Global Christianity
Lent: Ramadan for Christians
by Clay Staggs
Apparently that’s what a group of Catholics in the Netherlands is saying. They figure that the average Dutchman is more familiar with the islamic fasting period, Ramadan, than they are with Lent, so it’s just smarter branding to let folks know what this whole Lent thing is all about by calling it the Christian Ramadan.
Read the article here.
I’m not making this up. I’m not that creative.
HT: NRO’s Corner
Posted by Clay Staggs at February 12, 2008 02:07 PM
This should go nicely with the Buddhist Yom Kippur celebrations.
Why this super-capitulation to Islam?
In a lecture by Douglas Wilson, he says that the secular world (albeit in disagreement) admires the conviction of rigid Islam, while evangelical Xtianity only garners laughs due to its ever-changing mores over decades. I guess I could make a case (again) for historical Xtianity, but I’m sure the young people wouldn’t like it.
Tim,
I disagree with Doug Wilson at my great peril, but I do not believe that there’s any admiration for the fervency of Islamic belief among the secular world. In fact, if you took Islam tenet-by-tenet, the secularists would disagree with almost every one. The reason for the super-capitulation is that multicultural relativism has been almost totally taken to heart by the secular elite in the West. I think, in the cool grey dawn of morning, they’d LIKE to criticize the islamo-whackos, but they just CAN’T bring themselves to do it because they just don’t think they have any right to do so.
Now, one might reasonably say, what about Christianity? They feel free to criticize that, and that would be correct. But this is the west. We’re supposed to be culturally relativist and tolerant, and maybe even repentant for all those years of crusades and such. But (orthodox) Christians just AREN’T relativist - we have the temerity to say we have THE truth. And that’s so offensive to the relativist.
If you ask me, there’s also no small element of racism at work (freedom born of a Christian history for us here in the West, oppressive backward Islam for the dark-skinned folks over there), but that’s a subject for another post.