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Culture War or Crusade?

Copyright © 2005, 2007 by David E. Ross

It is clear from this that the Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.

Justice Antonin Scalia, 2003
Dissenting opinion in Lawrence vs Texas

The battlefields in this war are many: abortion, marriage and family values, crime and punishment, education, material and spiritual wealth, gun control, end-of-life decisions, stem-cell research, et cetera. Justice Scalia's opinion referred specifically to gay rights, but the issues being fought are much broader.

… we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian … and the enemy is a guy named Satan.

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
October 2003

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We can't ignore that our nation is based on Christianity — not science.

Kathy Martin
Kansas State Board of Education
May 2005

Justice Scalia is wrong (again). This is not merely a cultural war — a battle for minds on what direction American society should evolve. Instead, this is a religious war, a crusade, a fundamentalist Christian jihad whose goal is to entwine particular religious beliefs with government.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

U.S. Constitution
Article VI, paragraph 3

Despite the Constitution's mandate that election to office must not be influenced by religious beliefs, the crusaders are dictating to their followers how to vote. We see bishops threaten excommunication against anyone who votes for a candidate who might support a woman's right to have an abortion or who might support equal rights for gays. We recently saw a congregation expel members who voted for the "wrong" Presidential candidate. Nominees for federal judges and even chairmen of Senate committees are now being examined for their support of the jihad. President Bush felt compelled to cite Harriet Miers's affiliation with a fundamentalist church as part of his justification for nominating her to the Supreme Court; Miers's nomination then had to be withdrawn when the jihad objected to a speech she gave 12 years earlier in support of a woman's personal right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

U.S. Constitution
Amendment 1

The crusaders truly support the free exercise of religion. That is necessary for them to pursue their jihad. However, they also reject the prohibition against government establishment of religion. The non-establishment clause of the First Amendment interferes with their goal of having the government enact their dogma into laws affecting all of us, including those of us who follow other religions with opposing dogmas. Thus, the crusaders demand the following:

• Support of the Christian cross on the symbols of government and the maintenance of such crosses by the taxpayers on government land.
• Substitution of theological creation (and its "intelligent design" clone) for scientific evolution in public schools.
• Posting the Ten Commandments in court houses and school rooms — not the Catholic or Jewish versions but only the crusader's version.
• Enacting laws that declare a fetus to be a complete, legal human person despite contrary, centuries-old, religious beliefs that humanity does not begin until the first breath of air at birth.
• Prayers in tax-supported public schools — not the Jewish sh'ma or prayers to Allah, only the crusaders' own prayers. Also taxpayer support of religious schools.
• Not only exempting taxpayer funded, faith-based social services from federal anti-discrimination laws, but also federal preemption of state and local anti-discrimination laws, thus opening the door to tax-paid missionary activity and the denial of services to those who refuse to be proselytized.

The Christian jihad has already turned the U.S. Airforce Academy into its own missionary society, harassing cadets who do not follow the crusaders' dogma. Woe to those cadets who follow the "wrong" religions or who are atheists.

By seeking government support and endorsement exclusively of their own dogma, the crusaders support the free exercise of only their own religion and reject the equal right of the rest of us to exercise equally our own differing religions. This is a twisted version of the First Amendment.

But what is the dogma of the Christian jihad? The principles are arrogant, contradictory, and even hypocritical.

• We own the only true path to Heaven. You must believe as we tell you, or you will rot in Hell for eternity.
• Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Leviticus 19:18), unless your neighbor is a Democrat, is gay, belongs to the "wrong" religion, or has had an abortion.
• We must support a culture of life as long as it includes capital punishment.
• Thou shalt not utter a false report; put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness (Exodus 23:1) — except when justifying going to war.
• While some ayatollahs in this Christian jihad are women, the concept that women should have rights equal with men — in the workplace, in the consumer market, in marriage, in religious institutions, in health-care decisions — is contrary to God's laws. God wants women to be subservient to men.
  • Women should not be in management positions over men.
  • Men should make the decisions whether women might have an abortion.
  • A woman in a pulpit is an abomination.
  • In the home, men should make all the decisions and control all the money.
  • Women should expect to pay more for the same goods and services as men, such as haircuts, dry cleaning, and automobiles.
  • The country clubs and service organizations where business relationships are established are correct when they exclude women.
  • Women in the military should have lower career expectations than men. Further, since they put themselves in that position, women in the military should expect sexual assaults to victimize them twice: once for the assault and once again when they (not their assailant) are punished.
• The most important family value is the defense of the sanctity of marriage as long as adultery is ignored. This value is also void when a husband tries to implement his brain-dead wife's wishes about not prolonging her life.
• God's commandments — as decreed at Mount Sinai and transcribed by Moses — must be obeyed completely. There is no room for alteration or equivocation when following God's words. This includes the commandment against homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). However, the following Levitical commandments are now void:
  • Offering burnt sacrifices (1:2-17, etc).
  • Removing all blood from meat before eating it (3:17; 17:10-14).
  • Prohibiting the eating of rabbit; pork, bacon, and ham; lobster, shrimp, clams, oysters, and other shellfish (11:6-7,10-12).
  • Circumcision (12:3).
  • Prohibiting a husband from sleeping in the same bed as his wife while she is menstruating (15:19-21).
  • Prohibiting wearing clothes made of blended fibers (19:19).
  • Prohibiting the trimming of beards and piercing ears (19:27-28).
  • Welcoming immigrants, with the same laws applying to both citizens and immigrants (19:33-34; 24:22).
  • Capital punishment for adultery (20:10).
  • Celebrating Passover (23:5-7).

Besides a twisted dogma, the Christian ayatollahs of this jihad suffer two serious defects of character.

• They are adept at false apologies. If a leader issues a public statement so painfully bigoted and false that it will have a negative impact on the crusade, he first tries to dismiss it as "My comments were taken out of context" or "I was misquoted". When the examination of a complete transcript provides the complete context and proves the statement was not misquoted, he then offers a conditional apology that is effective only if the target was offended. Not only is the target offended, but so are all persons of good character. Sometimes, the apology goes through several iterations. In the end, however, two essential ingredients of a true apology are missing: sincerity and an admission of wrongdoing.
• They are afflicted with a constipated morality. They find smut and even pornography in a shadow. They attribute all kinds of depravity to fictional, non-human characters. They condemn fictional violence on TV, in the movies, and in video games but not the real violence in the boxing ring, on the battlefield, on the hockey ice, or in the homes of battered spouses. Messages of tolerance are condemned if they include tolerance for those who have different beliefs.

If there is any doubt about the existence of a Christian jihad, read the complete news article.

No, the Christian jihad does not include all Christians. It does not even include a majority of Christians. These crusaders are a small but very vocal minority of conservative Protestants and Catholics. Their power — the strength of the jihad and their political ascendancy — is the result of pandering for their votes by some politicians who might not otherwise get elected. Now that those politicians were successful in their election campaigns, the crusaders who supported them demand a payback. They demand laws be enacted to achieve what they cannot obtain through sermons from the pulpit. Since they believe theirs is the only true religion, they do not care if those laws are contrary to the beliefs of others and deprive the rest of us — especially non-Christians — of our freedom of religion.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Attributed to Edmund Burke, 1729-1797

The danger to the United States and our freedoms under the Constitution is that not enough good people even recognize the threat from this vocal minority let alone speak out against it. This threat is quite real. As seen with the ill-fated nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, the crusaders already dictate national policy.

As a Jew, I am afraid, very afraid.

4 June 2005
Updated 28 December 2007

I have used both crusade and jihad to describe how some fundamentalist Christians want to remake the United States into a theocracy. Yes, I know this is a mixed metaphor. However, there is much similarity between what these modern crusaders and Moslem terrorists both wish to accomplish — the destruction of all those who do not believe the way they believe and who do not behave the way they dictate.

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