The Stench Of Christian Cockiness

By James Donahue

November 2004

In the wake of the November Bush sweep of the nation I couldn’t help but notice (with disdain) an article by United Church educator Wayne Holst titled “The Twilight of The Godless.”

In the article, Holst lauds the “religious reversal” going on in America and claims that “atheism has fallen on hard times.”

Indeed, atheism, as a belief system, always has had a difficult time maintaining a following. No matter where one turns, it is nearly impossible to completely deny the existence of something divine about our very existence. The problem has been in defining just what that divinity is.

Even though the Christians are crowing since taking control of the US government, the courts and the media, I see signs that the foundations of this mighty image are cracking because they are made of clay. It seems like a passage right out of the Book of Daniel coming true before our eyes.

The Holst article is mostly a review of a book by Alister McGrath, The Twilight Of Atheism,” in which we are witnessing a resurgence of religious belief systems all over the world.

Indeed, this appears to be happening. But the results of it are astoundingly evil. We are watching the Roman Catholic Church stumble over the sickness of pedophilia among the priests, the Christians are busy conducting a modern crusade in the Middle East against the Moslems, the Moslems and Jews are at war in Palestine, and the Catholics and Protestants are killing each other in Ireland. The Moslems and Christians are burning each other’s places of worship in Amsterdam over the killing of a film maker who shot a controversial movie critical of the Moslem treatment of women.

Wars that have claimed millions of lives throughout African nations have been raging between Moslems, Christians and local cult groups that hate one another.

In India, conflicts between the Hindu people, the Moslems of neighboring Pakistan, and Christian factions continue to smolder. With both India and Pakistan possessing nuclear arms, warfare between these two countries could be a serious issue.

These are clear signs, at least to this writer, that religion isn’t working. It is at war with itself all over the world. Yet McGrath writes of what he calls a “phenomenal post-modern, global religious resurgence . . . a global rise of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. There has been a revival of Orthodox Judaism, and significant growth in militant Islam.”

Indeed, statistics show that the Islamic faith is among the fastest growing religions in the United States, and possibly the world. It is filled with people who appear attracted to the voice of rebellion against the suppression of what has been a world dominated by the orthodox Christian Church and linked to big business.

That is the power that runs the Bush Administration in Washington D.C. It is the power that keeps the United States humming. And it is a controlling power, one that feeds the rich at the expense of the poor and mentally limited masses.

While the Christian churches would like to belie the statistics, they suffer a declining number of followers. Reading their websites and/or Christian publications leads us to believe that God is blessing them with new followers. And, indeed, this may be true. Yet I suspect that the numbers are not growing at the rate of the general population growth, which means churches are in a general decline.

Nowhere is this more evident than in areas where I have recently lived. Here, for lack of financial support, I have seen pastors of protestant denominations, and even priests of Roman Catholic parishes getting whisked off to minister to more than one church. The pews in these churches are sprinkled with mostly white-haired parishioners and few others.

Many churches are closing.

This is not a sign of a growing spiritual revival. It is a sign of a society in flux…of a people no longer willing to submit to the threat of eternal hell and damnation as an alternative to submission to the will of angelic control.

It is a sign that people all over the world are searching for something better. They need a spiritual calling, but no more religious enslavement.

The power of new political movement in the US is deceiving because it lies in the hands of the voters. And voters in America are mostly those white-haired parishioners who still fill the pews in the churches. Voting is not a sport of the young. For them, all elections are a sham. They choose not to be bothered with it. Thus the Christians appear to be growing in strength because they have the control, at least at this critical moment in history, of our government.

This will not last long. But the fall will be an unnatural one. Instead of voting for change, psychic viewer Aaron C. Donahue predicts that the change will be brought by catastrophe. The foolish decisions by the apocalyptic leadership now in office will soon toss the world into nuclear holocaust and bring about the death of this nation.

Some of us will live to see it. The rest will die in the process.