« Three views of Zev Chafets | Home | Argument for the sake of Heaven »

January 31, 2007

"A 21st century battle of faiths"

I sent my musings about the Christian Zionists to a bunch of bloggers, got this back from Richard Fernandez (posted with permission):

Richard: Very interesting exchange in comments. The assertion that "replacement theology is dead" intrigued me most of all, because in some sense the current crisis is nothing but a struggle against the "replacement theology" of the radical Islamists. I can appreciate that you don't

Judith: good way of putting it

Richard: want to be caught in the middle of a religious war, each side invoking a sacred text. But objectively, that's what we are in the midst of: a 21st century battle of faiths.

Judith: Then the faith I battle for is the classical liberalism of the enlightenment, within which political container my people can follow our communal path and thrive. And so can everyone else if they agree to give up trying to take over the world by force, and agree to adhere to enough of the same mutual practices to keep the container intact (i.e. rule of law, civic involvement, minority protections, etc). i.e. the American model, which works very well for every group which agrees to it, including most muslim communities here. You can be as insular and fundamentalist as you like within that container, provided you give up the need to take over.

Pastor Hagee would probably say that modern Xtianity and classical liberalism are functionally identical, but they aren't quite. That's how you get brouhahas like whether Keith Ellison can take his oath on a Koran. Under my model he can, under Pastor hagee's (and Dennis Prager's) model, the initial claim is that he can't, and then they back down when those under my model push back.

But Hagee's people have given up the need to take over by force, and Islam hasn't. But the solution isn't to rearm Xtianity with that power and let them duke it out. Then you have Armageddon. Classical liberalism is the 3rd way - it hasn't been discredited at all, it's just harder to do. Also harder to describe the case for it. I needed 3 paragraphs to do that.

Judith | 01/31/07 at 07:32 PM | Categories: - Comparative Religion

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6105

Blogs which link to "A 21st century battle of faiths":

» Render unto Christian Zionists from Kesher Talk
I participated in the recent conference call via One Jerusalem, with Pastor John Hagee, the driving force behind the Christian Zionist movement. You can read a richly linked intro to Pastor Hagee’s work and listen to the podcast at the... [Read More]

Tracked on January 31, 2007 07:46 PM

Comments

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? Yes No

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style and URL links.
My spam filter rejects any word containing "sex" and "poker" - use asterisks like so: "p*ker")