Linkmeister

Under attack?

The questions are nearly 2,000 years old, yet in this culturally divisive American moment, a time when believers feel besieged and skeptics think themselves surrounded, a reconstruction of Jesus' journey from Jewish prophet to Christian savior suggests that faith, like history, is nearly always more complicated than it seems. (My emphasis)

That's from the cover story of this week's edition of Newsweek. It's an interesting read. The questions it refers to are: how did Jesus come to be viewed by billions [of people] as the Son of God, and why did Christianity succeed where so many other small religious movements had failed before and since? I'm not prepared to answer either, but that italicized sentence above is intriguing. How is it that a country in which "78 percent of Americans believe Jesus rose from the dead; 75 percent say that he was sent to Earth to absolve mankind of its sins. Eighty-one percent say they are Christians..." all those people can possibly feel "besieged?" It's manifested in Tom Delay's comments to the Family Research Council:

"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay told a conference organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. A recording of the event was provided by the advocacy organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. DeLay complained that "the other side" had figured out how "to defeat the conservative movement," by waging personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national news media to report the story. He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

When the Congress and the Executive Branch seem to be wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Religious Right, how is it they manage to persuade people they're under attack from all sides? I don't believe that Christians are dumb or unable to recognize facts as presented, so how is it this kind of malarkey sells?