walford
12-02-2004, 09:08 AM
Very long. Excerpted and bolded for easier skimming.
How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism (http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16157)
Lawrence Auster FrontPageMagazine.com
...With regard to mass non-European immigration and its attendant problems of multiculturalism, Islamization, and globalism, America and other Western nations face a challenge unique in history: to save ourselves from open-borders chaos and cultural destruction without becoming, in our own eyes, "racist," "mean," "exclusivist," and "un‑Christian." This is a moral and intellectual dilemma that most contemporary Westerners—if we bother thinking about it at all—find paralyzing. Unable to solve it, we have opted for a state of active or passive surrender—a condition from which we are only intermittently stirred by shocking acts of violence such as the September 11 attack on America or the jihadist slaughter of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
In fact, the moral dilemma described above is illusory. It is based on the false premise, unique to Western and especially modern Western society, that to preserve one's own nation or culture is somehow to be unjust toward other nations and cultures. Whenever this sentiment has gained ascendancy, as under the influence of ancient Stoicism or of modern leftism, it has led men to believe that the only just social order is a world state, in which there is no Other because everyone belongs to the same society. The problem with this idea is that a world state can only exist by depriving individual nations of their right of self‑government, indeed of their existence, and by subjecting all mankind to the rule of a distant and unaccountable regime. Therefore, based on all our experience of politics and human nature, a world state could not be just either. Traditional Christianity resolved, or at least managed, this conflict between the particular and the universal by locating true universality in the City of God, while recognizing the limited but real value of distinct societies on earth.
But a moral tension that remains manageable so long as different peoples with their respective cultures are living in different societies, becomes insoluble when radically different peoples and cultures are living in the same society, especially if it is a democracy. If a democratic country has a large and culturally different immigrant minority, the native majority cannot readily announce that they are against the continuation of more immigration, because if they did so, the immigrant group, who are now the majority's fellow citizens, would feel that the natives regard them as undesirable. As civilized, democratic people, the native majority do not want to insult the immigrant minority, or to deny their equal humanity, or to create even the slightest appearance of doing those things. So instead they—meaning we—surrender to the situation, accept continued mass immigration, and allow their country to be steadily transformed by an ongoing influx of unassimilated peoples and incompatible cultures...
...though Christian faith is the center of the West's historic being, it cannot by itself provide the enduring structure of Western society or of any other concrete society. As indicated by Jesus in his distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God, religious faith must work in a proper balance with worldly concerns—among which are considerations of political power and of culture. The balance is delicate and many things can go wrong with the spiritual-secular partnership. For example, if the Christian community breaks free of the surrounding earthly society and ignores the ordinary dictates of political prudence, or if it becomes corrupted by bad ideas emanating from the society itself, such as those of modern liberalism, it can become destructive of the surrounding society and culture. It can easily spin off into utopian universalist notions, such as the open-borders ideology, that spell the death of any culture.
In the remainder of this article, we will first recount the process by which Christianity has become liberalized. Then we will look at the doctrines, particularly the "cult of man," that define this liberalized Christianity and help engender the cultural radicalism that so threatens our society. Finally we will consider the role this liberalized Christianity has played in advancing open immigration and one-worldism, especially through its literalist reading of the Scriptures.
Confused Christianity
When the liberal order was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it did not immediately appear, at least in America, as a social force hostile to religion. Far from attacking or banning religion, liberalism marked out a religiously neutral public space where religious conformity would not be demanded and a person's religion could not be used against him. The various Protestant denominations plus Catholicism and Judaism were tolerated, and a generic—and rather strict—Protestant morality was authoritative throughout the society. In his journey through America in the 1830s, Toqueville was deeply impressed at how in America, more than in any other country in history, religion and liberty worked in harmony.
But over the past two centuries, as the demand for individual freedom has become ever more insistent and far-reaching, the respect accorded religion and religious morality in American public life has steadily diminished...
...are openly atheistic and hostile to religion, seeking, in the name of liberal tolerance, to drive religion out of the public sphere altogether. Or, to be more precise, they seek to drive Christianity out of the public sphere, while welcoming non-Western religions such as Islam. The only Christianity tolerated by these left-liberals is a desiccated Christianity that keeps up the external forms and formulae of the faith but no longer adheres seriously to any Christian beliefs that are distinct from those of liberalism. Even conservative Christian leaders have given up the traditional idea of America as a basically Christian society and now subscribe to the liberal view of America as a level playing field where different beliefs, including non-Western beliefs, can strive for influence.
...these liberal Christians tend to look at every issue through the lens of social justice, one‑worldism, and U.S. guilt, and are deeply committed to diversity, multiculturalism, and open borders. The liberal belief in the equal freedom of all human beings as the primary political and spiritual datum leads inexorably to the idea that our nation should open itself indiscriminately to all humanity. President Bush's proposal to give a green card to every person on earth who can underbid an American for a job is an example of this utopian attitude, and is plainly motivated, at least in part, by the liberal evangelicalism to which he subscribes.
The Church and the cult of man
In America, as we've said, a moderate liberalism that deferred to Christianity gradually became more secular and radical over time and brought much of the Church along with it. In Europe, by contrast, the left was in open rebellion against Christianity from the eighteenth century onward, seeking to create a new, materialistic society in which all human needs would be met without reference to anything higher than man...
[The Church] was also much concerned with man, with man as he really is today, with living man, with man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes himself the center of his own interests, but who dares to claim that he is the principle and [the] final cause of all reality. Man in his phenomenal totality ... presented himself, as it were, before the assembly of the Council Fathers.... The religion of God made man has come up against the religion—for there is such a one—of man who makes himself God...
Pope John Paul II expressed toward the Polish nation during his epochal first papal visit to that country in 1979...he spoke of Poland, not as a political and economic project or as an abstract idea, but as a distinct historical and spiritual entity, as a collective personality whose life has extended over centuries. Unfortunately, the Pope throughout the rest of his papacy gave this kind of recognition only to his native Poland, and, apparently, only because Polish culture was struggling to survive under Communist oppression. When it came to the United States, he took the opposite tack. America as the Pope saw it...has no national culture of its own, but exists only as a charity service for the world (the left view) or as the generator of a global democratic-capitalist ideology (the neoconservative view). Nevertheless, John Paul II's magnificent, if too narrowly applied, evocation of national culture as the vehicle through which a historical people express their relationship with God can be seen as the model for a restored, pro-Western Church. Liberal Christianity's denial of the identity and sovereignty of the historical Western peoples has led many Western patriots to be deeply suspicious of Christianity, even to reject it altogether, when what is most needed is a comprehensive renewal of the Christian faith, the religion which glorifies God and his truth, not man and his desires, and which provides a place under God for all peoples.
Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at View from the Right.
As a non-Christian, my interest in this centers upon the ‘cult of man’ phenomenon leading to utopianism which in turn leads to abandonment of Western culture. The author fails to recognize that Christianity is no less a Middle Eastern religion than is Islam. The difference is that it has been modified by Western thought – especially so by the Protestant Reformation.
Concepts such as rulers no longer being invested with the authority to rule in the name of the Almighty and the possibility of having a direct relationship with the Divine without clergy are conspicuously non-Middle Eastern in nature. They also were essential in leading to the establishment of limited government in the West.
The cult of man is a curious mixture of abandoning the concept of an objective Higher Power and offering certain ‘gifted’ humans as being subjective Supreme Beings. So we either have a human-designed ideological system that is not be questioned [Marxism] or a ruler who is deemed blessed with the instinctive wisdom to know what’s best for everyone else [Fascism]. In both cases, the government is to have absolute power so that a secular Heaven on Earth can be realized.
The 20th century slaughter of tens of millions finally disabused the West of such lofty goals. Unfortunately it also seems to have given a significant number of us to conclude that our own culture is not worth preserving any longer. Guilt over colonialism – in which it was decided that our superior culture justified imposing it on others – has somehow led many of us to think that our way of life is not even ‘superior’ enough to continue to exist in our own countries.
Thus we find ourselves increasingly inundated by cultures that have no problem with the idea of imposing their superior way of life upon us.
How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism (http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16157)
Lawrence Auster FrontPageMagazine.com
...With regard to mass non-European immigration and its attendant problems of multiculturalism, Islamization, and globalism, America and other Western nations face a challenge unique in history: to save ourselves from open-borders chaos and cultural destruction without becoming, in our own eyes, "racist," "mean," "exclusivist," and "un‑Christian." This is a moral and intellectual dilemma that most contemporary Westerners—if we bother thinking about it at all—find paralyzing. Unable to solve it, we have opted for a state of active or passive surrender—a condition from which we are only intermittently stirred by shocking acts of violence such as the September 11 attack on America or the jihadist slaughter of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
In fact, the moral dilemma described above is illusory. It is based on the false premise, unique to Western and especially modern Western society, that to preserve one's own nation or culture is somehow to be unjust toward other nations and cultures. Whenever this sentiment has gained ascendancy, as under the influence of ancient Stoicism or of modern leftism, it has led men to believe that the only just social order is a world state, in which there is no Other because everyone belongs to the same society. The problem with this idea is that a world state can only exist by depriving individual nations of their right of self‑government, indeed of their existence, and by subjecting all mankind to the rule of a distant and unaccountable regime. Therefore, based on all our experience of politics and human nature, a world state could not be just either. Traditional Christianity resolved, or at least managed, this conflict between the particular and the universal by locating true universality in the City of God, while recognizing the limited but real value of distinct societies on earth.
But a moral tension that remains manageable so long as different peoples with their respective cultures are living in different societies, becomes insoluble when radically different peoples and cultures are living in the same society, especially if it is a democracy. If a democratic country has a large and culturally different immigrant minority, the native majority cannot readily announce that they are against the continuation of more immigration, because if they did so, the immigrant group, who are now the majority's fellow citizens, would feel that the natives regard them as undesirable. As civilized, democratic people, the native majority do not want to insult the immigrant minority, or to deny their equal humanity, or to create even the slightest appearance of doing those things. So instead they—meaning we—surrender to the situation, accept continued mass immigration, and allow their country to be steadily transformed by an ongoing influx of unassimilated peoples and incompatible cultures...
...though Christian faith is the center of the West's historic being, it cannot by itself provide the enduring structure of Western society or of any other concrete society. As indicated by Jesus in his distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God, religious faith must work in a proper balance with worldly concerns—among which are considerations of political power and of culture. The balance is delicate and many things can go wrong with the spiritual-secular partnership. For example, if the Christian community breaks free of the surrounding earthly society and ignores the ordinary dictates of political prudence, or if it becomes corrupted by bad ideas emanating from the society itself, such as those of modern liberalism, it can become destructive of the surrounding society and culture. It can easily spin off into utopian universalist notions, such as the open-borders ideology, that spell the death of any culture.
In the remainder of this article, we will first recount the process by which Christianity has become liberalized. Then we will look at the doctrines, particularly the "cult of man," that define this liberalized Christianity and help engender the cultural radicalism that so threatens our society. Finally we will consider the role this liberalized Christianity has played in advancing open immigration and one-worldism, especially through its literalist reading of the Scriptures.
Confused Christianity
When the liberal order was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it did not immediately appear, at least in America, as a social force hostile to religion. Far from attacking or banning religion, liberalism marked out a religiously neutral public space where religious conformity would not be demanded and a person's religion could not be used against him. The various Protestant denominations plus Catholicism and Judaism were tolerated, and a generic—and rather strict—Protestant morality was authoritative throughout the society. In his journey through America in the 1830s, Toqueville was deeply impressed at how in America, more than in any other country in history, religion and liberty worked in harmony.
But over the past two centuries, as the demand for individual freedom has become ever more insistent and far-reaching, the respect accorded religion and religious morality in American public life has steadily diminished...
...are openly atheistic and hostile to religion, seeking, in the name of liberal tolerance, to drive religion out of the public sphere altogether. Or, to be more precise, they seek to drive Christianity out of the public sphere, while welcoming non-Western religions such as Islam. The only Christianity tolerated by these left-liberals is a desiccated Christianity that keeps up the external forms and formulae of the faith but no longer adheres seriously to any Christian beliefs that are distinct from those of liberalism. Even conservative Christian leaders have given up the traditional idea of America as a basically Christian society and now subscribe to the liberal view of America as a level playing field where different beliefs, including non-Western beliefs, can strive for influence.
...these liberal Christians tend to look at every issue through the lens of social justice, one‑worldism, and U.S. guilt, and are deeply committed to diversity, multiculturalism, and open borders. The liberal belief in the equal freedom of all human beings as the primary political and spiritual datum leads inexorably to the idea that our nation should open itself indiscriminately to all humanity. President Bush's proposal to give a green card to every person on earth who can underbid an American for a job is an example of this utopian attitude, and is plainly motivated, at least in part, by the liberal evangelicalism to which he subscribes.
The Church and the cult of man
In America, as we've said, a moderate liberalism that deferred to Christianity gradually became more secular and radical over time and brought much of the Church along with it. In Europe, by contrast, the left was in open rebellion against Christianity from the eighteenth century onward, seeking to create a new, materialistic society in which all human needs would be met without reference to anything higher than man...
[The Church] was also much concerned with man, with man as he really is today, with living man, with man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes himself the center of his own interests, but who dares to claim that he is the principle and [the] final cause of all reality. Man in his phenomenal totality ... presented himself, as it were, before the assembly of the Council Fathers.... The religion of God made man has come up against the religion—for there is such a one—of man who makes himself God...
Pope John Paul II expressed toward the Polish nation during his epochal first papal visit to that country in 1979...he spoke of Poland, not as a political and economic project or as an abstract idea, but as a distinct historical and spiritual entity, as a collective personality whose life has extended over centuries. Unfortunately, the Pope throughout the rest of his papacy gave this kind of recognition only to his native Poland, and, apparently, only because Polish culture was struggling to survive under Communist oppression. When it came to the United States, he took the opposite tack. America as the Pope saw it...has no national culture of its own, but exists only as a charity service for the world (the left view) or as the generator of a global democratic-capitalist ideology (the neoconservative view). Nevertheless, John Paul II's magnificent, if too narrowly applied, evocation of national culture as the vehicle through which a historical people express their relationship with God can be seen as the model for a restored, pro-Western Church. Liberal Christianity's denial of the identity and sovereignty of the historical Western peoples has led many Western patriots to be deeply suspicious of Christianity, even to reject it altogether, when what is most needed is a comprehensive renewal of the Christian faith, the religion which glorifies God and his truth, not man and his desires, and which provides a place under God for all peoples.
Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at View from the Right.
As a non-Christian, my interest in this centers upon the ‘cult of man’ phenomenon leading to utopianism which in turn leads to abandonment of Western culture. The author fails to recognize that Christianity is no less a Middle Eastern religion than is Islam. The difference is that it has been modified by Western thought – especially so by the Protestant Reformation.
Concepts such as rulers no longer being invested with the authority to rule in the name of the Almighty and the possibility of having a direct relationship with the Divine without clergy are conspicuously non-Middle Eastern in nature. They also were essential in leading to the establishment of limited government in the West.
The cult of man is a curious mixture of abandoning the concept of an objective Higher Power and offering certain ‘gifted’ humans as being subjective Supreme Beings. So we either have a human-designed ideological system that is not be questioned [Marxism] or a ruler who is deemed blessed with the instinctive wisdom to know what’s best for everyone else [Fascism]. In both cases, the government is to have absolute power so that a secular Heaven on Earth can be realized.
The 20th century slaughter of tens of millions finally disabused the West of such lofty goals. Unfortunately it also seems to have given a significant number of us to conclude that our own culture is not worth preserving any longer. Guilt over colonialism – in which it was decided that our superior culture justified imposing it on others – has somehow led many of us to think that our way of life is not even ‘superior’ enough to continue to exist in our own countries.
Thus we find ourselves increasingly inundated by cultures that have no problem with the idea of imposing their superior way of life upon us.