on doing her and her son harm.

     "Nancy Lanza, the mother of the Sandy Hook shooter, was in the process of having her son committed to a psychiatric facility when he went on the mass shooting spree,a lifelong family acquaintance told Fox News.
A senior law enforcement official also confirmed that 20-year-old Lanza's anger over his mother's plan is being investigated as a possible motive for the Newtown shooting."

Fear. Fear and anger. The two can be mutually inclusive. 

Paranoia Begetting Paranoia

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre

 ... Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily columnist and regular Fox News guest Erik Rush tweeted a video arguing that President Obama orchestrated the Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colorado shootings in order to cover-up a massive government scandal, forcibly disarm Americans, put people in concentration camps and start a civil war.

Driving The Second Amendment ... Into The Ground

Fear of England and fear of any totalitarian government like England's were certainly at the heart of the Constitution's Second Amendment. The common use of firearms (for hunting as well as protection) inculcated responsibility, however, with firearms that were nowhere near as deadly (or dependable) as a today's semi-automatic rifle. The vision of one man mowing down dozens of people within minutes could not have entered into the minds of the Founding Fathers. To be sure, frontiersmen had occasional run-ins with Indians, but the Founding Fathers were not concerned with them and any form of domestic terrorism was not in their nomenclature.

To put it simply: Patriot Movement and survivalist zealots armed with AK-47s and assault rifles were not what the Founding Fathers envisioned and they would have been ashamed that their own fears could reach such levels.

Wars and Enemies Everywhere

From foreign wars to the supposed "War on Christmas", the American psyche has been imbued with an "us vs them" mentality. Military terminology even invades our religious makeup (Cindy "Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon" Jacobs' organization is named Generals International - a point which seems to have no relevance whatsoever other than to instill a military air). The ability to stop paranoia seems, at times, futile: like the above insipid conspiracy theory, paranoia seems inevitable after a tragedy such as Sandy Hook. Calls for more guns and for greater school security with more guns (e.g. concealed weapons by teachers and administrators) are on the rise. Instances of children carrying guns to school are commonplace. Instead of being tamped down, paranoia is on the rise. 

One of the reasons for the rise in paranoia is the false notion that Christians are being persecuted in this country. In a country where the smallest hamlets have three church spires, the idea of persecution seems ludicrous, but for decades, "social conservatives" (the Christian Right's preferred label) have fostered an "us vs them" ideology that has not been seen since the days of the Roman Empire. For example, what is the "War On Christmas," except an attempt to take back the Christmas Spirit and brand it exclusively for Christians. 

What the Christian Right has never realized is that the Christmas Spirit itself transcended the holiday of Christmas long ago and any attempt to contain it, to make it exclusively Christian is futile. Instead of bemoaning the fate of Christmas, we should all be alarmed at the lack of Christmas Spirit brought on by our national paranoia. After all, the Christmas Spirit of "Peace On Earth Good Will Towards Men" depends upon something conspicuously pushed aside by our all-consuming paranoia: belief in your fellow man.

Was The Response To Sandy Hook The Final Chapter For The Christmas Spirit?

No. But dwelling on the lack of Spirit does little to propel the Spirit forward and grow, as it should, exponentially. What encourages and nurtures the Spirit is a combination of endless and all-inclusive hope, belief in your fellow man, determination and compassion. Endless. All-inclusive. The Spirit should be meted out to everyone and everything on earth ...forever.

There should be no Final Chapter.

So it is with the Spirit of Christmas that I bid everyone: