LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

INSTIGATION AND STEALTH

By Peter Fredson

One approach of aggressive Christians, who love to spread their beliefs, is through misdirection, deceit, instigation, stealth, and downright imposition. Whenever there is a sudden spurt of demands to install Christian artifacts, icons and symbols in public places, you can bet that instigation is at work. How does it work?

A preacher at a Sunday School gently asks his students “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell your public school friends about how you love Jesus?” “Isn’t it a shame that nobody has posted our lovely 10 Commandments in your school?” “I wish we could put up these posters someplace where people can see them.” “I’ll bet that if you asked if you could form a prayer club in your school that everybody could get saved quicker.” “When you graduate maybe you can pray for us.” “Just before the football game starts, you might ask God for help in winning the game.” “Be sure to wear this cross at all times.” “People should be told that Christ died for them.”

A modern technique is to create your own lawyers who cleverly evolve strategy to make things appear different from what they are. Aggressively promote your strategy through politicians in exchange for monetary support, votes and volunteer workers. God Advertising pays big dividends for politicians. Modern church data bases, web sites, and links can muster up millions of responses overnight. Displaying one bit of a nipple produced 300,000 complaints, most worded identically, to politicians complaining of the great breakdown in morality.

At meetings of top level evangelists with their lawyers they have evolved a plan to get Christianity “acknowledged,” despite the fact that courts ruled against them. They took a semantic approach that looked or sounded different, but had precisely the same application. For instance, if mentioning God during law trials is deemed inappropriate, try The Creator, Intelligence, Tradition, Customary Usage, Spiritual. If saying Christian prayers is deemed inappropriate then try Silent Contemplation, Reflection, Meditation, Moment of Silence, or Voluntary Individual Prayer, Non-curricular Clubs, Private Student Speech, or Spiritual Development.

If showing the 10 Commandments is deemed to be religious, try the Historical Approach and show the Commandments next to the Bill of Rights. If Creationism is deemed inappropriate, try Creative Intelligence [I think he means "intelligent design". -ed]. If more Christianity is needed try the Fair and Equal approach. If talk of evolution seems to be gaining ground, then argue that Christianity is the only other alternative possible to the flawed only-a-theory and, by using partial quotations out-of-context to refute their arguments, claim that scientists appear to be wavering in their commitment to evolution. Give creationists diplomas from fly-by-night diploma mills, nicely printed on parchment, to show serious credentials. And, above all, disclaim any religious purpose. Sham is the operative word in spreading Christianity in America today.

Get some politician to deny that legislation is politically and religiously motivated. A politician might say: “This isn’t about establishing religion, it’s about practicing religion.” Of course, this does not apply to Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus or any other religion but you can gloss over this and perhaps no one will notice. Say that your religious legislation is merely offering alternatives under the guise of accommodation for sincere beliefs.

Religious motives of legislators who enact religious law have been deemed irrelevant. What is important is that you pass legislation, and if that fails try rewording it again and again. Sooner or later you will find some True Believer judge who will agree with the rewording.

Speaking of judges, if any judges rule against your legislation, call them “activists.” But if you find nice Christian judges who will rule in your favor, call them “fair.” And make sure that you elect or appoint only “fair” judges.

Never mention anything favorable about any other religion, sacred literature or traditions. Never mention any of thousands of vicious murderous and barbaric acts of Christians during their history. Show the Crusades and missionaries as spreading sweetness, light, and love. Never mention book burnings, the Inquisition, torture and murder of people accused of witchcraft. Never mention any corruption, stupidity or perversity of priests. Hide their thefts and sodomies with a barrage of balderdash. Never mention that not one cent, or centavo, of the billions of dollars raised in the name of Jesus or God has ever made its way into their divine hands, or ever will. But frequently mention Pascal’s Wager, the Watchmaker argument and a dozen others as through they were all successfully proven and need no further discussion.

In other words, stacking the deck is good strategy. Misdirection, misinformation, deceit, and stealth show good results. So does simple imposition. Just ask any televangelist. Ask Gary Bauer. You might ask George, but he will probably deny it.

As one blogger (Mathew’s Journal) recently remarked: “George W Bush defended the war on Iraq, saying that the only way to avoid a chaotic world ruled by force was to rule by force. Next week he’ll be explaining how his economic policies will eliminate the US national debt by making it larger.”

From Iraq there are reports that a missionary refused water to thirsty people “unless they accepted Christ.” Sure, that’ll work. It always has.