After this story broke in February, I waited weeks to see if there would be any real fallout. In terms of the Church, would he be called out, disciplined, even excommunicated? Nothing happened.
People are shocked to read of the Albigensian Crusade and the monstrous attitude and conduct of Church leaders. Protestants used to read about it and shake their heads at how far astray Roman Catholic Church was by the 1200's - so far removed from New Testament Christianity, that a leading cleric called for an indiscriminate mass slaughter and believed it was godly to do so. When the soldiers of the crusade prepared to storm Beziers in 1209, they asked how to distinguish the faithful (good Catholics) from the heretics. Amalric the abbot and Papal Legate responded - Kill them all, God will know his own.
Can you even imagine such a time?
Look no further than Gaza.
In a viral video Andy Ogles (who represents Tennessee's Fifth Congressional District) counters a Palestinian activist by suggesting 'we should kill them all' - referring to the people of Gaza. He then says (almost as an afterthought) 'everyone in Hamas' which is his 'way out' of the controversy, his attempt to spin his own despicable words. But he's not off the hook. He follows this up with a statement that Hamas and the Palestinians have been attacking Israel for twenty years and its time to pay the piper. Like so many within the pro-Israel camp, the terms Palestinian and Hamas are indistinguishable. As far as they're concerned unless they are actively opposing Hamas, they are pro-Hamas. Therefore, to kill everyone in Hamas is to kill all the Palestinians. This is in keeping with the rhetoric coming out of Likud-dominated Tel Aviv.
Just as Americans wantonly slaughtered civilians in Vietnam and insisted that every dead woman and child was Viet Cong - so it is with the Palestinians. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, they're all Hamas, and Ogles would seemingly concur.
Was it just careless talk on his part? Can you imagine if a Democrat or some other political figure abroad had made a statement like that with reference to Israel or some other people group that the American Right viewed favourably? They'd go crazy. The FOX channel would all but blow up with around the clock coverage. They often resort to hysterics when it comes to ethnic Christian populations - but not the Palestinians. When Christians suffer persecution in Nigeria, China, and India, they'll cover it. But those in Palestine slaughtered by Israelis - they don't count.
The thing is I might be willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt and say he misspoke, but when one spends just a few minutes looking into Ogles, then it's clear enough what he is - and the wretchedness that he represents.
The truth is this incident should have turned the spotlight on this man and his now well-established track record of lies and outrageous statements - but he seems to have escaped the scrutiny.
It's pretty clear this guy is wayward in his thinking and needs to be called out - and if demonstrably unrepentant, put out of the church. In reality, if he can avoid scandal he'll keep climbing and when his political career ends he'll be primed to become an elder or other church leader - or perhaps the president of a Christian college. Rather than face discipline he's likely to see his star rise. This is the cesspool of modern Right-wing Christianity and the Dispensationalism that still affects its thinking when it comes to the Zionist state of Israel.
He also typifies the utter bankruptcy of American Evangelicalism, the absurdity of its pro-life claims, and its rapid slide into apostasy. Had he spoken in favour of abortion the church would go after him but not for mass slaughter and the promotion of violence.
Ogles also demonstrates the shift in ethos represented by Christian Nationalism.
I have been long frustrated by the term as in some respects it's nothing new. But there is a discernible shift - albeit a nuanced one. The media has handled this rather poorly I must say.
If we go back a few decades we find Evangelicalism arguing within the framework of Classical Liberalism for a place at the table, or even a preferential pluralism and this was contrasted with the hardline sacralism of Theonomy and the historic confessional position of a supposedly Christian magistrate legislating the faith, suppressing heresy and driving out false religion - a position wholly incompatible with the Liberalism of the American Founders.
Christian Nationalism represents a kind of triangulation. Dominionism (which has all but come to dominate Evangelicalism) has driven the evangelicals to the ugly nationalist right, even while Libertarianism has moved Theonomists from the kind of principled Confessional sacralism and a kind of conservatism to the Right. And the Right has become more extreme with some abandoning liberalism altogether for authoritarianism and ultra-nationalist positions that historically were within the fascist sphere. There's a tremendous amount of overlap and dissonance but generally speaking, older sacral models have been replaced by raw super-charged Christian-infused nationalism - another religion in itself. And while it makes almost no sense, the kind of long-frustrated individualism espoused by many Libertarians is increasingly prepared to embrace an authoritarianism. In an act of 'cutting of one's nose to spite their own face' the desire to wreak havoc and inflict revenge on enemies has led to this self-destructive embrace of authoritarianism in the form of Trumpism - and increasingly calls for insurrectionist violence.
It's nothing new per se, but a permutation and coalescence of different extant strains of ideology. It's a new style typified by sneering degenerate men like Ogles and his penchant for and promotion of violence all the way down to his rifle-brandishing Christmas cards with his family.
These people are increasingly dangerous and to be avoided. There is no fellowship with them that is not sinful. There is no communion with them as they have rejected Christ and replaced him with a Judaized counterfeit messiah that will appropriate the Roman Empire - the old dream of the Pharisees and Zealots.
Many of them don't know what Postmillennialism is but they've been influenced by its errors and functionally have embraced its over-realized eschatology of glory - rejecting the wilderness way of the cross. We are witnessing apostasy and I shudder to think where all of this is going and where these people will be in another decade and what kind of children they are rearing. We are at a watershed. When a Christian leader stands up and calls for the slaughter of children and this is viewed as commensurate with a Christian profession - it's time to re-think what is happening. For those who have been asleep, wake up.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.