[Video] Sen. Rand Paul: 'Worldwide War on Christianity' Ignored by Obama, Media

[Origanalist]

You must be new to this. (I love it when people say that, it makes them sound so, er, not new at it)Let me explain. We have the former Bush regime who killed Muslims in the name of Christianity and then they armed the opposition to kill the very people they claim to be. Why is that so hard to believe? Is it impossible that they are not Christians pretending to be so people will think that Christians are murders and giving them a bad name meanwhile arming people who kill Christians? This is the basis for pretty much every war of the last few decades.

I don't remember Bush invoking Christianity as his reason for invading anybody.

 

[ClydeCoulter]

Let me check......nope, this is not in the religion forum

 

[FrankRep]

Let me check......nope, this is not in the religion forum

It's a Rand Paul video. This is the Rand Paul Forum.

 

[Tywysog Cymru]

Jesus was a Pacifist, there is no arguing with that.

 

[ObiRandKenobi]

who cares about values. mark sanford cheated and he's awesome!

 

[fr33]

BEWARE THE RED HEIFER
How religious nutballs could start World War III

 

[TER]

Give me a break. Christians have been persecuting non Christians since the dawning of man. It has a history of violence. Now there is a case to be made that those who persued this type of policy are not "true Christians" like I mentioned, but the "true Christians" have also done nothing to stop it like I mentioned in my post as well. Non Christians have been shitting on the Christian brand and Christians have done nothing to stop it which is why Rand has to do this.

So you are upset with Christians because evil still exists in this world? Because the end of the world has not happened yet and we have not yet made it to Heaven, we should blame the Christians for the evil which 'non-Christians' have done in the name of Christianity? This is not fair at all. Christians consider themselves sinners, not God, and the vast majority of Christians living in the world have denounced these recent foreign military escapades of America. Don't be fooled by the average VVS voter and then wrongly blame the evils in the world to Christianity when most of Christianity have been against these wars from day one.

 

[liberty2012]

..

 

[TER]

While I agree with Rand's points on the war against non-muslims in the middle east and detest those extremists, the very beginning of his speech kind of disgusted me. I don't like it when any politician uses fear to conjure up support. If that's what the "values voters" want to hear, then fuck em'

He is conjuring up the fear Christians in many parts of the world are living in to wake us from the spell casted upon the American-born Christians by the leaders of the neocons.

 

[Publicani]

War on Christians in Boston? What is he talking about? Christians? Boston?

 

[Natural Citizen]

He is conjuring up the fear Christians in many parts of the world are living in to wake us from the spell casted upon the American-born Christians by the leaders of the neocons.

Nevermind. I keep telling myself that I'm going to stay out of these.

 

[MaxPower]

Christians, ever since their creation, have done nothing but wreak havoc on societies all across the globe.

Give me a break. Christians have been persecuting non Christians since the dawning of man. It has a history of violence.

You've obviously been reading the Christopher Hitchens school of historical "scholarship"-- intensely biased, bigoted anti-religious and anti-Christian propaganda. In real life, self-identified Christians in positions of power have been no more prone to persecuting non-Christians than members of most any major demographic have been toward persecuting non-members of that demographic. Societies with State-institutionalized emperor worship viciously persecuted those who wouldn't bend knee to the emperor, societies with "Christian" majorities and Church-States have often seen persecution of non-Christians, societies with Muslim majorities and Church-States have often seen persecution of non-Muslims, societies with white majorities have often seen persecution of non-whites, and societies with militantly-atheistic Communist States saw persecution of religious believers of all stripes-- and in point of fact, explicitly and militantly atheistic regimes like Communist China and Soviet Russia were more widely intolerant and prolifically murderous toward their populaces than any "Christian" State has ever been. Of course, you will respond by saying that the persecution seen in Communist regimes does not result from anything inherently murderous about atheism, but rather from the communism, and you're more or less right to think that, but it is equally true that the persecution seen in some "Christian" societies does not result from something inherent in the character of Christianity as distinct from most other worldviews so much as it does from the corruption intermingling with the State brings to most any belief system.

Now there is a case to be made that those who persued this type of policy are not "true Christians" like I mentioned, but the "true Christians" have also done nothing to stop it like I mentioned in my post as well.

You think this because you are a Hitchensite and are ignorant of the enormous swaths of history that militant atheist authors choose to blithely ignore or handwave. Christianity through around the first three-hundred years of its existence was intensely and almost uniformly anti-war and anti-State, to the point at which Christians were martyred en masse for refusing to bow down to the emperor or serve in his military, Christian dissenters and anti-war activists have been active in most every historical epoch since, and the entire concept of non-violent resistance utilized to great humanitarian ends-- as an alternative to violent conflict and in order to remedy persecution of minorities-- by the likes of M.K. Gandhi in India and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. stems explicitly from Christ's Sermon on the Mount (see Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, which was central in inspiring Gandhi). The late Pope John Paul II was outspokenly anti-war and referred to the Iraq invasion as "a defeat for humanity." Ron Paul himself is a Christian who (explicitly citing the teachings of Christ) critiques and fights against persecution of non-Christians on Christian moral grounds, as are many thousands of his supporters.

And it would take far, far longer than the space of this internet forum post will allow to cover the immense humanitarian good Christianity-- for all the blemishes on its institutional record (which have, incidentally, appeared most any time it has intermingled with the State)-- has wrought over the last two millennia. Suffice it to say that we would almost certainly not have anywhere near so humane a culture as we do now had Christianity never been born, and that, on balance, Christianity has had an immensely positive impact upon civilization.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/11/laurence-m-vance/the-early-christian-attitude-towards-war/
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2005/04/04/in-defense-of-john-paul-ii-peacemaker/