How did christians become warmongers?

Somewhere, somehow the generation of church leaders who are now elderly and passing away, became confused and sold out the Christian message of peace and adopted the right-wing war stance. I do not believe they did this with malicious intent. Regardless they made a huge mistake and have hurt the message of Christ deeply. They made the mistake of confusing culture and Christianity .... IMHO.

As you said in your OP, this is a huge change from what was preached when I was growing up.

 

"G.W. Bush's unconstitutional, unprovoked, preemptive wars of aggression, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents"

This many innocent deaths, really?

"Well, if you believe that Presidents are above the moral law of God regarding shedding innocent blood, why should they be held to any other moral law of God? And if Presidents are exempt, what about governors, mayors, sheriffs, etc.? I truly wonder how many evangelical Christians deep in their heart share the opinion of the above-mentioned pastor. Scary thought, isn't it?"

That is a very good question. One response would be to say that governors, mayors, sheriffs etc. do not exercise their duties in theaters of war. This should be obvious. Also, the idea of collateral damage weighs into this, as in, it wasn't intended. I think this parallel drawn here fails too quickly and too many ways to be persuasive to the 'warmongering' evangelicals.

 

Pertinent info:

"Chuck Baldwin is a syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, author, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He was the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party. He and his wife, Connie, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren. Chuck and his family reside in the Flathead Valley of Montana."

 

I think this is a subject that needs to be discussed among Christians. Not many understand or rather appreciate the need to do so.

 

I agree. It appears that the church has become too caught up in the things of this world and has replaced a Godly focus with a focus on these things.

 

I posted this up a while ago. Of course there will be some here who ignore Clinton's and other powerful Democrats role in the wars we are mired in. They are guilty, as well. Obama has taken over where Bush left off. Bush took over for Clinton.

I don't know why Christians continue to vote for the two major parties, and it confuses me more that they put so much blame on the other side, ignoring what each party has done.

Obama will not stop the wars. Romney will not stop the wars. If you want the wars over, you will not vote for either.

It's really very simple.

 

Call me a stickler for asking...

But isn't the OP based on an unproven premise at this point?

 

Agreed--:thumbs:

 

It started around 313 AD when General Constantine took control over the Christian Church.

 

The Constitution Party folks here in MT are pushing for the Christian version of Sharia.

 

Yes, it is. That premise is that Christians are supposed to be pacifists. Yes, it remains to be unproven.

Some of the most godly men of the OT were warriors. When Jesus encountered the centurion that had such marvelous faith he did not tell him he was lacking anything and then tell him to find another job. No where does the Bible call us to stay out of the military.

Knowing that war is one of humanities darkest events I would suspect that is one place we need the light of Christ the most.

Further, the Bible tells us that to know what it right and to not do it is sin.
A few days ago an 11 year old girl was attacked, sexually assaulted, and strangled. This occurred just a few miles from my home. She lived but her innocence has been stolen from her by a vile man. The pacifist agenda would have us believe is she was a Christian she should not fight back. It would also have us believe that a Christian witness to that event should not step in to stop it because that would involve violence. I wish someone had been there to spare this poor girl such horrid actions.

In 1999 Serbian forces (largely RC and Orthodox) were committing genocide in Kosovo. The victims were ethnic Albanians (Muslims). The US took action to stop that. This occurred in concert with NATO. The pacifists would have us believe the Christian thing to do would be to stand by and do nothing. Personally, I volunteered to go and was attached to the brigade headquarters providing security for visiting on-combatants. I was there for the collecting of some horrendous evidence of war crimes.

On more than one occasion I have encountered a man beating his wife or girlfriend. The pacifist would have us believe it is Christ-like to not intervene. I chose to step in to stop it.

As a pastor I cannot council an abused woman to stay in the house with an abuser. She must be safe while we work to address the issues involved. The same goes for children being abused or molested.

 

Yeah...Chuck's a good guy. But he should stick to doing his website. It's a good source for straight up dirt on both parties. He's doing the Lord's work.

He's right about the wars.

 

I think the Constitutionality of how we have waged war since WWII is something to be argued in another thread. I say WWII because that was the last time we engaged in anything remotely close to what the Founders intended for us to do in regards of war. That is also the last time we fought with any real will to win and the last time we "went to war" as a nation.

 

Agreed. Re: Kosovo, Milosevec claimed he was fighting Al Qaeda.

And I disagree with the OP in many areas but agree in others. We entered Iraq, not because of Evangelical Christians, but because of years of lobbying on Capitol Hill to Congresses and Administrations to get us to overthrow Saddam by a certain Mr. Chalabi. Evangelical Christians had nothing to do with it. Likewise Libya, etc. Rev. Baldwin is wrong on many accounts, but he is entitled to his opinion.

 

Most people don't understand the Balkans. The Muslims really are still fighting the crusades centuries after they started this holy war. The Serbs happened to be in power at the time so they were the ones wielding the heavy weapons. The pendulum swings back and forth. I actually had one Muslim thank me for being there and stopping the Serbs so they could rest, rearm, and have their chance to get even. He even said our time was coming.

 

>The Constitution Party folks here in MT are pushing for the Christian version of Sharia.

Most Right Wing Christians are de facto Christian Reconstructionists even if they have never heard of Christian Reconstructionism thus are pushing for a "Christian" Sharia that imposes Levitical law instead of Muslim law.

 

Not really.There are a few extremists, like some Constitution party folks here wanting to actually force people to be Christians.

 

from http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/paul-mcglasson-what-christian-reconstructionism/

Everywhere, it seems, one hears “Wasn’t our country founded as a Christian nation? Shouldn’t we vote only for Christian candidates willing to stand up for our beliefs?” The talk has grown in volume in recent years as earnest Christians endeavor to discern God’s will for church and society. Behind this talk is a movement known as Christian Reconstructionism, whose set of ideas is based on bringing Christian law into the public and political sphere.

Christian Reconstructionism can be defined by four interconnected ideas:

Christians have a complete system of right knowledge about the universe (or “worldview”), which cultivates epistemological dualism: “us” vs. “them.”
Christians have the right and the role of legislating morality for all people everywhere.
Christianity and western culture are two sides of the same coin.
The ultimate calling of Christians is to dominate the earth.

from http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/...nomy-reconstruction-theology-and-tea-parties/

. . . “The more significant Christian position that Bray and Hill advanced is related to the End-Time theology of the Rapture as thought to be envisaged by the New Testament book of Revelation. These are ideas related, in turn, to Dominion Theology, the position that Christianity must reassert the dominion of God over all things, including secular politics and society. This point of view, articulated by such right-wing Protestant spokespersons as Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have been part of the ideology of the Christian Right since at least the 1980s and 1990s….

“The Christian anti-abortion movement is permeated with ideas from Dominion Theology. Randall Terry (founder of the militant anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue and a writer for the Dominion magazine Crosswinds) signed the magazine’s “Manifesto for the Christian Church,” which asserted that America should “function as a Christian nation.” The Manifesto said that America should therefore oppose “social moral evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.”

“At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mike Bray found particularly appealing: Reconstruction Theology, whose exponents long to create a Christian theocratic state. Bray had studied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

“Leaders of the Reconstruction movement trace their ideas, which they sometimes called “theonomy,” to Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-century Presbyterian professor of theology at Princeton Seminary who took seriously the sixteenth-century ideas of the Reformation theologian John Calvin regarding the necessity for presupposing the authority of God in all worldly matters. Followers of Van Til (including his former students Bahnsen and Rousas John Rushdoony, and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North) adopted this “presuppositionalism” as a doctrine, with all its implications for the role of religion in political life.

“Reconstruction writers regard the history of Protestant politics since the early years of the Reformation as having taken a bad turn, and they are especially unhappy with the Enlightenment formulation of church-state separation. They feel it necessary to “reconstruct” Christian society by turning to the Bible as the basis for a nation’s law and social order. To propagate these views, the Reconstructionists established the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas, and the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California. They have published a journal and a steady stream of books and booklets on the theological justification for interjecting Christian ideas into economic, legal, and political life.

“According to the most prolific Reconstruction writer, Gary North, it is “the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ.” He feels this to be especially so in the United States, where secular law as construed by the Supreme Court and defended by liberal politicians is moving in what Rushdoony and others regard as a decidedly un-Christian direction; particularly in matters regarding abortion and homosexuality. What the Reconstructionists ultimately want, however, is more than the rejection of secularism. Like other theologians who utilize the biblical concept of “dominion,” they reason that Christians, as the new chosen people of God, are destined to dominate the world.

“Not all Reconstruction thinkers have endorsed the use of violence, especially the kind that Bray and Hill have justified. As Reconstruction author Gary North admitted, “there is a division in the theonomic camp” over violence, especially with regard to anti-abortion activities. Some months before Paul Hill killed Dr. Britton and his escort, Hill (apparently hoping for Gary North’s approval in advance) sent a letter to North along with a draft of an essay he had written justifying the possibility of such killings in part on theonomic grounds. North ultimately responded, but only after the murders had been committed. North regretted that he was too late to deter Hill from his “terrible direction” and chastised Hill in an open letter, published as a booklet, denouncing Hill’s views as “vigilante theology.” According to North, biblical law provides exceptions to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13), but in terms similar to just-war doctrine: when one is authorized to do so by “a covenantal agent” in wartime, to defend one’s household, to execute a convicted criminal, to avenge the death of one’s kin, to save an entire nation, or to stop moral transgressors from bringing bloodguilt on an entire community.

“Hill, joined by Bray, responded to North’s letter. They argued that many of those conditions applied to the abortion situation in the United States. Writing from his prison cell in Starke, Florida, Paul Hill said that the biblical commandment against murder also “requires using the means necessary to defend against murder—including lethal force.” He went on to say that he regarded “the cutting edge of Satan’s current attack” to be “the abortionist’s knife,” and therefore his actions had ultimate theological significance. . . .