Militant Christianity

Militant Christianity is one of those ideas that requires a great deal of cognitive dissonance. The more vociferous the followers of the religion are, the more likely they are to turn to violence to prove how peaceful their religion is, so militant Christianity takes many forms.

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Christian message on guns etc.

One of the more odd forms of militant Christianity is Trijicon, a small company in Michigan that inscribes gunsights with scriptural quotations.[1] Militant Christianity has a long history probably going all the way back to the Emperor Constantine, whose supposed Road to Damascus type conversion to Christianity took the form of a vision in which he saw a vision of the cross inscribed with the words to "Conquer by This", inspiring him to paint crosses on his shields the better to slaughter the enemy.

Ron Luce

Below are examples of the violent language Ron Luce likes:

  1. "No souls can be saved without the shedding of blood. Blood must be shed!"[2]
  2. "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the 'forceful' ones—will lay hold of the kingdom."[3][4]
  3. "I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don’t understand."[3]

Austin Cline wrote that it is only a matter of time before some crazy character takes the call to violence and bloodshed literally and acts on it.[5]

Positive Uses

Militant Christian is also used to describe dedicated people who fight for Christianity in a nonviolent manner. Examples include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who opposed the Nazis in Germany, and G.K. Chesterton, an influential Christian writer.

Further examples

Further examples include, famously, the Crusades and the Chinese "Heavenly Kingdom" of Hong Xiuquan. More recently, see Hutaree, the violent Christian Identity splinter movement called the "Phineas Priesthood",[6] and Pat Robertson's apparent Ayatollah Khomeini-like fatwa against Hugo Chavez and Islam.

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gollark: Hmm.
gollark: ++magic py await deploy_bees()
gollark: Deploying bees.
gollark: This is the majority of the Consortium's power supply.

See also

References
  1. Who would Jesus shoot?
  2. Sunsara Taylor, Ron Luce's Holy War. Archived from the original at rwor.org, 28 May 2006.
  3. Ron Luce is like Jesus Camp… only he didn’t shut down. Archived from the original at liberal-debutante.com, 18 July 2007.
  4. Kathryn Joyce, America’s Youth and The Holy War. Archived from the original at onislam.net, 26 March 2013.
  5. Austin Cline, Militant Christians: Where's the Criticism? Where's the Hand-Wringing? about.com, 17 April 2007.
    You can't use such militant language, all the while denying that you mean it in a metaphorical way, and not end up with some violence at some point.
  6. Domestic Terrorism:Phineas Priests
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