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Christianity beginning 'to disappear' in its birthplace, warns Prince of Wales

j-mac said:
Mornin' LT...I see, so it's Bush's fault? Is that right? :roll:



I think you are missing the point....Christianity is being exterminated from its birthplace....And all you can muster is a passing 'eh, separation of Church and state' or 'It's Bush's fault'???? That is truly disappointing.
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Did I mention Bush anywhere? Certainly not, it is not about Bush, it is about your statement that the people who support the separation of church and state (which you associate with a war on Christians) don't mind the violence that is occurring in Iraq, and Syria predominately towards Christians (and other groups which you don't seem to care about ). Which is why I mentioned that that same group of people were generally against the war which generally allowed the violence against Christians in Iraq to take place (meaning they would generally be against the violence then and now)


As for what to do?

The US invaded Iraq, and the Christians were driven out, in Syria, the US supported the rebels (working with Saudi Arabia) and the Christians (again not just Christians) are leaving as refugees. Should the US invade Egypt and cause the exodus of the Copt's? Should the US bomb everyone but Christians?

The choices are limited and unless involving a massive ground force unlikely to do anything effective
 
The German said:
It is not about something being overtaken.

The Christians in Iraq were driven out of their country through bomings, kidnapings and murders. The Christians in Egypt have suffered for generations under institutionalised discrimination and repeating terror attacks. And at the middle eastern borders with Black Africa, secterian conflict has exists for almoust 1200 years. Only a few countries in the middle east such as Turkey, Israel, Jordania and Tunisia actualy undertake messures to secure that religious minority.

So it is not some silly question of faith but a question of human rights.

But I doubt that the OP sees it this way. The OP is probably evangelical, so he probably wouldnt want much to do with the Coptic christians of the middle east whos traditions are more releated to eastern European orthodoxy than any form of protestantism. He is merely using a tragedy for a conservative talkingpoint.

And I also believe that OP wouldnt speak out and defend the rights of muslims who are persecuted in India, Myanmar and Central Africa. Or any other persecuted religious minority that is not christian.
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Funny how pompous some can be not knowing a damned thing about another isn't it?
 
Northern Light said:
Maybe it's because ever since the "war on terror" began, American evangelical missionaries have flooded the middle east, often manipulatively, which is a classical leftover of colonialism. There were plenty of stories coming out of Afghanistan about missionaries dressed in burquas pretending to be Muslims who had converted to Christianity, when really they were white Americans. In Afghanistan after the media lockdown on the press began, evangelicals were still given more free access than even our journalists. Once Amnesty International started reporting on the intensive proselytizing and seizing of children by these religious fundamentalists, the U.S. started cracking down, but it has never been complete.

In places that are more lawless like Uganda, missionaries have been seizing social and political power, mostly by preying on local ignorance, to implement their evangelical vision of the world because their crackpot ideology will never be accepted in the United States and the rest of the western world. Essentially in every country we invade, the evangelicals follow. They may not have our government endorsement but they certainly don't have its condemnation.

The Middle East has felt invaded by us not only politically but ideologically. And people wonder why Christians aren't safe there anymore? The U.S. war machine comes part and parcel with religious zealotry most of the time. This particular brand of Christian relies on war to carve new ideological pathways into regions that would normally be deaf to its message. And once there, these zealots use all manner of dirty tactics which offend local culture and beliefs.

The Christians who were already there were not the problem. It is the radical American Christians who turned the region against Christianity in general. In some places the balance was a very delicate one to begin with, but these zealots tipped the scales.
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The Middle East, the home of Judaism and Christianity, has been taken over by Muslims. Doesn't that tell you who is expanding their borders and taking over the region? We can only imagine at what a hospitable and democratic place the Mid East would be if Christianity had remained in place.
 
Grant said:
The Middle East, the home of Judaism and Christianity, has been taken over by Muslims. Doesn't that tell you who is expanding their borders and taking over the region? We can only imagine at what a hospitable and democratic place the Mid East would be if Christianity had remained in place.
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Grant said:
We can only imagine at what a hospitable and democratic place the Mid East would be if Christianity had remained in place.
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Dreams that paint a religious utopias tend to be based on serious cherry picking.
 
Grant said:
The Middle East, the home of Judaism and Christianity, has been taken over by Muslims. Doesn't that tell you who is expanding their borders and taking over the region? We can only imagine at what a hospitable and democratic place the Mid East would be if Christianity had remained in place.
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You have no idea what you are talking about. The middle east has never had a Christian majority. The Muslims conquered it from the Zoroastrian Sasanians. You can also hardly call wars from 1000 years ago to be "expanding borders" in modern times.
 
Hatuey said:
Dreams that paint a religious utopias tend to be based on serious cherry picking.
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Never mentioned 'religious utopias' but it seems clear that people in Christian nations have done a lot better than those living in Islamic nations. Is this even open to debate??
 
rathi said:
You have no idea what you are talking about. The middle east has never had a Christian majority. The Muslims conquered it from the Zoroastrian Sasanians. You can also hardly call wars from 1000 years ago to be "expanding borders" in modern times.
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No, my friend , it is you who has no idea. I never mentioned "Christian majority" at all.
 
Grant said:
No, my friend , it is you who has no idea. I never mentioned "Christian majority" at all.
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Your exact words were "Christianity remained in place", which implies Christianity was once the dominant religion in the area. If that wasn't what you meant, please clarify.
 
Grant said:
Never mentioned 'religious utopias' but it seems clear that people in Christian nations have done a lot better than those living in Islamic nations. Is this even open to debate??
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Depends on what you consider "better" and "Christian nations". Are we including countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America? Because if we are, I could come up with about 2 dozen examples refuting any claims of "done better" and supporting "equally as ****ed". But if we're only cherry picking Europe (and really, what you mean is everything except Eastern Europe), Australia, US and Canada, I guess you could claim some sort of superiority. The rest of modern Christianity, which technically is most of Christianity has done pretty terribly.

South America had about 15 wars in a 20 year period. Africa had about 50 in a period where the Middle East was relatively calm. Africa has entire Christian countries which have served as war zones for 30 years. Which "Islamic" country even comes close to that? Whereas most of the Islamic world has enjoyed relative peace (Indonesia, India, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco - Pakistan to a lesser degree), the majority of the "Christian world" has been at war nonstop for the last 100 years. So really, it's a matter of 1) which countries you consider to be part of "Christianity" and 2) what you consider "doing better".
 
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I was under the impression that the jewish, christian and islamic faith all began in the middle east and stemmed from judeo-christian/abrahamic beliefs and its not like christianity isn't guilty of doing the same things the muslims have been doing. It really seems like a cycle that those three faiths follow.
 
Grant said:
Never mentioned 'religious utopias' but it seems clear that people in Christian nations have done a lot better than those living in Islamic nations. Is this even open to debate??
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Hardly. You can find plenty of crappy christian nations and excellent non-christian ones. Secular government, regardless of whatever the religious beliefs of the local populace are, is the basis for vibrant nation states today.
 
rathi said:
You have no idea what you are talking about. The middle east has never had a Christian majority. The Muslims conquered it from the Zoroastrian Sasanians. You can also hardly call wars from 1000 years ago to be "expanding borders" in modern times.
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Why not? Isn't it liberals constantly using the crusades as an example of Christian aggression?
 
rathi said:
Your exact words were "Christianity remained in place", which implies Christianity was once the dominant religion in the area. If that wasn't what you meant, please clarify.
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So you are going with 'implying"? Just go by what I said, ok?, and there will be no misunderstandings.
 
rathi said:
Hardly. You can find plenty of crappy christian nations and excellent non-christian ones. Secular government, regardless of whatever the religious beliefs of the local populace are, is the basis for vibrant nation states today.
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Perhaps you can create a Column A and a Column B to see how they stack up against each other. Not too many people emigrating to anywhere the Muslims have control.
 
Grant said:
Perhaps you can create a Column A and a Column B to see how they stack up against each other. Not too many people emigrating to anywhere the Muslims have control.
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There are very large numbers of immigrants that head to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
 
X Factor said:
This is why Christians in the US (myself included) need to stop feeling defensive and persecuted in the US. I definitely don't agree that every religious symbol should be removed from public view but considering the depth of real persecution our Christian breathren face in other parts of the world, we need to maintain some perspective.
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So essentially give in and give up. Hide your beliefs, keep quiet about your beliefs, pray in private only. In other words, be ashamed of your beliefs.
 
Grant said:
Have you actually got anything to say?
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I guess artistic interpretation is not one of your fortés.

You claimed that Muslims are expanding and taking over the Middle East. First of all, which Muslims? "Muslim" isn't a country, it's a religion. So which countries are expanding their borders? All evidence demonstrates that the only country whose borders have changed is Israel as it expands its settlements. Kind of blows your argument out of the water, doesn't it?

If anything, Muslim tribes have been busy fighting with each other for hundreds of years. If you really insist on looking at this through the lens of religion, then the U.S.-Israeli alliance looks more like a Judeochristian invasion.

Not that religion is really at the heart of this.
 
Northern Light said:
I guess artistic interpretation is not one of your fortés.
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Didn't realize it was 'art'. It looked more like a political cartoon but if you think it was 'art' then I'll go with your call.

You claimed that Muslims are expanding and taking over the Middle East. First of all, which Muslims? "Muslim" isn't a country, it's a religion. So which countries are expanding their borders? All evidence demonstrates that the only country whose borders have changed is Israel as it expands its settlements. Kind of blows your argument out of the water, doesn't it?
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Which Muslims? Omar the Great, Achmed the Horrible and Mohamed the Seducer.. That's all the names i can give you right now. You quote me a wee bit and then go elsewhere, making little sense in the process.

If anything, Muslim tribes have been busy fighting with each other for hundreds of years. If you really insist on looking at this through the lens of religion, then the U.S.-Israeli alliance looks more like a Judeochristian invasion.
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An invasion of where?
Not that religion is really at the heart of this.
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What other theory do you have?
 
Northern Light said:
Maybe it's because ever since the "war on terror" began, American evangelical missionaries have flooded the middle east, often manipulatively, which is a classical leftover of colonialism. There were plenty of stories coming out of Afghanistan about missionaries dressed in burquas pretending to be Muslims who had converted to Christianity, when really they were white Americans. In Afghanistan after the media lockdown on the press began, evangelicals were still given more free access than even our journalists. Once Amnesty International started reporting on the intensive proselytizing and seizing of children by these religious fundamentalists, the U.S. started cracking down, but it has never been complete.

In places that are more lawless like Uganda, missionaries have been seizing social and political power, mostly by preying on local ignorance, to implement their evangelical vision of the world because their crackpot ideology will never be accepted in the United States and the rest of the western world. Essentially in every country we invade, the evangelicals follow. They may not have our government endorsement but they certainly don't have its condemnation.

The Middle East has felt invaded by us not only politically but ideologically. And people wonder why Christians aren't safe there anymore? The U.S. war machine comes part and parcel with religious zealotry most of the time. This particular brand of Christian relies on war to carve new ideological pathways into regions that would normally be deaf to its message. And once there, these zealots use all manner of dirty tactics which offend local culture and beliefs.

The Christians who were already there were not the problem. It is the radical American Christians who turned the region against Christianity in general. In some places the balance was a very delicate one to begin with, but these zealots tipped the scales.
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The Middle East has been flooded by Evangelical missionaries? Since when? I have no affinity for religion in general let alone Christianity, but it is ludicrous to try and suggest that the root cause of the internecine religious violence between minority Christian communities and their largely Muslim neighbors is the result of Western missionaries. It is rooted in waxing Islamism, the loosening of autocratic bonds which have held such groups in check, and the general destabilization that numerous regional conflicts have brought. Missionaries? What a masochistic and insincere answer.

On a purely anecdotal level I travel to the Middle East frequently for business, primarily Iraq and the Gulf States, and never in my life have I come across a Christian missionary except in Iraqi Kurdistan--and he was Turkish. I did a little searching to see if there was any statistics that could be turned up on missionary activity in the Middle East and there is.

The multitude of Baptist Congregations currently have 401 missionaries in Africa, 1,071 in the America's (excluding the US), 565 in Asia/Pacific, 728 in Europe, and 14 in the Middle East. (Missionary Statistics | Statistic Brain)

The LDS Church which is among the most prolific of missionary movements records almost no missionaries in the Middle East with a single center in Dubai and freely admits that its congregations in the region are largely foreign nationals living abroad. (LDS Statistics and Church Facts | Total Church Membership)

The same general numbers seem to hold true for the Presbyterian Church, and other evangelical denominations which maintain low key, low staffed centers in places like Egypt.

Evangelical influence in Uganda has been possible because Uganda is already a conservative Christian country and its leadership had close ties and connections to US based religious organizations. This has nothing to do with the War on Terror. Your premises and conclusion make no sense.
 
This is why everyone should just be atheist. No fundamentalist islam or christians.
 
rathi said:
There are very large numbers of immigrants that head to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
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There is a difference between an immigrant and a foreign worker.


It might behoove you to learn that difference.
 
Northern Light said:
I guess artistic interpretation is not one of your fortés.

You claimed that Muslims are expanding and taking over the Middle East. First of all, which Muslims? "Muslim" isn't a country, it's a religion. So which countries are expanding their borders? All evidence demonstrates that the only country whose borders have changed is Israel as it expands its settlements. Kind of blows your argument out of the water, doesn't it?

If anything, Muslim tribes have been busy fighting with each other for hundreds of years. If you really insist on looking at this through the lens of religion, then the U.S.-Israeli alliance looks more like a Judeochristian invasion.

Not that religion is really at the heart of this.
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You are obviously know nothing of the history or demographics of the region, so I expect you have absolutely no idea that Lebanon, for instance, was set up initially with a Christian majority, but were you to ever get past your 8th grade understanding of the world, you might come to realize that Islam dominates in increasing sections of the world where it did not dominate previously. Sure, you know only so much about things so as to know what you are expected to defend in order to be conformist, but the truth of the matter says otherwise.
 
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