The Shapur Effect in Pakistan

Those who attack churches are murderers and enemies of Christ, even when they attack congregations that are not Biblical. They don't know the difference do they?

And yet, the United States and its false Church bear some responsibility. The West has agitated the region for centuries and the United States has been heavily involved in the region for the better part of fifty years. It plays enemies off against each other, uses them, throws them away, and then picks them up again when convenient.

It has fomented war, supported dictators, encouraged radical Islam and then fought against it when deemed prudent to do so. It has waged an unrelenting a murderous campaign along the Western created border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and has traumatized the population with drone attacks. The United States has killed far more innocents than the Taliban or Al Qaeda. It doesn't excuse these groups, but it has to be taken into account.

The whole situation is lamentable but what is even more frustrating is that the Christian Right wants more war and agitation, and to utilize the power of the United States to intervene. That is the worst possible thing that can be done. Just as in Mesopotamia, the more the United States intervenes, the more violence will be generated, the more society will be destroyed and turn to nihilistic chaos, and the more the ethnic Christian groups of the region will suffer.

History repeats itself because fools refuse to learn. Their arrogance leads to bloodshed. The Christian Right in America is drunk on the blood of the poor and downtrodden of the world... many of whom are professing Christians. The wars they wage serve their interests and wallets, not the interests of the people on the ground.

This entry is from the glossary at The Pilgrim Path/Proto-Protestantism

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/p/glossary.html

Shapur Effect- This is a term I've coined to describe the historical phenomenon of a state persecuting Christians because its geo-political enemy is a Constantinian state. Christians had happily lived in Persia, but when Constantine embraced Christianity and made Church-support a policy of the Roman State, suddenly the Persian Emperor Shapur II viewed Christians within his realm with suspicion and eventually persecuted them. He feared they were a fifth-column, potential traitors and Roman spies. So, Roman policy unintentionally led to Christian persecution by tying in the Kingdom of God with the state. Suddenly Christianity was a political threat.


This is still happening today. Christians are often persecuted because their religious expression is linked with the policies of the United States and other Western Powers.