This was a sad and unfortunate read. And what's even more
disheartening is that the report should have been broken by Christian reporters
but instead it takes a pro-Sodomite Anti-Christian publication like The
Guardian to get the story out.
Christian news outlets will respond by suggesting that The
Guardian operates from a godless worldview (which it does) and that motivates
them to run stories such as this, pieces that make Evangelicals look bad.
Of course I would respond that the primary Christian
motivation should be a deep commitment to truth... even if it makes 'The
Church' look bad. Because indeed we know that much that identifies as Christian
and as 'The Church' is anything but. As the New Testament warns we are
surrounded by counterfeits and we as Christians should be exposing these
things.
But politicised Christian 'news' has little interest in this.
Such stories do nothing in terms of building political capital... for the
causes and factions they wish to support. Their approach to such questions is
one of calculation.
It's a sad reality, but this is in keeping with the whole
morose tale that is modern Evangelicalism and its consistent tale of worldliness,
downgrade and apostasy. Born in the decadent hearts of Kingdom rejecting and
power mad American Christians, this diseased and contagious form of
Christianity has now spread across the globe.
Its history and trajectory are tragic and nowhere
demonstrates this more poignantly than a country like Guatemala. Briefly ruled
by 'Evangelical' dictator Efrain Rios-Montt, the nation was supported by the
United States even while a waged a decades long brutal war against its own
people. While the tenure of Rios-Montt was relatively brief, this 'Evangelical'
dictator waged what has been called the 'Silent Holocaust', massacring tens of
thousands of Maya in addition to the spate of disappearances and murders by US
backed death squads. These horrors preceded Rios-Montt and continued after him,
but his tenure marked a particularly dark and brutal chapter of what was a US
sponsored and instigated regional conflagration.
But his brief regime proved a boon for the growing
Pentecostal movement which has continued to grow throughout Latin America and
indeed has become the all but predominant form of Christianity in the world.
Given to excess and easily susceptible to heretical ideas,
the movement was influenced by American style Evangelicalism and its emphasis
on politics and wealth. In more recent years this movement has been given an
infusion by the introduction of Dominion Theology. This teaching while more or
less in keeping with previous expressions of Evangelicalism provided an
overarching ideology, focus and a determined and coherent programme for social
transformation.
The older Pentecostalism was more Fundamentalist in its social
outlook, separatist and more committed to the way of the cross. Dominionism is
a theology of glory, a programmatic scheme paving the way to political and
social dominance and is happy to embrace the various financial means (and
schemes) in order to achieve these goals. The pernicious theology can be
described as a baptised worldliness, a means of rationalising the appropriation
of the world system and the embrace of its goals and methods.
Is it any surprise then that the movement has succumbed to
corruption? This also helps to explain the bogus nature of so much of what
passes for 'Christian News'. Journalism, exposure and truth-telling are neither
in their interest nor would they dare risk offending the political
sensibilities and agendas of their powerful financial patrons. The Evangelical
world is corrupt and in no small part inhabited by bought-and-sold mercenaries
and spiritual sellouts who will happily trade the truth in order to boost
numbers or gain a coin. They're willing to water down doctrine in order to
receive a perk or will tell lies for a grant, donation or an endorsement. A
political movement, it has totally succumbed to its deep-seeded corruption. It
is led by celebrity false teachers who make merchandise of God's people and
teach them to sin.
And this story from Guatemala is by no means the only
instance of profiteering taking precedent over people's lives, or Evangelicals
cashing in on the suffering of others. How sad that for these poor and
desperate people, they're caught between one group of Christian leaders that would
exploit them and another that would use politics and state violence to crush
them... using them as scapegoats for the failings of the economic and political
system they support and for the pseudo-Christian ethics they pretend to hold.
Their anger toward immigrants is fierce and yet the great
irony is that the global flood of immigrants is largely due to American
policies and the instability it continues to promote. America has been waging
war on Latin America for decades. Usually in the form of low-grade and proxy
conflicts, the region is awash with violence. From America's political
machinations, to the phony drug war, to its proxies and support for death
squads and corporate exploitation, Latin America is groaning in anguish.
Guatemala for its part has never really recovered from the Civil War years, nor
its most intense chapters during the tenure of Ronald Reagan and the
implementation of his policies born and hatched at the Heritage Foundation with
its significant population of Evangelical academics and staff.
Dominionism gave a theological justification for their
rapacious policies of theft, exploitation, violence and murder... all in the
name of preserving Capitalism and the Western Liberal order versus the supposed
existential threat represented by people's movements which sometimes coalesced
around forms and symbols of Marxist and Communist ideology. In truth the poor
and downtrodden were often left looking for something, some kind of alternative
to the system which crushed them. Marxism often served as little more than a
symbol or platform to unify their movements which were often peasant and grass
roots in origin. But these subtleties mattered little to the likes of Reagan
and Rios-Montt. These resistors had to be slaughtered.
And as we've seen in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya,
if you utterly destroy a society and its institutions, the monsters emerge. War
destroys all and the Divine Hand of restraint is seemingly removed. A vacuum is
created that is quickly filled by what can only be described as demonic forces.
It's a sad day and we must continue to hope that a new movement
will arise that will expose Evangelicalism for what it is... a form of false
Christianity that is dripping in blood.
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