Michael Craven

In last week’s article, I pointed out how Great Britain, through incremental concessions to Muslim demands, is sowing the seeds of its own subjugation. As to the cause of this civilizational suicide, Europe rendered itself impotent long ago when it traded its Christian philosophical foundations for that of secularism.

The roots of modern secularism began in the Renaissance, which marked the transition from the medieval to modern era. From the fourteenth to sixteenth century, Renaissance scholars and artists began to oppose the ever more oppressive church-state hegemony that Rome had come to represent. In reaction, old and new ideas alike were kindled, ideas that sought to “liberate” humanity from the oppressive bonds of ecclesiastical authority and religious dogma. (How unfortunate that the church was largely responsible for its own removal from public life.) The Renaissance purposed to elevate man and eliminate God.

Faithful Christians also reacted to the corrupt and hegemonic church leading to the sixteenth century Reformation, recovering old ideas in the form of historic orthodoxy and producing new ideas that would positively shape much of Western cultural and social life, including everything from politics and philosophy to science and the arts.

These two worldviews—Renaissance secularism and Reformed Christianity—offered competing interpretations of the world until the eighteenth century when the Enlightenment, buoyed by the rapid advances of science and technology and coupled with a growing spirit of anti-intellectualism within the church, finally began to succeed in shifting the public trust from the God of Scripture to human reason. The sacred-secular split was complete and what followed was a diminution of all things religious. The only meaningful knowledge was now scientific; religious thought was relegated to a secondary and subservient category of knowledge that would increasingly find itself excluded from public life.

Because this sacred-secular split was also accepted among many Christians, Western institutions, once dominated by the Christian interpretation of reality, gradually began to fall under the influence of secular humanism.

In Europe where this shift occurred first, the belief that the universe was the creation of an infinite and personal God, that mankind rebelled against its Creator (thus bringing death and evil into the world), and that our only hope is in Jesus Christ who is making all things new was rejected. Instead, Europeans came to accept that the world and everything in it is the product of time and chance, that evil is only ignorance, and that our hope is to be found in education and enlightenment, which will bring about an earthly utopia. In essence, the secularizing process was complete—and this is why Europe is now so impotent in its ability to resist the increasing domination by Islam.

Because secularism ignores those fields of human experience that science cannot address—such as religion, philosophy, ethics, and the other metaphysical questions of life—secularism fails as a worldview. It doesn’t deal with reality because science cannot explain everything; it cannot enlighten countless areas that touch human lives, nor can it define what it means to be human or answer our most fundamental questions of meaning and purpose. By ignoring these vital areas, secularism is unable to offer any cogent basis from which one can analyze and critique the varied interpretations of life and reality. Tolerance becomes the only virtue and belief in anything and everything follows.

Once this is achieved, you essentially believe in nothing. There is no consensus view of life and reality and no overarching truth awaiting discovery. We are each allowed our own interpretation, regardless of how unreasonable it may be. This philosophical ambivalence doesn’t know how to respond to the Islamic interpretation of reality, no matter how violent or bizarre, for fear of appearing intolerant. Secularism’s blind belief in human goodness, despite all evidence to the contrary, has led its adherents to hope that by being “nice,” Islamic terrorists will stop blowing up themselves and others. Europeans engage in philosophical hand-wringing and self-condemnatory statements that ask “Oh my, what have we done to incite such anger?” The idea that Islam as an ideology may be the source of this evil never occurs to them.

Furthermore, reliant upon the assumption of evolutionary progress, secular Europe’s utopian hopes were decisively shattered in the twentieth century. The First World War, which suffered over 40 million casualties, was closely followed by the worst pandemic in recorded history: the Spanish flu, which killed roughly another 1.7 million Europeans (between 50 to 100 million people worldwide). Then came the Great Depression, followed by the atrocities of World War II, which claimed more than 50 million lives. With the jettisoning of religion and the destruction of their utopian hopes, Europeans no longer know what to believe in. They are powerless in the face of unwavering convictions, zealous devotion, and the cosmic purpose of the faithful Muslim. Also, by not taking religion seriously the secularized culture fails to recognize the implications of religion in general and Islam in particular. And not taking Islam seriously has proven deadly.

Next week, I will compare the cosmic dimensions of the Islamic narrative with those of the gospel, demonstrating that the American church must recover and once again convey the full gospel story, which includes creation, the fall, redemption, and re-creation. I will argue that the privatized gospel, which has come to dominate much of American evangelicalism, is—similar to secularism—inadequate to inoculate America against the domination of radical Islam.

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. Michael is the author of Uncompromised Faith (Navpress), scheduled for release January 2009. Michael's ministry is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, the teaching ministry of S. Michael Craven, visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

While Britons may think of America as its juvenile and impetuous offspring, Great Britain has surely become our senile grandmother. Through repeated acts of self-condemnation and political correctness, the British are systematically capitulating to all things Islamic. In essence, our British forbearers are committing cultural suicide.

In what may appear to be deferential considerations to their growing Muslim population, British authorities are slowly conforming to the demands of an increasingly outspoken and violent minority.

Already in Britain, Muslim men with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long government review. Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by British authorities means that polygamous marriages can now be recognized formally (not to mentioned subsidized) by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. And yes, polygamy remains a norm in the Muslim world.

In other another act of mindless irony, the Research, Information and Communication Unit, a division of the British Home Office, established for the purpose of countering al-Qaeda’s influence in the UK, is actually instructing civil servants not to use terms such as “Islamist extremism” or “jihadi fundamentalist.” Instead, they are to use phrases such as “violent extremism” or “criminal murderers” or “thugs” to avoid any implication that there is connection between Islam and terrorism.
Closer to home, the US government also issued guidelines earlier this year for the Department of Homeland Security suggesting such terms as “jihad” and “Islamic terrorism” not be used. (Where is the Ronald Reagan of our generation who is willing to call evil evil?)

So ridiculous have British concessions to Muslim demands become that Fortis Bank “stopped giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims,” according to The Times of London. (Pigs are an offensive, unclean animal to Muslims.) There are also accounts of Muslim nurses refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms.

And this past week, Fox News reported that “Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.” According to news reports, “The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.” Adding that “rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system…”

In an astonishing statement, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, said there was no reason why sharia law, derived from several sources including the Qur´an, could not be used for contractual agreements and marital disputes. The first question that comes to my mind: How does British society plan to mitigate between the Western and Muslim views relative to the rights of women?

The first public signs of appeasement emerged in the wake of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa (death edict) against British author Salman Rushdie in 1989. Thousands of British Muslims marched in the streets calling for Rushdie to be killed while the British authorities thought it best to “play it cool,” according to Mark Steyn, author of America Alone. Of the more than 100 demonstrators arrested for violent assaults on the police that day, all were released without charges. British non-Muslims held a (much smaller) counter-demonstration shortly thereafter to uphold the right to free speech—meaning the free speech of Salman Rushdie—only to be attacked and beaten by Muslims.

Playing it cool has only emboldened Muslim radicals and the calls for blood and violence increase. Today there are sections of London in which no non-Muslim dare venture for fear of being killed.

And the same is occurring across the rest of Europe. Recall the French riots in 2005 in which thousands of young Muslims, armed with clubs and sticks and shouting, “Allah Akbar!” stormed the streets. Windows were smashed; stores looted and cars were torched. Europeans trapped by the mob were viciously attacked, and some killed. The trouble in France finally ended only when various levels of French authorities quietly accepted that there were de facto no-go areas within the country, mini-Islamistans run by the dominant local Muslim majority. Shortly after, riots in Denmark featured Muslims taunting authorities, saying, “This territory belongs to Islam; you don’t belong here.” In a growing number of Western European nations there are now territories that have been effectively occupied by Islamic fundamentalists determined to subdue their host countries. 

Iman Abdelali Hamdoune revealed the goal of Islam when he urged the Muslim faithful:


Recently, the United Nations General Assembly began considering a resolution sponsored by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) under the altruistic title of “Combating Defamation of Religion.” Supporters claim its goal is to stamp out “incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.” Of course, Muslims are at liberty to incite hatred and violence against other religions and infidels. Felice Gaer, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan federal body, says it’s clear that the OIC countries are attempting to “mainstream” prohibitions on any speech that could be considered critical of Islam. So when Muslims take to the streets with signs reading BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM, it would be insensitive of us to suggest that perhaps Islam is a factor in breeding violence. Hmm?

Next week I will explore the philosophical preconditions that have rendered Europe so impotent in its response to radical Islam, demonstrating that these same conditions are emerging within our own society. In short, there are three worldviews today that are contending to “narrate the world” (in the words of theologian Robert Webber)—Christianity, secular humanism, and Islam.

I will argue that the American church, in its present state, will not be able to counter the Islamic effort to narrate the world until it is liberated from its own cultural captivity. American evangelicalism, with its emphasis on personal experience and therapy, has produced a narcissistic faith that centers on self rather than Christ and the redemptive mission of God—and this has rendered the Christian story of the world shallow and irrelevant.

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. Michael is the author of Uncompromised Faith, published by Navpress and scheduled for release January 2009. Michael's ministry is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, the teaching ministry of S. Michael Craven, visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

Another school year has begun and an estimated 15 million young men and women will be pursuing studies at the college and university levels. However, this may not be as beneficial as we have historically believed higher education to be.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” This point was echoed two years ago in a Dallas Morning News article under the apt heading, “All Brains, No Soul” (August, 20, 2006). The author, Thomas Hibbs, a philosopher and dean of the Honors College at Baylor University begins by quoting Plato’s Apology, in which Plato, quoting Socrates’ defense of himself at trial, says:


Hibbs makes the point that we Americans are becoming like the Athenians Socrates is addressing, especially when it comes to the object and aim of higher education today.

Few today attend university for the purpose of gaining wisdom or giving care to the state of their souls. Instead, the emphasis is upon obtaining a degree that, it is believed, will insure material success. In fact, the whole emphasis of higher education today seems to be of an instrumental nature: a means to an end and not an end in itself. And, sadly, even many Christians view education in the same way.

W. E. B. DuBois, the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of African-Americans in the first half of the twentieth century, writing on the goal of higher education said, “The final product of our training must neither be a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure and inspiring ends of living—not sordid money getting, not apples of gold” (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903).

Unfortunately, these loftier goals are getting lost in the scramble for prestige and six-figure incomes. William H. Willimon, former professor and dean at Duke University, shares his observations at Duke’s school of business:


By exchanging the nobler virtues for consumer-driven ends, the American university has become a setting for debauchery and hedonism virtually unparalleled.

A Rolling Stone magazine article, following the Duke Lacrosse team scandal, offers chilling insight into the depraved culture prevalent on university campuses today. Rolling Stone reports that “Sex at Duke is a sport most students participate in, on some level or another.” It goes on that “the vagaries of sex on campus have created a specific ‘hookup culture’ … As one male student describes it, it ‘exists in a whirlwind of drunkenness and horniness that lacks definition—which is what everyone likes about it [because] it’s just an environment of craziness and you don’t have to worry about it until the next morning’” (Janet Reitman, “Sex Scandal at Duke,” Rolling Stone, June 2006).

The article went on to describe an emerging attitude among young women in which they view and enthusiastically embrace this sexual anarchy as a form of liberation in which they are able to subjugate themselves to all manner of sexual debauchery in the name of unencumbered choice. There is no romance, no emotion—just pure animalistic behavior. One young woman even recognized the condition when she said, “Girls reduce themselves a lot here in order to be able to have the sexual freedom that I think they don’t have by doing that,” but she indicated little or no inclination to counter this pressure. Another young woman is quoted as saying “I’ve never been asked out on a date in my entire life—not once.” Nor has a guy ever bought her a drink, according to the author. “I think that if anybody ever did that, I would ask him if he were on drugs.” Rather, the article’s author adds, “there’s the casual one-night stand, usually bolstered by heavy drinking and followed the next morning by—well, nothing, usually” (Ibid.).

The culture presented here—in which students are obsessed with style, acceptance and pleasure—comes eerily close to the Athenians described by Socrates. While many students are still driven to excel academically, it is mainly for the purpose of achieving their material ends. However, in the absence of real wisdom and higher virtues, what we are left with is increasing generations of morally indifferent and intellectually vacuous men and women incapable of true greatness. 

Hibbs’ article cites numerous examples demonstrating this culture is not exclusive to Duke University but in fact typical of most—a fact often unknown to most parents and ignored by school administrators.

I am not suggesting that these students experience some radical transformation of values upon stepping onto the college campus. These values are generally already present—or perhaps more accurately, the moral convictions that enable them to withstand the moral pressures confronting them are simply not there. College only provides the opportunity in which such students can express their personal virtue, or lack thereof, in the absence of parental supervision.

Parents must adequately prepare their children to enter such a hostile moral environment and promote the true object of education: the cultivation of wisdom and virtue that honors God, to learn what it means to be human and to open our hearts and minds to the best that has been written and imagined. This was the purpose of a classical education and it still offers a foundation from which we may recover a right knowledge of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven, (An earlier version of this article appeared in September of 2006.)

My latest booklet, The Christian Mind illuminates the biblical worldview of education much more thoroughly. Order your copy HERE for only $5.00

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. Michael is the author of Uncompromised Faith, published by Navpress and scheduled for release January 2009. Michael's ministry is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, the teaching ministry of S. Michael Craven, visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

Rarely do I feature a guest commentary, however John Jalsevac’s review of the extraordinary documentary film, Miss HIV is so important that I thought I would be doing my readers a great service in sharing his insights. I have tried to edit Mr. Jalsevac’s piece for brevity’s sake without reducing its substance.

Mr. Jalsevac writes:

Miss HIV… is a film of an unexpected beauty on a subject that is anything but beautiful - HIV/AIDS and the international struggle of competing HIV/AIDS policies. At the core of the film is the burning question: "Why, after countless billions of dollars have been spent on HIV/AIDS prevention and cures, is there still no end in sight? Why are millions still dying of a preventable disease?" Implied is the much more volatile query: "Who is to blame?"

By the time the credits roll, the film leaves no doubt where it stands: those who promote an ideology of casual sex at all costs, under the guise of a mistaken interpretation of unfettered "human rights", are the foes of the effort to end AIDS. They are those who are so radical in their beliefs that they can claim, with a straight face, as one speaker did at the 2006 International AIDS Conference, that the same program that promotes abstinence and fidelity and that reduced HIV rates in Uganda from 30% to 6%, "has become a nightmare, a devil, a tool of murder in Africa."

This same speaker, who is herself HIV-positive, then suggested that those with HIV, a sexually-transmitted disease that has killed 25 million people to date, have an unassailable "right to sex," which naturally leads one to wonder who is murdering whom.

And yet, where most other documentaries on a subject of such a controversial nature would swiftly devolve into polemics and pure propaganda, the makers of Miss HIV opt instead for creating a work of art. This approach to documentary-making lends Miss HIV a transcendence—a universality of appeal that ensures that it cannot easily be written off as mere propaganda. Miss HIV is a truly beautiful film…. But what is most important is that the documentarians chose to approach their subject matter not in a removed, academic fashion, but as a story….

Like any truly great storyteller, the camera treats each of the characters in Miss HIV sympathetically, affirming that each of their stories is worth telling. This holds true even (or most especially) for those who in the end are found to be the story's villains - those who protect and promote the radical casual sex ideology in the face of its abysmal failure, and who purposely downplay the risk of AIDS as a misguided method of removing "stigma" and "discrimination."

This objective, non-condemnatory approach to story-telling is good and necessary, for the fact is that human beings are rarely malicious; this is especially true for those who have devoted their lives to some sort of advocacy, such as eliminating AIDS. Such as these are rarely malicious, though they may be wrong - even fatally wrong. As the director of the film, Jim Hanon, states, "Since when does conflict in a story have to mean demonizing people and their points of view?" (Well said!)
 
Many an otherwise admirable work has been spoiled by this tendency to demonize the opposition, an approach that ensures: 1) that only one sort of people will ever watch it (those who already agree with its thesis) and, 2) that those who agree with it and watch it will only be more confirmed in the insufferable sense of superiority which erects walls between people and destroys any hope of true dialogue. Miss HIV is a model of how to avoid this pitfall…

The documentary takes its name from the Miss HIV pageant, which takes place in Botswana. The event was organized to showcase attractive, healthy-looking women who are also HIV-positive in an effort to eradicate "stigma" and raise awareness. The film follows two of these women on their journey to the Miss HIV catwalk, and places us in the midst of their lives and their families. Interwoven throughout is footage from the 2006 International AIDS Conference, interviews with various experts and activists, and intimate snapshots of life in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the world's HIV epidemic is most concentrated.

What is gradually revealed is, in part, the absurdity and hypocrisy of an ideology that is built upon the idea of radical human freedom, and that seeks to normalize HIV in order to erase "stigma", but that in turn stigmatizes anyone who even suggests abstinence or fidelity may be a solution to what is, after all, a sexually-transmitted disease.

As Martin Ssempa, the electric young Ugandan pastor who has been so instrumental in reducing HIV rates in his country, says, "You know what I find? I find that these guys have an irrational fear of abstinence. I mean they're paranoid. When you say the word abstinence they go 'Arraghagh! Stop!' And then, if you really want to get them riled up, say something about faithful in marriage. They want to pull their hair out!"

This would be a lot funnier if it weren't the literal truth. You may recall that at the 2006 AIDS conference Bill Gates gave a speech in which, in passing, he mentioned the ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom) policy, at which point he was booed down. The makers of Miss HIV include that scene. It is very disturbing to watch. A convention center packed to the rafters with the world's most powerful AIDS policy makers apparently cannot even bear the mention of abstinence and faithfulness. As Ssempa says, these people are "abstinophobic" and "matriphobic."

But Miss HIV is not a depressing film. It does not play about in the muck for a minute longer than is necessary to prove its point. Otherwise we are introduced to the magnetic personality of Martin Ssempa and his joy-filled approach to ministering to the youth of Uganda. And we are introduced to those who have embraced his model of premarital chastity, a way of life that, in contrast to its opposite, is free from fear - the fear of contracting, living with, and dying of AIDS, and the fear of living without a love that is lasting and unconditional.

To put it more positively, abstinence and fidelity are convincingly presented not simply as an answer to AIDS that, by forbidding some good thing (the pleasures of sex) can thereby prevent a worse evil (contracting AIDS), but as a way of life that itself offers new and greater goods than what it forbids….

Miss HIV is perhaps the only film made about HIV that faces the disease with such brutal honesty, but that still leaves the viewer with such a powerful sense of hope. It is a film that must be supported and watched and promoted. It is, quite simply, the best documentary I've ever seen, and the one with the most potential to change a horrible reality for the better.

© 2008 by John Jalsevac - LifeSiteNews.com.

To purchase Miss HIV, or to find out more about the film, see: www.ethnographic.tv

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. Michael is the author of Uncompromised Faith, published by Navpress and scheduled for release January 2009. Michael's ministry is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, the teaching ministry of S. Michael Craven, visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.