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Special Report

The Race and the Not-So-Swift

Missionary work, Universalist-postmodern style.

(Page 2 of 2)

One suspects they smell a con game. One also suspects they're right.

WHAT MAKES THIS NEW CHURCH mission different from the kind carried out in the first 1,800 or so years of Christianity, is that its motives are purely selfish.

Put it this way -- whether or not you accept the doctrines of Christian evangelists and missionaries of the past, it's hard to deny that their activities were altruistic. If you really believe that people are going to Hell for eternity, it's an act of kindness to tell them how to escape it. Thousands of missionaries suffered horribly and died far from home (often very young) to take that message.

But the ELCA, in its outreach to racial minorities, is motivated by no idea of giving these people anything. Instead they want something from them. In their own estimation, they themselves are "White," as is a blank sheet of paper. To be white, they believe, is to be contentless, without meaning or value. "People of color," on the other hand, are perceived to "have something." They are vibrant and alive, purified by suffering. The ELCA wants to appropriate social atonement through them.

The agenda of the ELCA, in other words, is essentially racist.

And, like all racism (even when self-directed), it's stupid.

Page:   12

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About the Author

Lars Walker is a librarian and Norwegian translator, and the author of several published fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book called Troll Valley, available for Kindle or Nook.

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