11AR16-28

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Apologia Report 16:28 (1,078)

August 11, 2011

Subject: Norway: Islam, Christianity and Journalistic Agendas

In this issue:

APOLOGETICS - almost "all major modern apologists and just about all ancient and modern arguments" for faith, cataloged in one book

CHURCH HISTORY - "Fact, Fiction, and the First Council of Nicaea"

ISLAM - journalists, Anders Breivik, and "Islamophobia"

OCCULTISM - "accounting for the seeming similarity of moral panics in different historical and social contexts"

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APOLOGETICS

Apologetics for the 21st Century, by Louis Markos (Scholar in Residence, Houston Baptist University) [1] -- Craig Parton's review notes that "The book attempts to cover all major modern apologists and just about all ancient and modern arguments marshaled on behalf of the faith, while also providing a roadmap for operating in postmodern times. ...

"Markos is a recognized authority on C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and the red meat of this volume is not surprisingly found in the first section devoted to their apologetical legacy."

Related to this is the inclusion of "the apologetical contribution of Dorothy Sayers. There [Markos] focuses on her utterly original defense of the Trinity based on an analysis of the human creative process (see The Mind of the Maker [2]). The author goes on to show how the 'evidentialist legacy' of Lewis was advanced by the uniquely American contributions of Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, and Lee Strobel. ...

Parton praises Markos for doing "a yeoman's job of cataloguing many of the giants of modern apologetics," but faults him for his surprising omission of John Warwick Montgomery. Parton also refers to Markos's "maddening inability to engage contemporary Christian leaders who are anxious to jump into the philosophical bed with postmodernism. Remarkably, his section on 'Nonapologetic Apologists' cites, without any serious blood being spilled, the likes of Brian McLaren and James Choung." Parton rightly complains that to include these two "and to then shovel onto the pile references to 'apologists' Joel Osteen and Rick Warren" is quite odd.

Parton's specialty is legal apologetics (e.g., Simon Greenleaf) and he laments the lack of attention this gets from Markos as well. Other names that go unmentioned by Markos include Harold Lindsell, E.J. Carnell, and Wilbur Smith. Modern Reformation, Mar/Apr '11, pp52-53.

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CHURCH HISTORY

"Making Up History: Fact, Fiction, and the First Council of Nicaea" by Justin L. Petersen -- "the objective here is to address the creeping problem in modern historical scholarship of putting [one's] agenda ahead of the pursuit of truth, especially regarding Church history." After some historical background, Petersen considers the prejudice evident in the work of popular novelist Dan Brown and Jesus Seminar fellow Karen Armstrong.

"Another example of a modern writer using the Council of Nicaea to justify his historical theories is James Carroll's Constantine's Sword [3]." This is discussed briefly.

Petersen's "last example of wild claims about the Council of Nicaea propagates probably the most common misconception - that Constantine orchestrated the entire council to secure his hold over the Church and its leadership." Here Michael Grant's Constantine the Great [4] comes under fire. Christian Apologetics Journal, 9:1 - 2011, pp67-77.

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ISLAM

"Why Anders Breivik's Manifesto Mentions Me" by conservative commentator Rod Dreher, who laments that "we journalists should pay more attention to the role of Western imams in radicalizing Muslim youth." He is responding to a colleague who complains that journalists "focus on Islamic leaders and terrorism" too much. To which Dreher replies: "It was a stupid point made by a man whose cultural matrix required the enemy to always and everywhere be right-wing Christians. When it comes to reporting on the complex reality of contemporary Islam and violent extremism, this is a mindset one finds far too often in American journalism.

"My jaundiced view, informed by 20 years of newsroom experiences, is that journalists see their job more as managing the story to protect Muslims from imaginary redneck lynch mobs than to report with critical intelligence on the world as it is.

"It's not hard to imagine the vindication many of these mainstream journalists must feel because of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Bering Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto. ...

"When details of Breivik's motives emerged last Friday, a headline on the New York Times's website trumpeted that the killer was a 'Christian extremist' (it was shortly changed to 'Right-wing extremist'). [NYT staff writer] Andrew Sullivan, eager to tie Breivik's ideology around the necks of American Christian conservatives, quickly took to calling Breivik a 'Christianist' - Sullivan's term of opprobrium for politically engaged conservative Christians. And so it goes.

"But readers of Breivik's manifesto will see that he is not a Christian in any meaningful theological sense. Rather, he sees the faith much as the Nazi leadership did: as a European tribal religion that can be instrumentalized to provide the basis for an ethno-cultural war against the Other - in this case, Muslims. ...

"It is unlikely that the 'blame Christianity' meme will survive for long in the mainstream media, as it's difficult to argue credibly that it's the fault of a religion that the killer himself rejects, except in an eccentric, non-theological way. But the 'blame Islamophobia' canard will be far more durable - and, in the long run, more harmful.

"'Islamophobia' is a weasel word designed not to enhance understanding, but to prevent it. It implies that skepticism or criticism of Islam or its followers derives from irrational fear. ...The problem with the term Islamophobia, as with its companion term homophobia, is that they are intended to disarm critical discussion by stigmatizing it as a mental disorder.

"Europe really does have a significant problem assimilating Muslim immigrants, and with Islamic extremist networks that hate, even to the point of violence, the same liberal secular societies that have given them refuge. European cultural elites have dealt with this by blaming the messenger, typically by demonizing them as, yes, Islamophobic. ...

"In the US, nearly a decade has passed since 9/11, and the media still haven't seriously examined the paramount ideological and organizational role the hardline Muslim Brotherhood plays ininstitutional U.S. Islam....

"This is an enormously important story that has never been given the attention it deserves. Now, thanks to the crimes of apseudo-Christian Norse monster, who, in the simple-minded logic of our media, represents the inevitable consequence of taking Islamism's Western critics seriously, it won't be for a long time." Real Clear Religion, Jul 26 '11, <www.bit.ly/nQS8hs>.

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OCCULTISM

Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, by David Frankfurter (Dept. of Religion, Boston University) [5] -- Robert Blunt's review explains that this book "begins in the 1980's American panic around Satanic Ritual Abuse, a peculiar moment in America's social history that galvanized a coterie of occult experts, law enforcement agents, and alleged victims against the seemingly growing presence of the occult in quotidian American life."

Blunt calls it an "erudite investigation into the sheer force of images of intense horror, molestation, and satanic abuse that have at different times in history motivated vicious forms of social action to name and arrest 'evil.'

"Evil Incarnate is thus a bold attempt to theorize across wide swaths of time and space to account for the seeming similarity of moral panics in different historical and social contexts. In the name of seeking what is general rather than specific about rumors of occult practice and demonic corruption, Frankfurter takes the reader on a rich comparative journey through medieval Europe, late '80s America, Britain, and postcolonial Africa. ...

"Frankfurter argues that evil is a discourse or, as he states, 'away of representing things and shaping our experience of things, not some force in itself.' But Frankfurter is also careful to point out that discourses of evil take on a life of their own, driving forms of mass action like the witch-hunt, a dynamic common to state leaders and peripheral groups alike. ...

"Frankfurter's analysis clearly works in a polythetic manner;phenomena are compared through a logic of family resemblance rather than reference to a heuristic device. With that said, it is often unclear whether his comparisons of devil discourse are structural or historical; just what the sufficient and necessary criteria for comparison really is remains somewhat elusive." Journal of Religion in Africa, 41:2 - 2011, pp233-234.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Apologetics for the 21st Century, by Louis Markos (Crossway, 2010, paperback, 272 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3wu6v69>

2 - The Mind of the Maker, by Dororthy L. Sayers (Continuum, 2005, paperback, 206 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3wsvxym>

3 - Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A History, by James Carroll (Mariner, 2001, paperback, 768 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3sk3t8z>

4 - Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times, by Michael Grant (History Book Club,2000, hardcover, 282 pages)<www.tinyurl.com/4xe67b3>

5 - Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, by David Frankfurter (Princeton Univ Prs, 2008, paperback, 320 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3sxmc9b>

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