How Christians Ended Slavery

From "How Christians Ended Slavery" by Dinesh D'Souza, posted 1/14/07 at KRLA AM

Isn't it remarkable that atheists, who did virtually nothing to oppose slavery, condemn Christians, who are the ones who abolished it?

Consider atheist Sam Harris, who blames Christianity for supporting slavery. Harris is right that slavery existed among the Old Testament Jews, and Paul even instructs slaves to obey their masters. During the civil war both sides quoted the Bible. We know all this. (Yawn, yawn.)

But slavery pre-dated Christianity by centuries and even millennia. As we read from sociologist Orlando Patterson's work, all known cultures had slavery. For centuries, slavery needed no defenders because it had no critics. Atheists who champion ancient Greece and pre-Christian Rome somehow seem to forget that those empires were based on large-scale enslavement.

Atheist Michael Shermer says Christians are "late comers" to the movement against slavery. Shermer advanced this argument in our Cal Tech debate in December. That debate is now online, and you can watch it at michaelshermer.com.

But if what Shermer says is true, who were the early opponents of slavery who got there before the Christians did? Actually, there weren't any...

The truly ironic thing is that if black slavery were still present in the U.S. I suspect very few of today's Christians would raise a voice or lift a finger against it. To speak out for righteousness has fallen into tremendous disfavor. Having imbibed the spirit of the age, even the Church has decided that tolerance (of any and all but the most obviously hideous behavior) is considered loving, and a great virtue. Conversely, speaking out for righteousness is considered unloving and a great spiritual faux pas.

Strangely, many Christians now see the proclamation of God's Law as an 'obstacle to the Gospel' rather than God's instrument to teach men and women what righteousness really is -
thereby leading them to realize they are wretched sinners in need of a savior.

Booker T. Washington certainly saw standing up for righteousness differently than we see it today:

"If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian."

-Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery, 1907)

Read the rest of this helpful article and consider what the implications are for Christians to stand against the great evils present in our society today such as the promotion of sexual immorality (even to children), abortion, pornography, destruction of religious freedom etc...

Does Religion Kill?

It's time to abandon the mindlessly-repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

From "Atheism, not Religion, is the Real Killer" by Dinesh D'Souza, posted 11/29/07 at tothesource.com

In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as End of Faith author Sam Harris puts it, “the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.”

Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. “The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries.”

In his best-seller The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world’s recent conflicts—in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, in Sri Lanka—show the vitality of religion’s murderous impulse.

The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem Witch Trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event continues to haunt the liberal imagination.

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the Crusaders’ and Inquisitors’ misdeeds of more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be around 5,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are miniscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the twentieth century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

Read the rest of this commentary.

Is it Necessary to Win the Culture War at Home in Order to Win the War on Terror?

According to a new book by Dinesh D'Souza the answer is yes. Some food for thought...

The culture wars and the war on terror are intimately connected. If we want to win the war on terror we have to win the culture war at home. That is the central argument of Dinesh D'Sousa's new book, The Enemy at Home, and it's a point worth pondering.

Why were we attacked on 9/11? Why do they hate us? D'Sousa rounds up and dismisses the usual answers to these questions — "they hate us for our freedom," "they're angry about Colonialism," etc. — and proposes the same answer that the terrorists themselves give: they hate us for our decadence. And they fear that we mean to export our debased values to their traditional societies — not just Britney and Madonna and rap music, but also illegitimacy, easy divorce, abortion, and gay marriage. According to D'Sousa, Muslims feel threatened less by our military, and more by our seductions. They refer to us as the "Great Satan," he observes, because Satan is primarily understood as a tempter, not a conqueror.

There are some problems with this analysis. It doesn't quite explain why radical Muslims attack other traditional people in India or Indonesia, or why traditional Sunni Muslims blow up mosques in traditional Shia neighborhoods. Nor is it useful in explaining why Muslims swept out of Arabia in the seventh century, and subjugated most of the Middle-East, all of North Africa, and most of Spain. Whatever the reason for these conquests it had nothing to do with outrage over images of scantily clad temptresses beamed over satellite TV from stations along the North African coast. D'Sousa slides too quickly over the aggressive, expansionistic side of Islam, and gives too much credit to the notion that the current jihad is motivated solely by fear of cultural subversion. Most Islamic religious authorities hold that jihad is a duty commanded by Allah in good times and bad.

Nevertheless, D'Sousa's argument deserves serious consideration. His thesis may not explain all of Muslim aggressiveness, but it does help to clarify the current situation...

A culture which concentrates on self-gratification is bound to drain life of meaning because meaning is usually found in something outside the self. People will fight and die for God and for family, and for values that are perceived as noble, but not many are willing to sacrifice themselves so that strangers can gratify themselves in strange ways. How many want to die in order that polyamory might live? Or that Britney might expose herself with impunity? Or that Robert Redford might indulge himself by screening films about zoophiles? The cultural left seeks an expansion of rights for the self-expression lobby, and a restriction of rights for those who look beyond the self for moral standards. If they win that fight we all lose, left and right alike.

If you think the culture wars don't matter, take a look across the Atlantic. They never had a culture war in Europe because when the war was declared, only one side showed up. Now they have another kind of fight on their hands for which they are totally unprepared. D'Sousa's analysis is not without flaws, but when the critics urge us not to read it — as Warren Bass does — or dismiss it as beneath discussion, it may be an indication that he's hitting close to home.

Read the rest at Catholic Exchange