Thursday, November 17, 2005
A Tale of Two Scandals: The Air Force Academy and Abe Foxman
Ready to start blogging again and what pops up in the news: more “scandal” at the Air Force Academy and the rantings of Abe Foxman, head of the ADL. Is this for real? Are we about to see “oceans and oceans of blood” flowing from the rise of “radical Christianity” in the American government?
What a strange week this has been. Saturday morning (11.12.05) the local Colorado Springs Gazette had another article about inappropriate Christian efforts at the Air Force Academy. It seems that a missionary to the Academy had indicated in his prayer letter to donors of his special access to the cadets. This gave Mikey Weinstein, the self-appointed watchdog of all things religious at the Academy, a chance to once again call for making the Academy an essentially religious-free zone. Then on Wednesday it comes out that Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), sees the greatest threat to America coming from, no not Islamicists, but Christians (http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=11659).
Now lets take a quick step back. First, as we have already seen from the Air Force’s own investigation, there is no attempt at the Air Force Academy to force Christianity to be the branch’s official faith. The prayer letter in question, I am sad to say, came from my own organization [official note – my comments of course do not reflect those of The Navigators (http://www.navigators.org) or of the individuals in question, but are my own]. Having written my own prayer letters to donors I know the natural tendency to, well how do I say this nicely, “put things in the best light.” The individuals in question did not have “special access” but the access available to any religious group that has gone through the process of being certified (see story here: http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1312116&secid=1).
The Navigators and all such similar groups are committed to being there for students as they struggle with their transition into adulthood. And yes, the encourage those who have found faith in Jesus Christ to share that faith with others (as our faith requires if we are to be faithful to the message of Christ). Some would no doubt see this as opportunism, taking advantage of people at a weak moments in their life. Of course, those same people have no problem with professors filling the minds of similarly weak and struggling young people at most campuses with idea of Marxism, environmentalism, and any other sort of philosophy which those professors see as the true meaning of history. The reality is that we are all evangelists, even Mr. Foxman, for our own way of seeing the world.
Of course those like Mr. Foxman see the Constitution as allowing for professors and other state and federal employees sharing their worldviews because they are not “religious” but forbidding any mixing of religion (by which they mean Christianity) and state. The reality is, however, that in a postmodern world, any all-encompassing philosophical worldview (of which Mr. Foxman’s liberalism is indeed one) is a religion – and based on the money spent in the last election, modern liberalism is a very financially well off on at that.
Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Foxman (it should be noted that both men are Jewish and the pall of the Holocaust rightly influences their thinking, though it is also important to note as Rabbi Lapin and others have said, that Jews experience the greatest freedom and protection in the modern world where true Christianity is dominate), in a time when radical Islam is on the move around the world, when America faces real enemies including the People’s Republic of China, believe that greatest threat to America lies in evangelical Christians:
Foxman: “What we’re seeing is a pervasive, intensive assault on the traditional balance between religion and state in this country,” he said. “They’re trying to bring Christianity to all aspects of American life. They’re not just talking just about God and religious values but about Jesus and about Christian values.” ... On a policy level, he said, that includes the vast expansion of funding for religious institutions through various faith-based programs in the government.
Weinstein: “Whenever radical Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state we have wound up with oceans and oceans of blood,” he said Monday in a telephone interview from his New Mexico home.
Now, certainly I am concerned about some elements of the Christian right. When Pat Robertson says his latest (to use Hugh Hewitt’s favourite phrase) “just nutty” thing, he has been and should be denounced, not by the secular press, but by Christians. There is always a latent desire to create heaven on earth, but as Christians we know that the fallenness of humanity cannot be controlled through the apparatus of state. In fact, the power of state has been and is now being turned in Christians with as great degree and with as great of violence as any faith.
Mr. Weinstein in particular needs to be challenged on his assertion. Where has radical Christianity engaged in the machinery of state that has resulted in oceans and oceans of blood? If you want to say the Crusades, that was not an official act of any state, but rather a coalition of states in a feudalistic system. And there it was a war (remember that Islam had militarily conquered the Middle East from its Christian population), though I renounce that war as immoral.
In point of fact, the “oceans and oceans” of blood have poured forth from secular regimes and those motivated by nationalism or racial purity:
Turkish genocide of the Christian Armenians.
World War I and its war of nationalism.
The Russian Revolution.
The purges of Stalin in the 1930s.
Nazism
Tojoism and a pure Japan in World War II
Mao’s Cultural Revolution
The Khmer Rouge’s perfect Maoist peasant state
Rwanda’s ethnic genocide of 1994
It is not Christianity that poured forth these oceans and oceans of blood. There is no such thing as a secular state. Every state will be guided by some overarching worldview. Even today, as George Weigel points out in his excellent book The Cube and the Cathedral, nations such as France and the EU are guided by the Kantian idea of a perfectly moral society. As the recent riots in Paris’ suburbs point out, its not working too well.
Mr. Foxman is correct that as Christians we want to see our nation have the values of Jesus: justice for the oppressed, care for the poor, stewardship of creation, love of enemy and neighbour, humility, and an understanding that humanity is not the final judge of all. As Christians we do not want special treatment or special favour. All we ask is that the playing field is level, that freedom of religion is really honoured, and that there is opportunity for a debate about whether Mr. Foxman and Mr. Weinstein’s version of the world really is the one we want.
