Now we are seeing how, on President Obama's cue, the Left is dredging up every bad thing done by Christian Crusaders nearly 1000 years ago and done by a very small number of white racists 50 years ago and more, all things that are no longer done or allowed. Whatever the reasoning for this compulsion to make America out to be as evil as ISIS, it becomes a defense the actions of ISIS. Equating the bloodthirsty methodology of ISIS with what? With a few examples of excessive violence during battles in a war that was started to defend Christianity against centuries of Islamic conquests, that's what. There is something very seriously wrong here with our President's perspective on history!
And in addition to his mischaracterization of Christian history, he talks about racist violence in American history as if it was rampant and wholeheartedly endorsed by all of society. He equates the acts of violence in the United States by a very small minority of radical racists to a regime led by genocidal Islamo-terrorists whose territorial gains are built on the murder of hundreds of innocent people in each city they conquer.
His point seems to be that I shouldn't say ISIS is doing something very depraved and evil because I am white and because radical white racists did unspeakable things to black people years ago. If being white causes all white people to be racists, what about all the white people that were abolitionists, and whites who supported the civil rights movement and arrested and prosecuted racists who did those shameful and horrendous things to black people? And what about Lincoln and the Civil War, where a white President and white administration led the United States in opposing separatist states that wanted to keep slavery. We are a nation that DOESN'T do those things that are dredged up from the past, that white people were overwhelmingly opposed to when they happened.
As to Christian Crusaders, they were responding to centuries of conquest by Muslims. Muhammad was a warrior, whose message was that his belief system needed to be spread by his adherents with military conquest and authoritarian government.
On the other hand, early Christianity spread with the message of Christ's love to people that were subject to the military conquest and authoritarian government of the Romans. How about emphasizing the effects of true Christianity on the world, Mr. President? The message of the Gospel is that God's love has been poured out to a fallen world and is available to all. And while there are plenty of peaceable Muslims in the world, it is only because they have departed from the original methodology of Islam - one of spreading their message by violent conquest.
What is true Christianity? That the risen Christ accepts each of us as we are and His love working in us changes us for the better. Change comes from within, not by adhering to a rigid set of rules and regulations.
Jonah Goldberg did a great job of putting Christianity in proper historical perspective at Realclearpolitics:
"Christianity ended greater barbarisms under pagan Rome. The church often fell short of its ideals--which all human things do--but its ideals were indisputably a great advance for humanity. Similarly, while some rationalized slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S. by invoking Christianity, it was ultimately the ideals of Christianity itself that dealt the fatal blow to those institutions. Just read any biography of Martin Luther King Jr. if you don't believe me.
"When Obama alludes to the evils of medieval Christianity, he fails to acknowledge the key word: "medieval." What made medieval Christianity backward wasn't Christianity but medievalism.
"It is perverse that Obama feels compelled to lecture the West about not getting too judgmental on our "high horse" over radical Islam's medieval barbarism in 2015 because of Christianity's medieval barbarism in 1215."
Obama's Comparison of Christianity to Radical Islam Defies Logic, February 6, 2015
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2 NIV)
Barack Obama says he was led to Christ by Reverend Wright in the 1980s. But if he has truly accepted Christ, he has never renewed his mind by the Word of God. His indoctrination-from-childhood in the religion of Islam still guides him in his world view. He always defends and praises aspects of Islam, but is always quick to criticize Christians, misusing and misquoting Scripture as he does - even making up verses that he says are in the Bible. While most of his Prayer Breakfast speech was quite good, all of that was clearly overshadowed by his distortion of Christian history in an attempt to downplay the real threat of worldwide Islamic extremism.
Rolf Yungclas is a recently retired newspaper editor from southwest Kansas who has been speaking out on the issues of the day in newspapers and online for over 15 years
