LIFT HIGH THE CROSS!

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim,
Till all the world,
Adore his sacred name.

Oh, Lord, once lifted,
On the glorious tree.
As thou hast promised,
Draw the world to thee!

Driving through the town in which I live, I have often thought it would be a tremendous task to count the multitude of churches that one encounters.  There are Roman Catholic churches by the dozens and all sorts of mainline Protestant churches and innumerable churches readily identifiable as fundamentalist or evangelical.  Thus far, I have sighted only one structure bearing a crescent moon, which, by all indications, is a mosque.

By any gauge, America must still be deemed a Christian nation.  The Judeo-Christian tradition was planted early and deeply in the nation's consciousness, and it still resonates profoundly with the great mass of Americans.  Yet, one would never imagine that by virtue of what is encountered in American popular culture, the media and the nation's intellectual life.  

I once heard a sermon by a Catholic priest who opined that Christians should welcome the ridicule and opprobrium heaped upon them by hostile sources, for the Church has had its finest hours in environments considered  unfavorable to it.  Accordingly, I often think these days of the words of that priest; and, as one who worships in the Anglican tradition, I often think, too, of a recessional hymn heard often in that tradition, "Lift High the Cross."

If there was ever a time when Christians should be lifting high the cross, it is now.  Throughout the world, Christians are subjected to the worst sorts of persecutions, daily suffering pain and death for their faith.  Yet, in my own country and despite the denigration of a largely pagan popular culture,  American Christians continue unthinkingly to accept implicitly that religious freedom may be taken for granted.  At the same time, their incomprehension that the religion they profess is the most widely persecuted faith in the world is abetted by clergy so afraid of controversy that they fail to even mention the cataclysm of persecution in their sermons.

Although reluctant to be mistaken for a broken record, I have written time and time again from a perspective shaped by several years of residing in the Middle East, for it was there that I came face to face with the type of  rigidity and intolerance that can make an openly-lived Christian life a dangerous proposition.  Yet, despite the danger, persecuted Christians around the world continue to lift high the cross.

It is ironic that those entering the U.S., hailing from traditions of a monolithic/ideological framework and presumably immigrating in order to benefit from American freedoms and economic opportunity, do not deign to speak out when their coreligionists in other lands openly persecute individuals aligned with other religious traditions.     However, I remember well when Christians and other non-Muslims spoke out vigorously in objecting to Serbs who called themselves Christians persecuted Muslims in Bosnia.  As a Christian who objects to religious persecution regardless against whom it is exercised, I deplore the Islamic double-standard.

In contrast to the message of Christian love and forgiveness, wherever Islam prevails, it does so with compulsion and brute-force.  In place of viewing Islam as a religion, in many ways it is more proper  to see it as an ideological system, which has as its nucleus the audacity to claim that it should determine how life in its totality should be lived, prescribing  principles to be followed in economics, politics, hygiene, sex, law, family life, worship and and in virtually all areas of objective human reality.

Although it is out of keeping with the new orthodoxy of political-correctness to say it, it cannot be disputed that Christians, throughout their history, have taken the lead in fighting against human bondage, wage-slavery, child abuse and other forms of inequality and oppression.  No, America, those evils were not overcome in any setting by "progressives," leftists, communists, fascists and any other political extremists being in the forefront of opposition.  

Too often, I find that Christians in America, perhaps because of an unfettered popular culture of atheism and agnosticism which specializes in sensational attacks on the Church, seem embarrassed to acknowledge their faith.  Not only does this "head-in-the-sand" attitude lend a degree of legitimacy to those who would like nothing better than to see the ruin of Christianity, it also affects how we order our political life and conduct ourselves on the international stage.

That we have a president who cannot or will not speak out against the persecution of Christians speaks volumes about what we have allowed to transpire in a nation that has traditionally prided itself as being the leading defender of the world's oppressed people.  To prefer to court favor with Muslim tyrants and despots, rather than to decry the persecution of religious minorities in their beknighted  lands, smacks of moral and intellectual cowardice unbecoming  of our great Republic. As an American, I am very much ashamed.

Those of us who are Americans and call ourselves Christians must not be fearful.  If we believe in a risen Lord and Savior, we have nothing to fear.  We must not be apologetic.  And, if we are to honor the almost 2,200 Christian martyrs who gave up their lives throughout the world in 2013, mostly at the hands of Muslim persecutors, we must LIFT HIGH THE CROSS.

Deo Vindice!

God bless Texas, and may the Lone Star State remain forever red!