TRUMP - Some people think......... How do you feel?

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I am the midst of reading the most depressing book I have ever read. It's by Yuval Noah Harah, and it's title is Sapiens. It a history of us going back the origins of -, well, of us. It begins with the earliest human types that, like most creatures of the wild, killed only to eat. They felt no impulse to kill beyond that.
But as we evolved into Homo Sapiens, our brains grew bigger - and we became obsessed with killing almost anything that moved.
That's a pretty good description of what our world is today, and of what we are. We are destroying whole species as well as each other.

That has affected Christians as much as non-Christians. Particularly since 1492, we Christians have been obsessed with killing and, early in Christianity we have murdered people all over the world - as in the empires of Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, the U.S., and the attempted empire of Hitler's Germany.

Did Christian leadership ever challenge that? Almost never. Indeed, the churches have usually blessed the killers. In World War Two, they blessed British, Germans, Americans.... So it is t hat we now have wars, especially American ones, that specialize in murdering civilians and children.

The church has never recognized it's own evil.

Isn't think a question Christians should be raising?

Dealing with that would be more useful than our endless chorusses of Jesus wants me for a sun beam.
 
Graeme is too young for WW2.

PG-13, do you deny that Western Christian culture has been/continues violent and war-prone?
 
Pontifex Geronimo 13 said:
I personally don’t know any Christians who advocate for war.
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I was raised in the US during the 60's and 70's. I remember being exposed to little ditties like 'Kill a Commie for Christ.' I recall Phyllis Schlafly calling nuclear missiles God's gift to the US. I remember hearing a few diatribes (described as "sermons" in the Sunday bulletins) about the Cold War, about how We were Right, and everyone else could go hang. Yes, Christians very definitely advocated for war, to keep the (self) righteous USA safe, and to destroy all the enemies of God (read: Commies, especially Soviet Commies). I remember Reagan talking about what he called 'Peacekeeper' missiles. "We" needed them to keep the balance of power on Our Side. Yes, churches and Christians did support wars, just or otherwise; for it might jeopardize the Christian (i.e. American) way of life, and heavens, "we" couldn't let THAT happen.

I also remember July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It happened to fall on a Sunday. Guess what topic dominated most of the pulpits that day. Robert McAfee Brown referred to it once as the 'Dearth of Christ Sunday", for mentions of Christ were rare, largely replaced by mentions of Washington and Jefferson and Paul Revere, etc etc etc. Egad, what a disaster.

Please don't try to insinuate that Christians do not advocate for war.
 
For the record, my Dad, who served in WW2 from 1939-45 (enlisting as a 17 year old), was one of the most ardent pacifists I've ever met. Also, entered the war ostensibly C of E, left a lifelong atheist.
 
Redbaron said:
I was raised in the US during the 60's and 70's. I remember being exposed to little ditties like 'Kill a Commie for Christ.' I recall Phyllis Schlafly calling nuclear missiles God's gift to the US. I remember hearing a few diatribes (described as "sermons" in the Sunday bulletins) about the Cold War, about how We were Right, and everyone else could go hang. Yes, Christians very definitely advocated for war, to keep the (self) righteous USA safe, and to destroy all the enemies of God (read: Commies, especially Soviet Commies). I remember Reagan talking about what he called 'Peacekeeper' missiles. "We" needed them to keep the balance of power on Our Side. Yes, churches and Christians did support wars, just or otherwise; for it might jeopardize the Christian (i.e. American) way of life, and heavens, "we" couldn't let THAT happen.

I also remember July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It happened to fall on a Sunday. Guess what topic dominated most of the pulpits that day. Robert McAfee Brown referred to it once as the 'Dearth of Christ Sunday", for mentions of Christ were rare, largely replaced by mentions of Washington and Jefferson and Paul Revere, etc etc etc. Egad, what a disaster.

Please don't try to insinuate that Christians do not advocate for war.
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I think he "dodged that bullet" by saying he "PERSONALLY" doesn't know any Christians that advocate for war. So he's basically telling us he chooses to not be aware.
 
Redbaron said:
I was raised in the US during the 60's and 70's. I remember being exposed to little ditties like 'Kill a Commie for Christ.' I recall Phyllis Schlafly calling nuclear missiles God's gift to the US. I remember hearing a few diatribes (described as "sermons" in the Sunday bulletins) about the Cold War, about how We were Right, and everyone else could go hang. Yes, Christians very definitely advocated for war, to keep the (self) righteous USA safe, and to destroy all the enemies of God (read: Commies, especially Soviet Commies). I remember Reagan talking about what he called 'Peacekeeper' missiles. "We" needed them to keep the balance of power on Our Side. Yes, churches and Christians did support wars, just or otherwise; for it might jeopardize the Christian (i.e. American) way of life, and heavens, "we" couldn't let THAT happen.

I also remember July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It happened to fall on a Sunday. Guess what topic dominated most of the pulpits that day. Robert McAfee Brown referred to it once as the 'Dearth of Christ Sunday", for mentions of Christ were rare, largely replaced by mentions of Washington and Jefferson and Paul Revere, etc etc etc. Egad, what a disaster.

Please don't try to insinuate that Christians do not advocate for war.
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Egad! On the 200th anniversary Jesus took the back seat to independence celebrations. What a disaster. You do know that he has just about been excommunicated from the UCC?
Every Sunday. Rare to find mention of him on UCC websites too. But not so hard to find lots of stuff about sex and witchcraft.
 
War is our greatest weakness as humans. And we are coming close, very close, to the final war.
Alas! the church is not our final authority. Our final authorities are our super rich. Any war we have ever fought has been a war to benefit them - so it should not be suprising that World War one and two were NOT fought as us good and the other side evil. Britain and the U.S. were quite prepared to cheer Hitler on. We couldn't care less what he was doing to Jews. Both World Wars were fought over the rivalries of Capitalism. And the U.S. entered on our side only because it's billionaires hoped to displace the British as the world's biggest capitalists. (And so the U.S. won it. Since then, it has been wild about atttacking China in the great hope of plundering China as the British had done.) That's why the chance of nuclear war is coming close.
It was been rare, very rare, for our churches ever to discuss the evil of our moneyed class. Not surprisingly, almost all American presidents (like,say, the Bushes, father and son) were vicious and cruel mass murderers - and regular church attenders. So were the presidents from Washington on who massacred native peoples. And the ones who have plundered and murdered Latin Americans for over a hundred years. The British army, in its heyday, murdered far more people than Hitler ever did. The milliions of starvation deaths in India (deliberately imposed by Chruchill alone) was as great as Hitler's holocaust of Jews.

But I have never, in any church, heard about this.

Oh. Alas! I am not too young to remember world war 2. One day in 1945, I was sent home from grade 6 for being late (again). To my surprise, my mother just scooped me up to take a bus downtown. I was dazed. The streets were packed. The shops were boarded up. I saw a soldier from a highland regiment leaning against a wall. He was missing a leg.

Then I saw a sign. "We've won the the war". Wow. We'd won. My father would be coming home. Then I noticed the next sentence. "Now, we've got to win the peace."

But that was silly. If we had won the war, of course we had won the peace......
 
Ah! I see and applaud Pontifex's insight. But, gee, Pontiflex, couldn't any of your family sign up like good Christians and kill North Koreans or Libyans or Afghanis - possibly Haitians - or even Syrians or Iraqis? Or you could cross the border, and volunteer to murder Latin Americans? I mean, you're right. Jesus was not as Christian as he should have been.

Of course, you would have to shave that ghastly growth on your face. Was this an attempt on your part to look like Jesus?
 
Redbaron said:
And then there's this, that has come to the fore in the last few days. Even whilst USMA grads were saluting him, Trump knew that Putin was offering bounties for killing US soldiers.

www.newsandguts.com

Since Learning Of Russian Bounty On U.S. Troops, Trump Continued To Court Putin - News & Guts Media

We all need to take a deep breath and think about the latest allegations against Donald Trump, because they are the most despicable in a long list of questionable acts. The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump has known since March of a plan by Russia to pay Taliban soldiers to kill...
www.newsandguts.com www.newsandguts.com
Click to expand...

Serving the Bottomless Kool-Aid: 'Blame Russia' Rides Again! - Antiwar.com

When a nation touts its own exceptionalism, that’s called patriotism. Absolute Americanism so red-blooded that it’s become mandatory for all political aspirants (think Obama’s "belief" with "his every fiber") to prostrate themselves at exceptionalism’s altar. Funny, when an individual believes...
original.antiwar.com
 
Ritafee said:

Serving the Bottomless Kool-Aid: 'Blame Russia' Rides Again! - Antiwar.com

When a nation touts its own exceptionalism, that’s called patriotism. Absolute Americanism so red-blooded that it’s become mandatory for all political aspirants (think Obama’s "belief" with "his every fiber") to prostrate themselves at exceptionalism’s altar. Funny, when an individual believes...
original.antiwar.com
Click to expand...
As happens more often than not, you miss the point. It isn't about blaming Russia. It's about Trump's woefully inadequate response to what Russia is doing.
 
I have no idea whether Russia ever did this. But there's nothing unusual in hiring killers. The U.S. armed and trained Aghanis to kill Russians. It hires people in the middle east to kill citizens of other countries in the region. The U.S. hired freelance killers from all over the world to murder 200.000 Guatemalans.
Why do we get picky if somebody else does that sort of thing?
 
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