Christendom vs Islamic Empire

Disclaimer

Although the following opinion may offend some people, my concern is not with politics. The recent politics simply highlights an issue I wish to discuss. My desire is not to criticise or promote a general political position, I only wish to discuss a strategy that seems aimed at manipulating Christians.

Also, I’m not from the US or Europe, so I’m only saying what it looks like to me. I would welcome other perspectives. However, this is not just a US issue, as we now live in a global faith community, and US politics has resonances in the politics of other Western countries.

The political event and what I have got out of it have long histories. But for me it made something click, so I wish to use this event to demonstrate in concrete terms what is a much wider topic.

Historic Christendom

Christianity has a long history of empire and colonisation that has not always been in the best interests of the conquered or colonised peoples. The negative side of our history is not the result of “some deep moral failing inherent to Christianity”, but I think it would be fair to say that has been the result of a deep moral failing in much of the church during its period of Christendom (Christian empire), a failing that has also sometimes been exploited by those with other agendas.

Although we Christians have lost much of our political power, I think the philosophy of Christendom is alive and well in much of Christianity. This can be seen in our yearning for the golden era when Christendom (though not Christianity) covered most of the world or in our desire to politically dominate other groups in our own societies. I think that one of the tasks of the emergent church is to dig out this deep rooted attitude that has plagued us for 1600 years.

The most important conflicts faced by European Christendom were with Islamic Empire in Africa stretching up into Spain (at one time into France), and in the Middle East extending into Eastern Europe. This long conflict came to an end after WWI with the disintegration of Islamic and European Christian Empires, though alliances during this war show that religion had ceased to be a significant factor. However, recent political events seem to have brought this historic conflict back to public consciousness.

Current politics and the Islamic Empire

The US president recently made a speech containing the following

These militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain. If they are not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation.

For context, see the full speech here.

The hypothesis presented in the quoted paragraph seems to ignore the relationships between the various Islamic sects, along with many other factors that make this scenario more than a little far fetched. The US president and his speech writers are intelligent people; they knew exactly what they were saying. Therefore the paragraph I quoted is pure rhetoric, not a reasoned statement or a mistake. I don’t think that this rhetoric comes from his advisors on foreign affairs who I imagine are also extremely competent. My question is this: where is this rhetoric coming from and why?

Christendom vs. Islamic Empire

I think the emphasis on Islamic Empire is aimed straight at Christians. There are other more descriptive terms he could have used - terrorist, violent extremest, oppressive,… the journalist rephrased it to “totalitarian empire” in the summary. But Islamic Empire brings back memories of European history and Christendom’s struggle for survival. However, although I personally feel some Christian organisations are not very fair in their generalised characterisation of Islam, I don’t see Christian organisations making these incredible statements, so I think that this rhetoric is not originating in the Christian community.

I wonder if we are again seeing an example of people with other agendas trying to exploit our latent Christendom. Is this an attempt to weld Christianity more strongly into the philosophy of the New American Century and a more general continuation of Western hegemony? Are we being manipulated by a secular ideology?

Rather than giving in to this manipulation, we need a new a way of relating to people that our leaders would like us to imagine as barbarians (“Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience”). This relating should be the task of the church, but we seem to have left it very late and the time of reckoning may be getting close. I feel concerned about the historical overtones and the direction that this war between the “civilised” West and the “barbarian” Terrorists is taking us.

Questions

What is the response of the emergent church to the attempted manipulation of our faith? Have we dug out the root of Christendom in our own emergent groupings, or are we still vulnerable to manipulation in this way?

Is it possible that the “hawkishness” of some evangelical Christianity originated through similar manipulative rhetoric about the “godless communists”? I think we are in a unique position to influence the evangelical church, so what can we do to help them resist this?

How should we relate to Islamic countries, especially when some of them are persecuting Christians? What is an emergent way of relating to Islam in our own countries?

Or is there an alternative way of looking at this whole situation?