Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 3

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

BILLY GRAHAM HAS PASSED,

LET CHRISTIAN AMERICA AWAKE

"Either communism must die, or Christianity must die, because it is actually a battle between Christ and anti-Christ," he said. The answer was "old-fashioned Americanism. Through the ideals of early Americanism we built the greatest nation ever to exist in all history."

Billy Graham 1918-2018

Reverend Billy Graham called the individual soul to a rebirth in Jesus Christ and he called his countrymen to a revival as a Christian nation. Here are multiple reflections from Christianity Today about the life and work of America's Pastor. Rev. Graham required that his public gatherings not be racially segregated. That was a radical position when he first enforced it and a forgotten truth when he retired.  Like a modern day George Whitefield, he preached a deeply personal religion which he hoped would inspire a spiritual awakening of our uniquely Protestant nation.

A Christian America?

Christian America is not a code word for white nationalism. It wasn't for Martin Luther King and it wasn't for Billy Graham. That accusation is the Liar slandering what he fears. A Christian nation accepts the Sovereignty of God the Father and keeps His Covenant. As  a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation" the Christian protection pact protects what is sacred.  It hails the power of Jesus Name. It is built on but does not compel love of Christ. A Christian America builds a brotherhood of protection among all men as fellow citizens and seeks fraternity with other nations. Christian America sees other nations as the grandsons of Noah not perpetual enemies in the Darwinian struggle for racial survival.  A Christian America by customs and law sanctifies the sexual act within the interpersonal intimacy of the marriage covenant. A Christian America respects authority-in the family, in the civil authorities of the state and in the sovereignty of the Father God over all nations and all of nature.  Without authority there can be no community. Without Divine Authority there is no order in the universe. Those who obey authority are also called to exercise authority. A Christian nation acts with authority to establish justice and insure tranquility.  The symbols of authority must be given their due: respect for the elderly, deference to officials, obedience to the law,  piety toward the flag and reverence for the sacred name of the Lord.
A Christian America builds on  bonds of affection--toward God and toward our fellow citizen.  Brotherhood in Christ is a template for the American brotherhood we share with our countrymen. This Christian understanding of politics as civic fraternity has animated our cities and nation while socializing our young males. Billy Graham did not call us to live together. He challenged us to love one another. Let the ordered love of Christian grownups protect our children once again.   A Christian America protects the sacred. We protect the innocents on our city streets and in our local schools.  We safeguard the modesty of women from the sexual harassment of the pornographer and the lecher. We protect the innocent in the womb from the domestic violence of abortion. A Christian America protects the sacred spaces where men worship God communally: the synagogue, the mosque, the church and the cathedral.
Let us honor this Christian holy man. Let us love as he loved and hate what he hated. Let us use his sacred categories in describing the active power of Satan and demons who seek the ruin of our common life and Christian culture as Americans.
God first loved us-He loved each of us into existence. He desires that we be with Him for all eternity and He sent his Son to draw us back into his Fatherly embrace. His Son died on the Cross. He was tortured and shamed. Billy Graham said many are repelled by the Cross. They look away. But he told us to embrace the Cross and Repent! There is a reason for the existence of the universe and there is a spiritual meaning for the human species. Because Christ took on the cross we can repent as individuals and as a nation. Repent and then be free! Become a new creation in Christ. Let us love God who first loved us. Let us reject the lies and works of Satan who was a Liar and a Murderer from the beginning.  Reverend Graham loved a mighty God and served His beloved Son. He said "if you hear that Billy Graham has died, don't believe a word of it  for he has never been more alive." Let us imitate his joyful witness to the reality of God, the resurrection of the dead and the firstborn of a new creation: Jesus Christ. Let us imitate his unblushing Americanism. Let us repent as a nation, renewing the country he loved by obeying the God he loved even more.

I. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

BOSNIA AND EUROPEAN MUSLIMS: An essay on Bosnia as a culture of European Muslims with plenty of salafist threats. Bosnia (pop 4million) is divided into two equal land mass regions: the central region of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska(RS)--two discontinuous ares in the north and south. 51% of the population is Muslim and ethnically Bozniak, 30% ethnically Serbian and religiously Orthodox and 15% ethnic Croats and Catholics. The FBiH is overwhelmingly Muslim.

HAVE THE SAUDIS LOST THE RIGHT TO BE THE GUARDIANS OF THE HOLY CITIES: An Indonesian (from the world's largest Muslim country) says the restrictions against the enemies of the Royal Family are violating the unity of the umma.

WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN SYRIA FEB 22, 2018: This from Al Jazeera, the best news agency in the Arab Mideast and a target of Saudi Arabia in their war against Qatar

BAHRAIN SHIA MAJORITY REPRESSED BY SAUDIS: Is this too the fault of Iran?

 SENATORS LEFT AND RIGHT TRY TO CUT OFF FUNDS FOR SAUDI ATTACKS ON HOUTHI SHIITES IN YEMEN: The real collusion between the US government and a foreign power has been the financial and personal relations between Saudi Arabia and officials in our political and security establishment. How does the religiously motivated population bombing of the Shiites in Yemen serve the American nation? Senators from left and right  have asked for a declaration of war or a cessation of bombing. Prime players in decades of collusion  are 1) the Clintons; 2) the Bushes; 3) John McCain; 4) John Brennan; and 5) Robert Mueller. The press as a profession brings to this humanitarian catastrophe and religious cleansing in Yemen  a strange combination of religious obtuseness, historical ignorance and journalistic indifference.

II. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AND THE NATIONS

THE LURE OF NATIONALISM: Pat Buchanan.

MARION MARECHAL LE PENN SPEECH TO CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE. "THE ELDEST DAUGHTER OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SHOULD NOT BECOME THE YOUNGEST NIECE OF ISLAM." A beautiful woman - a quite unbelievable speech. Here's a quote:

Today, even children have now become merchandise. We hear now in the public debate, we have the right to order a child from a catalog, we have the right to rent a woman’s womb, we have the right to deprive a child of a mother or father. No you don’t! A child is not a “right”. Is this the freedom that we want? No. We don’t want this atomized world of individuals without gender, without fathers, without mothers, and without nation...... I finish with a Mahler quote I like very much, a quote which sums up conservatism in modernity: ‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

ON THE EXHAUSTED NEOCONSERVATIVES REPRESENTED BY MONA CHAREN'S REBUKE OF MARION LEPENN AND DONALD TRUMP AT THE 2018 CPAC CONFERENCE: From Steve Sailer:

“Indeed, the organized conservative movement was once led by meritocratic mental giants such as John Podhoretz, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter & Elliott Abrams; Bill Kristol, Irving Kristol & Gertrude Himmelfarb; and Donald Kagan, Frederick Kagan, Robert Kagan & Victoria Nuland!”

The "mental giants" Mr Sailer mocks are a series of married power couples with different last names and their offspring. They multiply their influence by starting small magazines and even smaller institutes and "Centers for the Study of....." This is the incestuous world of neoconservative atheists recently and rudely upended. Conservatives (especially practicing Catholics) who did not concur with the worldview of this sect were banished from "respectable conservatism" usually with charges of  racism or anti semitism.
Conservatives might ask, "Do Mona Charen and this gang speak better for God and nation than President Trump?

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

A PRIMER ON EMOTIONS: George Stanciu at Imaginative Conservative.

TUCKER CARLSON A DIFFERENT VOICE; AN HONEST JOURNALIST: He is not ready to invade Iran or make Russia an enemy. By far the most interesting TV journalist on the right or left.