A large, nicely formatted magazine came to me today. It's being called "America, Return to God" and it appears to be a massive direct mailing to pastors of churches across the country.

The message is plainly spelled out inside. America is dying and has been ever since the nation turned away from "biblical and natural law" which (by the charts included in the text) seems to have happened in 1963.

This meteoric decline (I am told) is caused by the usual suspects. The ACLU, the Liberal Media, Homosexuals, Feminists, Liberals, and Neo-Pagans have offended God with their words and actions so God is turning his face away from America.

I really hate mail like this.

It's an effective bit of propoganda. If you read it you get the picture of a vast and monolithic anti-Christian conspiracy. The call is to be afraid and to rally Christians to lash out at these groups with all of our political strength.

Fear, as so many have discovered in modern history, is an effective rallying tool. If you can identify a problem and find an outside group to pin it on, you can garner great power very quickly. The problem can be real, or a relatively small problem exaggerated to frightening proportions, or it can be manufactured. Then you put forth the solution: To solve the problem we have to overwhelm / silence / get rid of the people we blame for the problem.

I have to admit that I have a few things in common with the people who put out the magazine. I agree that many of the things they cite as problems are legitimately problems. Broken families, violent crime, sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancies and so on are real problems. (I think they are being disingenious in implying that liberals, homosexuals etc. don't care about and aren't trying to help deal with these problems.)

I also agree that Christianity needs to be a big part of the solution to these and other problems. I think it is telling that this magazing refers only to what they label "moral" issues and does not address the issues of social justice that are so much a part of the Bible and especially the Gospels. That doesn't negate their issues, but I am bothered by their silence on things like poverty, racism, sexism, and homophobia. (They do meniton homophobia but only to say that it is not a legitimate issue.)

What bothers me the most is the fear-mongering. Yoda wasn't the first to observe that...

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering, and suffering leads to the dark side."

I know that quoting a pop-culture icon makes me automatically suspect in the eyes of people like those who put this magazine together. They often say that culture is the corrupt product of Satan. And there's the problem. By adopting a fearful us-them mentality we tend to assume that anything a Christian leader says must be right and true and anything a secular source says must be dangerous and untrue.

Jesus didn't care for this attitude.He say that the religious leaders around him were often narrow, hateful, and intolerant and that many non-believers acted out the values of God. This is a theme that he returned to often in his ministry and is perhaps most powerfully seen in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Samaritans were viewed by the Jewish community of Jesus' time as immoral non-believers who were a corrupting influence. The attitude of scribes and Pharisees towards the Samaritans was very similar to the attitude of the authors of my magazine to the ACLU, homosexuals, etc.

My appeal to Christians reading this is this. Let's deal with the issues raised here, but let's not fall into the trap of hate and fear, false accusations and needless battles. Let's engage in honest and loving dialogue, looking for answers together with any allies we find.

Turn not to the dark side we should!