SON, WE DO THIS EVERY DAY (via Tom Morin):

Ask Spengler (Spengler, 8/08/06, Asia Times)

Dear Spengler:

As chief executive of the world's largest Christian denomination, I plead for an immediate stop to the killing in the Middle East. I am surprised that American evangelical Christians seem less concerned about peace than about victory, and appear to be more pro-Israeli than the Israelis themselves. I can understand how Christians can support their own country in time of war, although the consequences may be tragic. But American Christians have no direct stake in this fight. How is it that the evangelicals and I come to such radically different conclusions?

Tired on the Tiber

Dear Tired:

You have already half-answered the question. During World War I, Benedict XV tried to persuade the combatants to stop, and rightly so. Russia considered itself the only true God-bearing nation (Fyodor Dostoyevsky's phrase) and the seat of the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople; Austria the rump of the Holy Roman Empire and thus the arbiter of Christian Europe; France fought for its national grandeur, pursuing the delusion institutionalized by Cardinal Richelieu; and Germany mistook Siegfried for Christ, in Franz Rosenzweig's phrase. They were idolaters all of them, worshipping their own image in place of that of the crucified Christ. The next time they fought, in 1939, Germany and Russia marched under pagan banners and France did not fight at all. That is why Christianity is dead in Europe and why your great cathedrals are full of tourists and empty of congregants.

American evangelicals have no cathedrals, no Magisterium, no pontifical universities, no monastic orders with institutional memories back to the 4th century. They have mega-churches in shopping malls, mass commercial culture, and Christ crucified. Americans evaded Europe's tragedy because they rejected the idolatry that you and your predecessors, including the great Benedict XV, failed to control. Their forbears came to America to be Israel. They do not have the staff of St Peter upon which to lean, only their own wobbly legs to ascend the road to Calvary.

What binds American Christians to Israel is that the inner journey of each Christian, in his conversion from Gentile to child of Abraham, recapitulates the story of Israel, just as Jesus' own story recapitulates the entire story of Israel's redemption. American evangelicals are not baptized and raised as Christians; they must become Christians at the age of sentience. But to become a Christian is to undertake Israel's journey. You consider your Church to be Israel; evangelicals are children of Abraham by adoption, which is not to say that they are less loved by their foster father than the children of his flesh. But because they love their adoptive father, they love his natural children all the more.

MORE:
Have you heard the one about the Jews?: As a writer on The Ali G Show I can do insulting jokes. But the anti-Jewish sentiment at Edinburgh is shocking (Jamie Glassman, 8/15/06, Times of London)

Wandering through the streets of Edinburgh during the world’s largest arts festival, you never know what sight or sound you will be bombarded with next. Half-naked men on 6ft stilts meander by, half-naked girls rush to sell you their show, troops of Japanese acrobats tumble past. But I wasn’t prepared for the verbal assault I got when I wandered into a comedy gig this week.

There have always been anti- Semitic jokes. But you know times are changing when you go along to a stand-up show at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe and you hear audience members shouting “Throw them in the oven” when the comic suggests kids should stop playing Cowboys and Indians and replace it with Nazis and Jews.

Stand-up comedy is as good a prism as any through which to look at the changing attitudes in our society. If my past few days are anything to go by then it is becoming increasingly acceptable to hate the Jews. Again.