:marseyunhappymerchant: Lies :marseymanysuchcases:; Claims No Christians Present in Gaza, Justifies Slaughtering Children and :marseynun:

https://x.com/lbc/status/1737015437966086404

Church? There are no Churches in Gaza so I don't know where the report is talking about” “There are no Christians in Gaza….”. “Well I don't know… I didn't see the report, I don't know”.

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17030034159478445.webp https://i.rdrama.net/images/17030034164111605.webp https://i.rdrama.net/images/17030034167099407.webp https://i.rdrama.net/images/17030034169915364.webp

https://x.com/BaderRifat/status/1736837819589410891

Reminder to all you :marseywingcuck: :marseyhitlerjew: that they'd be happy to kill you too if you ever left the gooncave in your parent's basement.

74
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Christianity obviously did not come to prominence in the Roman Empire by violently conquering it, and current historiography emphasizes the bottom-up aspect of its growth (ie. it did not "win" just because of a few converts who forced it on the masses by state power; growth rates were broadly stable over time).

The difficulties came after: can you remain just and righteous after "winning"? History suggests this is much harder.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Christianity won against a decentralized "religion" in serious decline long before Christianity even existed. The Hellenistic world was in a serious crisis of faith and doesn't demand exclusivity, so Christianity could spread gradually through syncretism. And even then in some regions of the empire it only won by force. (Chiefly against the Jews and Samaritans.) Against modern monotheistic religions it doesn't have a good track record of success.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Christianity's primary global competitor today is not Islam, but atheism or apathy. For a modern model of Christian growth, we can look to the church in China. I've had the fortune of meeting some Chinese Christians from outside the state's "approved" system. There's real energy there. I feel hopeful for the coming decades and centuries. It's good for the spiritual center of the church to move from time to time, and I accept that it's moving out of the West.

The West, meanwhile, is becoming a spiritually empty space. The question here is different. Can Christianity slowly convert a society that was once Christian but appeared to move "past" it? I think it's possible, but it can't come from the extant institutional churches. We can't be constantly chasing secular liberal trends, but we also can't be a performative larp for reactionary chuds. We need to be a primary source of meaning, not an auxiliary for some other cause. A turnaround can only take place over the arc of history. I hope that in my life we will begin to see it.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Christianity's primary global competitor today is not Islam, but atheism or apathy.

I disagree, since atheism and apathy don't have a mission to conquer and subjugate Christianity. Right now, Christians are too powerful to be threatened by Muslims but in three generations when Muslims are the majority in France and Germany, they will be on the receiving end once again, together with atheists.

We need to be a primary source of meaning, not an auxiliary for some other cause.

The "meaning" of Christianity has always been adapted to the society and social order it found itself in or at least the society that was exporting it, so wouldn't the choice of which be arbitrary? Do you adopt an evangelical, Episcopalian, Maronite, Ethiopian Orthodox or Japanese Catholic value system to give you meaning? They're all very different obviously. Clearly you need to wed it to some compatible contemporary value system.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Muslim growth seems like a special fixation of secularists scared to discover they're not really the end of history. The thought of a largely Muslim Europe in 2070 causes far less trouble for my worldview then the thought of a largely atheist Europe in 2070. If God is real, I should expect atheism to be a transient period of spiritual vacuity, not an incidental part of a successful, complete liberal rationalist ideology that can sustain itself forever. The latter would be a real threat, in a way that "another faith has temporarily become more popular than mine" could never be.

The majority of Muslims worldwide are not in anachronistic sandshit tribes or tinpot theocracies. I'm not pretending it's always peaceful, but it doesn't look like the neocon caricature either. There are also examples of Christian growth in majority Muslim environments like Indonesia.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Muslim growth seems like a special fixation of secularists scared to discover they're not really the end of history.

No, it's genuinely terrifying to see backwards supremacist savages become the majority. It's basic self preservation. I wouldn't mind and would in fact prefer a more Christian Western world.

The thought of a largely Muslim Europe in 2070 causes far less trouble for my worldview then the thought of a largely atheist Europe in 2070.

If God is real, I should expect atheism to be a transient period of spiritual vacuity, not an incidental part of a successful, complete liberal rationalist ideology that can sustain itself forever.

Why in particular atheism? Surely this logic applies to every wrong religion?

The majority of Muslims worldwide are not in anachronistic sandshit tribes or tinpot theocracies.

No but even the ones that aren't are backwards shitholes that oppress religious and ethnic minorities. Let's take a look where officially (never mind unofficial persecution) the death penalty for leaving Islam is in effect:

https://i.rdrama.net/images/17030509102570236.webp

Don't forget of course that the Muslim world is constantly in flux so yesterday's monarchy or military dictatorship is today's theocratic dictatorship.

Now let's look at the worst places in the world to be a Christian:

https://i.rdrama.net/images/1703050910847846.webp

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/january/christian-persecution-2021-countries-open-doors-watch-list.html

Do you see a pattern?

There are also examples of Christian growth in majority Muslim environments like Indonesia.

Your one example is where Christianity is a prestige religion because of its association with the wealthy West. So this route is also out the window if you leave Europe to the Muslims.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't deny that there are serious difficulties for Christians (and others) living in more heavily Muslim regions. I can understand why you worry about the expansion of Islam, the clash of civilizations, etc. But this began because I said it's not all about winning for me. I don't want to use the "best" tactics or have the "strongest" country if it comes at the expense of weakening or betraying the Christian faith. Most of Christianity's spiritual weakness today stems from a past form of "winning" that eventually merged with secular power and became tangled in things that weren't of God. People lost their faith because the church became simply one cog of the Western nation-state, and whenever the faith contradicted some secular goal it was the faith that lost. Chuds will observe this easily when the issue is the church's failure to stop no-fault divorce or the LGBT movement, but they're not as likely to notice how the strong WWII-era "Christian" state mass-bombing civilian populations had itself betrayed the faith.

Obviously I would most like to see a Christian West. But for me that wouldn't mean having the strongest empire. It would mean creating model societies that other people want to emulate because they actually work. That can only come as an outgrowth of strong faith. And I see no germ of a future Christian West in either leftoid utopian politics or in flag-waving boomercon kitsch. Rebuilding will take a long time.

Why in particular atheism? Surely this logic applies to every wrong religion?

Do you think the average Christian is more likely to slip and lose faith, or slip and become a Muslim? One is a lot more of a natural regression at present, and that's the one we're afraid of. No Christian stays up at night worrying that Islam might be true. However, the world can sometimes feel godless.

Secularists often think religion is simply a part of our history we can leave behind, and that in the future enlightened humans will instead find meaning in (wordswordswords). If this were to occur it wouldn't prove atheism true, but it would begin to make religious arguments kind of irrelevant. A lot of the ways to win converts depend on the idea that humans need God. If people share a certain need, if they're empty and calling out for something, I can offer Christ to them. But if everyone were somehow actually not-fake happy without God, what could I offer them besides some workshopped apologia with no emotional resonance?

So I guess I'll say that a miserable atheist West in 2070 might just be fertile ground for the faith to rise again. If liberalism somehow managed to break free of religion and stably sustain itself forever, that would be more of a difficulty.


We clearly have different worldviews and values. If you're not a Christian I wouldn't expect you to see value in a situation that leaves you worse off. For the Christoid :marseybikecuck: we simply have to remember that God's kingdom is not of this world, and those who fight hardest to dominate the world inevitably risk their own souls.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Link copied to clipboard
Action successful!
Error, please refresh the page and try again.