Nathaniel Peters at First Things comments on CNN's recent three part series titled God's Warriors hosted by Christiane Amanpour. The hype for the series suggested that the three monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity shared a common desire to impose a theocracy by whatever means necessary, but if that was their intent the producers must have been at a loss as to what to do with footage like this described by Peters:
Toward the end of the final segment of God's Warriors, Christiane Amanpour speaks to Mindy Peterson, a teenage organizer for Teen Mania, the evangelical organization that hosted the BattleCry rally against which the San Francisco protestors railed [see the opening paragraph of Peter's essay]. Peterson is, she says, the product of an affair between her mother and an abortionist who wanted to have her aborted. Arguments over abortion, therefore, are more than political theory for Mindy Peterson.
After the San Francisco protest, Peterson told Amanpour, "These people think that our war is against other people. They think that our war is against man. And our war isn't. Our war's against . . . the pain in teenagers' hearts, like depression, alcoholism. Those things that-that are, like, tearing our teenagers apart."
Mindy Peterson's words suggest that it means something very different to be God's warrior for Christians in the United States. In the Middle East, the war is against flesh and blood; in America, the war is against principalities and powers.
Indeed. Despite the stereotype promoted by the left of militant, violent Christians it's amazingly hard to actually find a specimen of one. Most Christians believe that the best way to change society is through changing people's hearts, not by lopping off their heads.
Someday, perhaps, the secular media will realize that they have been duped by their own propaganda and that the ubiquitous theocratic Christian boogeymen of their imaginations are in fact about as common as pink elephants.
RLC
