{"id":1205,"date":"2009-01-08T15:27:38","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T23:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1205"},"modified":"2009-01-08T15:31:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T23:31:29","slug":"god-against-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/god-against-the-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"God against the gods"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914<\/a> the author notes that militant secularism during the 19th century in France was a feature of the Metropole<\/a>. In contrast, the French Church was always the privileged handmaid of Empire no matter the orientation of the political faction in power. The reality of this ad hoc<\/em> case-by-case arrangement shows that principles collapse even for the famous a priori<\/em> French when faced with reality which demands pragmatism. A few days ago I was pointed to an article in The New Republic<\/em> which had me thinking of this, Enemy’s Enemy: Evangelicals v. Muslims in Africa<\/a>. From the piece:<\/p>\n

Evangelicals are hardly persecuted in Uganda today–if anything, under Museveni, evangelical Christianity has a governmental imprimatur. But resentments dating back to the Amin era still fester, and they are exacerbated by the growth of Islam in Africa. Ssempa and other evangelicals frequently complained to me about how Middle Eastern Muslim states are pumping money into African proselytizing. Though Muslims comprise only 16 percent of the Ugandan population, foreign largesse gives Muslim students an edge when it comes to education, Ssempa claimed. What he’s doing, he said, is trying to right the balance. “There is a race,” he said angrily. “Islam is also racing for the soul and mind of the Africans.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the competition between evangelical Protestants and Muslims all things equal there is no deep thought required as to my personal preference; Islam as a whole stands opposed to the West, and America in particular. African Christians may have their own resentments against the West, but the tie of Christian civilization at least serves as a potential cultural bridge. Obviously, not so with Islam. To be fair, my own preference would be that institutionally more elaborate churches, such as Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism or Presbyterianism, were waxing as opposed to evangelicals of a Pentecostal tinge; not only are these churches less irrationally superstitious, but their more top-down structure formalizes West-the Rest ties. \u00a0But there is no option that I can see for any robust secularist movement predicated on a thin naturalistic understanding of the world in Sub-Sarahan Africa. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This does not mean that I favor the activities of evangelicals in all circumstances. \u00a0In much of the Middle East prosyletization by evangelicals is not helpful, not least to local Christian groups who have established a modus vivendi<\/em>\u00a0with the Muslim majorities who always view them suspiciously. \u00a0This does not mean that I do not prefer that Iran, for example, should be evangelical as opposed to Muslim, or that I would disagree with the notion that in the civilized world the option of personal choice in religion and free witnessing is a rather fundamental right. \u00a0The former is unlikely, and the latter is irrelevant, because Iran is not truly part of the civilized world from a Western perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914 the author notes that militant secularism during the 19th century in France was a feature of the Metropole. In contrast, the French Church was always the privileged handmaid of Empire no matter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[150,163,164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}