Christianity Is under Attack‽

The first chap­ter of Ken Ham’s The Lie begins with a bold state­ment: Chris­tian­i­ty is under attack! I’ll let the inim­itable Jon Stew­art speak on that notion as only he can:

Yes, the long war on Chris­tian­i­ty. I pray that one day we may live in an Amer­i­ca where Chris­tians can wor­ship freely! In broad day­light! Open­ly wear­ing the sym­bols of their reli­gion… per­haps around their necks? And maybe — dare I dream it? — maybe one day there can be an open­ly Chris­t­ian Pres­i­dent. Or per­haps, 43 of them. Consecutively.

Chris­tian­i­ty has a pret­ty sweet ride here in the Unit­ed States. In my coun­ty alone, there is just about a church for every 250 peo­ple; they’re every­where! Pas­tors and church lead­ers are respect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. Church or wor­ship ser­vice-like pro­gram­ming can be found on tele­vi­sion at all hours of every day. The Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has a spir­i­tu­al advi­sor who is a Chris­t­ian, and next to a high­way in Ken­tucky, a 1:1 scale mod­el of Noah’s ark stands as a brazen tes­ti­mo­ny to Judeochris­t­ian fundamentalism.

If there is an attack on Chris­tian­i­ty, at least here in the Unit­ed States, it’s not a very overt attack. So let’s look at what Ken Ham is talk­ing about here. 

“These are chal­leng­ing days,” Ham says on page 17. “On the whole, soci­ety is becom­ing more anti-Christian.”

On this point, I’m not sure I dis­agree with Ham. We may have vast­ly dif­fer­ing under­stand­ings regard­ing what being “Chris­t­ian” means, how­ev­er; suf­fice it to say, soci­ety has been “anti-Chris­t­ian” or bet­ter, unchris­t­ian) for near­ly two mil­len­nia. Any­way, back to Ham:

We are see­ing steady increas­es in homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, sup­port for abor­tion on demand, unwill­ing­ness to obey author­i­ties, unwill­ing­ness to work, mar­riage being aban­doned, cloth­ing being aban­doned, an increase in pornog­ra­phy, and an increase in law­less­ness, to name but a few areas.

I’m not going to take the time to dig up num­bers for each of these to see whether they are increas­ing or decreas­ing or sim­ply fluc­tu­ate all all times in human his­to­ry. How­ev­er, it is clear that Ham’s idea of soci­ety becom­ing “anti-Chris­t­ian” is sim­ply “sin­ners being sin­ners” (with apolo­gies to my LGBT read­ers; you are not sin­ning by being who you are!).

How­ev­er, one does not define being a Chris­t­ian as some­one who does­n’t have an abor­tion or as some­one who is straight or some­one who, well, wears clothes.

Rather, a Chris­t­ian is some­one who active­ly obeys the com­mands found in Jesus’ speech­es through­out the Gospels; the crux of Chris­tian­i­ty is humil­i­ty, self-sac­ri­fice, char­i­ty, and so on.

Speak­ing of Chris­tians, Ham states that “Chris­tians are fight­ing for their free­dom even in so-called ‘Chris­t­ian’ nations.”

No. Just… No. I’m only speak­ing for the Unit­ed States here, but I can say pret­ty assured­ly that Chris­tians here can attend their church­es, wor­ship their god, and live a life of self-sac­ri­fice and humil­i­ty all with­out the gov­ern­ment car­ing much at all.

What Ham is prob­a­bly think­ing about and call­ing “free­dom” is the abil­i­ty for Chris­tians to dis­crim­i­nate against oth­er peo­ple. Think about it: The Bible was once used to jus­ti­fy slav­ery, until slav­ery was abol­ished in the nation. The Bible was once used to jus­ti­fy seg­re­ga­tion of blacks from whites, but that was abol­ished as well. The Bible was used to jus­ti­fy out­law­ing “sodomy” and pre­vent­ing homo­sex­u­als from get­ting mar­ried, but that has been done away with for the most part as well.

In oth­er words, where Chris­tian­i­ty is “attacked” is in where it attacks oth­ers. If Chris­tian­i­ty requires the abil­i­ty to lord over oth­ers, dic­tat­ing how they are to live their lives, then it is right­ful­ly attacked in those areas, if only to pro­tect the dig­ni­ty of all who would call them­selves Americans.

What has hap­pened in soci­ety to bring bout these changes? Why is it that many peo­ple are cyn­i­cal when you talk about Christ and seem to be closed to the gospel? There must be some foun­da­tion­al rea­son for this change.

What­ev­er forth­com­ing answer Ken Ham has, I sus­pect the more like­ly rea­son for folks becom­ing pro­gres­sive­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with Chris­tian­i­ty is that we are increas­ing­ly fur­ther removed from being a soci­ety of naïve illit­er­ates who rely upon the local cler­gy to instruct them of what the wise men of old set forth.

We have become a soci­ety which is glob­al­ly inter­con­nect­ed, and for a few decades now, we have had unimag­in­ably large sums of human knowl­edge avail­able to us in the com­fort of our homes via the Internet.

What we aren’t now is a loose­ly con­nect­ed soci­ety where­in a bump in the night in one per­son­’s home could grow via word of mouth to become a local leg­end of a haunt­ed house. The sort of defense inher­ent in a mas­sive­ly con­nect­ed, tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety is bad news for a wide array of myths and leg­ends, includ­ing those which make up Christianity.

Years ago, our soci­ety was based on Chris­t­ian absolutes.

I’m going to let the Treaty of Tripoli speak here, as it was signed by Pres­i­dent and Found­ing Father John Adams: “the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is not, in any sense, found­ed on the Chris­t­ian religion.”

Fur­ther, what Chris­t­ian absolutes?! Choose two church­es at ran­dom, and you’ll find that they dis­agree on some fair­ly fun­da­men­tal matters!

One mat­ter which most (not all) Chris­t­ian church­es will agree on, though, is that you must wor­ship God, else you will in some way be pun­ished. On the oth­er hand, the Amer­i­can founders made the very first free­dom afford­ed to the cit­i­zens of their fledg­ling nation some­thing which is com­plete­ly con­trary to the bib­li­cal man­date of wor­ship­ping God: “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise thereof.”

Were our soci­ety actu­al­ly based upon “Chris­t­ian absolutes,” the First Amend­ment would have began some­thing like, “Con­gress shall make no law con­trary to God’s law, and the free exer­cise of oth­er reli­gions is prohibited.”

Peo­ple knew what was right and what was wrong. Behav­iors such as sex­u­al devian­cy, easy divorce, pub­lic law­less­ness, abor­tion on demand, pornog­ra­phy, and pub­lic nudi­ty were con­sid­ered to be wrong. Var­ry­ing pun­ish­ments for offend­ers were met­ed out by soi­ety. Val­ue judg­ments were basi­cal­ly built on bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples (for exam­ple, the Ten Com­mand­ments). Most peo­ple accept­ed or respect­ed a belief in God.

Let’s be straight here: Just because some­thing is con­sid­ered “wrong” does­n’t mean peo­ple did­n’t do it. “Sex­u­al devian­cy,” for exam­ple, has exist­ed through­out Amer­i­ca’s his­to­ry, right back to its found­ing on “Chris­t­ian absolutes.” The founders them­selves are exem­plars to that effect.

In fact, I’d wager that not hav­ing access to easy divorce is a pre­cur­sor to sex­u­al devian­cy because, like it or not, human­i­ty is not a nat­u­ral­ly monog­a­mous species. Soci­etal pres­sure to main­tain monogamy results in secret affairs, pres­i­den­tial scan­dals, and so on. It hap­pens in plen­ty of mar­riages that the love will be lost or that cir­cum­stances will change to make the mar­riage no longer ben­e­fi­cial to both par­ties. It should be that folks should be able to freely exit a rela­tion­ship which they freely entered into.

I agree that pub­lic law­less­ness is an issue, but crime has been a prob­lem for mil­len­nia, in every nation which forms laws which can be broken.

“Abor­tion on demand” has been avail­able for mil­len­nia, and abor­tion in gen­er­al for even longer, induced abor­tion hav­ing been around since at least the 16^th cen­tu­ry BCE. Chris­t­ian the­olo­gian Ter­tul­lion even ascribes to the father of med­i­cine, Hip­pocrates, the own­er­ship of tools used for abortions.

What has changed is that abor­tion is no longer a clan­des­tine activ­i­ty under­tak­en in unsafe back alleys using ques­tion­able tech­niques. Women seek­ing an abor­tion are now able to get one safe­ly, in hygien­ic environments.

Pornog­ra­phy and pub­lic nudi­ty have been around for as long as human­i­ty has been in some form or anoth­er. A trip to any art or his­to­ry muse­um will reveal that much. As tech­nol­o­gy march­es on, though, the pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and con­sump­tion of pornog­ra­phy has increased, not because human­i­ty has new lusts that need sat­is­fied but because it’s ever eas­i­er to sat­is­fy the urges which we have always had. Pub­lic nudi­ty, on the oth­er hand, is more a back­lash against pornog­ra­phy and oth­er forms of exploita­tion than any­thing else; it’s a form of de-objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, a way of say­ing that a woman can go top­less with dig­ni­ty just as a man can. The human body isn’t scan­dalous! Nor­mal­ize its nat­ur­al, nude beau­ty and you take dull the teeth of pornography.

Mov­ing on, yes, the Ten Com­mand­ments and oth­er reli­gious teach­ings were influ­en­tial in how soci­ety has been run, but they are not them­selves law in our soci­ety. This influ­ence is part of the respect folks had for reli­gion and the reli­gious, as mentioned.

What has changed is that an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple through the years have stopped default­ing to a posi­tion of respect for reli­gion; rather, they’ve tak­en the free thought approach to ques­tion­ing what, if any­thing, reli­gion has done to earn the respect so many give to it.

And we must always ques­tion. Every­thing. And we must do so with care­ful scruti­ny any sys­tem which demands our feal­ty or which defines our behav­ior toward others.

The Bible and Chris­tian­i­ty aren’t under attack, at least not direct­ly. Rather, we are increas­ing­ly real­iz­ing, at least on mat­ters of prac­ti­cal­i­ty, that the Bible’s code(s) of con­duct aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly applic­a­ble in today’s soci­ety. We’re dis­cov­er­ing a world full of glob­al con­nec­tions, diverse cul­tures, and infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, and we’re doing all of it in ways which either rede­fine what the Bible says away from its lit­er­al mean­ings or remove us from the Bible altogether.

Fea­tured image: source | license