The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Thank You, Mr. Secretary

9.6.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 5)

Having thus pulled the pin, he then lobs the grenade: "We're a long way from 1942."

Rarely have so few words been so pregnant with meaning.

How fortunate we are to have had the heroic "greatest" WWII generation on the battlefield and on the home front to defeat the Axis...instead of their puny, pitiful, pampered, preachy, post war, puissant offspring, a particularly gutless and over-educated collection of yellow-belly thumb suckers, malingering whiners, petulant bed-wetters and garrulous girlie-men I have come to think of as the Cry Baby Boom elite.
-- Thomas Stuart

TESTAMENT TO MARK
Re: Mark Tooley's America the Brutal:

I am having a little trouble with the phrase" ...paranoid partners in global destabilization." It sounds like Sister Joan is pining for a better time in history when it was stable. When was that? I'm having trouble with who the partners are too. Were we partners with Hitler to destabilize the world or were we partners with Stalin to defeat Hitler? If America is paranoid, then what diagnosis would be rendered for the homicide bomber.
-- unsigned

RED CHRISTIANITY
Re: Joseph M. Knippenberg's Religious "Diversity" at Georgetown:

Mr. Knippenberg may have thought he was engaging in a bit of hyperbole in comparing Georgetown University with China in regard to its treatment of evangelicals, but he was more right than he knows. As a current resident of mainland China (for four years now), I can attest that the situation evangelical believers here face is quite similar to that now faced by those holding the same beliefs at Georgetown.

Here in China, what the government fears is not faith, but organization. Countless (some say upwards of 80 million!) Chinese are evangelical Protestants, completely free to believe what they want. Despite living in a communist country (in name, at least), they can buy Bibles and related books from the state-run ch*rches which operate with full government support and are attended openly by anyone who wishes, including us foreigners. Outside of this official realm, however, most believers attend one of countless small fellowships that meet in people's homes. Certainly aware of many of them, the government tends to ignore these small groups...unless they become too large and/or vocal. This they see as a threat to their authority. In cases where a crackdown does come, it seems often to be carried out by officials at the local or provincial level, often without direction or coordination from Beijing.

Compare this with the current situation at Georgetown University. Despite being a Jesuit school, a significant number of its students ascribe to other faiths (or in the case of the evangelicals, other brands of Chr*stianity). It provides diverse, school-funded places of worship. Anyone is free to attend the protestant services, but most evangelicals choose to participate in ministries of various other para-ch*rch organizations. But as tends to be the case on campuses, the evangelicals have an outsized impact â€" they are eager to share their faith with others and eager for others to join them in their worship. And so, now the crack-down has come, without direction or coordination from higher up (in this case, led by one or more hostile chaplains, rather than the office of Georgetown's President, John DeGioia, which apparently knew nothing about it until contacted by the media for comment).

There are at least two significant differences, however. First, Georgetown U. has been satisfied to merely ban these organizations and instruct their followers to attend the school-provided services. In China, of course, crackdowns can be much more severe, often resulting in imprisonment or death. Secondly, as a weekly attendee of a state-run ch*rch in China, I can assure you that the message preached there is infinitely more evangelical than any message ever delivered by a chaplain at Georgetown University.

Here's wishing good Providence to the evangelical students of Georgetown University, who are no doubt now working hard through various channels to convince the school's chaplains (i.e., motivational speakers) that it is actually okay to believe and practice religion rather than merely exploit it as a career.
-- Jon King
Tianjin, China

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