Pew Research Findings

The percentage of the American population that identify themselves as Christian has declined over the last eight years.

A Lot.

From 78.4% to 70.6%.

That was big news this week.

So was an article commemorating the 50 years that have passed since a famous photograph of amish children running into the corn fields to escape forced bussing away from their one room school to the local public school system.

These are connected. And it should be obvious.

I am a Christian. 100% sold out.

And the part of the population that no longer identifies as a Christian may have:

1. Never been Christian
2. Be a joiner, but not believer
3. Be apostate, having left the faith
4. Be brainwashed against the faith
5. So deep in sin that they barely see the light
6. Something else

Frankly, the percentage means nothing to me. You do. My kids do. My friends do. That's where the Amish kids and the choice of schooling is important. Without that choice, they aren't Amish, they aren't really people.

50 years ago the state was forcing kids into education programs. 100 years ago the Germans turned their children over to the State for education. 150 years ago Marx envisioned education as the way to return humanity to control.

The Pew study just told us that the plan is working. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Missionaries 2

Missionaries have a mission. They represent their parent organization and push the agenda of the group. Christians use the term to speak of those who go to a foreign environment and promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But there is a new group of missionaries promoting their religion through the tactics advocated by their original leader: Mohammed. And the West isn't handling it very well. Why not?

This is a blog, my ideas, and not a definitive examination of the subject. Disclaimer over.

Secularism has discounted the value, importance, validity and need for religion. The philosophy that man is the measure of all things is the modern counter weight to the idea that God is the center of all things. The tactics of secularism have pushed Christianity into the corner in order to establish a society without moral restrictions, regardless of eternal outcome. Why? Because in the secularists philosophy there is no eternal for a man therefore there should be no restrictions. Our wealth is choking our hearts and souls.

When a person, or many people, have more money than they can possibly spend in a lifetime there is a tendency to slack off and pursue whatever feels good in the moment. Rationalizations kick in and restrictions are thrown away. Eventually the wealth of the nation becomes the touchpoint for decline because the populace weaken in their bodies, minds and will. America is the wealthiest population in the world. Our poor receive benefits that dwarf the subsistence living of most of the world. Yet, the push continues to discount restrictions, morals, and religion. 

Secularists find it inconceiveable that religion could be that important to anyone. Why bother, they reason!

So now we have new missionaries in our midst. They are firm believers in their religion, follow its rules and guidelines, and wholeheartedby believe that their lives matter only in the age to come. They use the tactics laid out by their original leaders to spread the new understanding of god and man's order. They convert people who are interested and ready to have a soul change in a radical way. These converts want to matter to someone, or something and the missionaries are doing their best to give them a great shot at it. People are being recruited in person, in temples, in jails and through the many communication avenues of the internet.

The discounting of religion in secular society has caused a blind spot in media reporting and political thinking. Therefore they have missed the true nature of the threat of Islam. These missionaries are not in our midst to promote their faith through “good works”. These modern missionaries are promoting their faith through a war, a “jihad”, that was outlined by their leader Mohammed. The fact that the entire movement is based on their religion is what seems to baffle these prominent leaders. Why, when they have been given so much, do they want more?

This ignorance, willful or genuine, means that the West is in big trouble. The principles of Christianity laid the thinking for the emergence of America as the leading nation in the world. The principles of Islam have laid the foundation for continued strife and stagnation in the areas where it holds sway. These missionaries want to drastically restructure the world into their own image and belief system. It’s all religion, folks. And these missionaries are doing their best to make converts and infiltrate the society we live in according to their leaders direction.

Politically correct language tries to soften the blunt reality of a situation. It may be more polite but it does not have the emotional push needed to confront this latest push by Islam into the world’s stage. These missionaries are the vanguard of the armies to come. Will we have the language, stamina, and faith to repel the first emissaries of this religion? Will we be able to establish Christianity again as the only freedom faith ever shown to man? Or will we live our faith lives in smaller enclaves until the day of our redeemer’s return?

Tactics, missionaries, modernity. Wake up secular America, we’re in real trouble.

Missionaries

Language is a funny thing. English can be a very precise communication device. Just dip into science and medicine and the language is unintelligilble gibberish to the uninformed. Or the blog posts here: the lowercase titles are straight reflections of mine from reading "The Story" chapter by chapter.

If that is what you are looking for, then don't read further. This uppercase titled piece is strictly an untested observation that I wanted to get down before it escaped my fragile short term memory.

The missionary movement among the Christian faith was birthed by Jesus when he sent out the twelve in two's to preach the good news in the neighboring towns. Their mission was simple, speak publically and privately about the work Jesus was doing and the reason he was doing it. The disciples were advised to take little baggage along, but instead survive on the generosity of the people in the town moved by their message. If no one listened, then move on. 

The modern missionary movement had the same goals, but with outside funding could stay in resistant areas and "do good works" to prove their worth and fortify the message. In many settings it was a recipe for cultural clashes and martyrdom. Death on the field was a major loss at home, but it was seen as a direct ticket to heaven based on purity of motive and service to "the cause". Excuse me if this is a little blunt, but the hardline truth in this analysis is to throw a light on intent and strategy: Modern Christian missionaries used service, good works, and teaching as the strategy for attention to the message: Jesus Christ is the messiah and shows us the right way to live and die.

The crazy thing to me has always been the idea that different denominations, often with very similar doctinal stands, would have similar missions in the same foreign lands yet never speak of joint efforts or mutual benefits. Just two completely separate organizations with almost identical missions, doctrinal statements, identical missional strategy, and location. The duplication of effort drive me nuts. One church, one Savior, one salvation, 8,000 organizations. (Exaggeration intended. Accuracy not needed. Bureaucracy run amok.) 

Now we are seeing a similar missionary effort in the West by another religion, and we are not handling this situation so well. First, what is the missionary effort then why are we not handling it so well.

The missionaries and their tactics. 

Media reports the infiltration of missionary tactics happening on our borders and through the internet. People and thoughts are crossing our porous safety nets to bring a new message of order and peace to the people of America. Their mission is to make converts. Their tactics are to use the same rhetoric of oppression, dominance and order that makes for great conspiracies. But it is also the same rhetoric that builds freedom crushing societies built on fear. The first push for such organizations is to build enclaves of useful “others” who peacefully coexist and build lives of prominence. The second step is to build a force of their well heeled children and the disaffected in the surrounding society.

What the current missionary effort in the USA didn’t count on was the close aliance with another movement pushing through the culture at the same time: radical racial upheaval and the adoption of the Teachings of Mohammed by many influential religious leaders of color. While Christians looked to Ghandi for patterns to change society, others looked to Mohammed for inspiration and found a different tactic for cultural “rightness”.  Think Martin Luther King compared to Louis Farrakhan as an example.

If this writing seems vague without names or specific dates/events it is on purpose: I’m laying some ideas about strategy that are running through my head, I have not done the hard work of researching them or correlating them to facts. Let’s face it, this topic is worthy of book length examination.

People without hope looking for meaning (in a meaningless society, now there’s another statement to tear apart) will gravitate to the place where change is being done personally and in the surrounding world. The new crop of missionaries to America see the mission as lifting Mohammed and his religious order to prominence using the tactics of the past: peaceful infiltration then legal reform to the pattern of the Koran and finally pressure enforcement through fines, imprisonment and death. Their tactic is the soldier, recruited and trained according to the thoughts and motives of their founder, with language that only now sounds ominous; before the language sounded like the language of protest. 

So how does my earlier observation about the English language come into play here? Because we are loathe to call these recruits what they really are: missionaries of Islam in the context of the Koran completing the missions that Mohammed himself sent his disciples to do to the surrounding towns. This is the core of the tactic being revived in the modern age. Our language, or perhaps our societal refusal to engage religious dialogue, has set us up to miss a crucial point for the so-called terrorist threat. These are not terrorists! They are missionaries of the prophet working according to the directions he gave with the message and tactics outlined through practice. Not so different than Jesus sending out the twelve, just radically different message, tactics and results. 

Missionaries. Some bring water, crops, medicine, chickens and a message of life and hope. The current crop bring bullets, confrontation, dirty bombs and “in your face” pressure hoping to die for the cause. Which should be supported for the general welfare? Which should be stopped?