For some reason I don’t seem to attract the kind of crank email that, say, PZ Myers gets, but now and then I stumble across a bit of good material. It happened to me this weekend: I was in the store buying vitamins, and noticed that someone had discretely slipped a copy of “Prophetic Observer” into one of the displays. (Talk about a bold witness, eh?) Published by Southwest Radio Ministries and the Southwest Radio Church of the Air, this was a full tabloid-sized four-page newsletter containing a single article: “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?” by Noah W. Hutchings. And man, it brings the crazy.
Check out this opening paragraph:
While the title of this article may be offensive to most Christians, thousands, if not millions, of church members are converting to the new religion of Chrislam. Much of the impetus behind this apostasy is that our president [note: whoever left this flier in the display rack underlined the words “our president” in red pencil] has evidently made a special effort to entertain Muslim leaders at the White House, observed Ramadan, and has been shown on national television bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. The presedent’s many accommodations to Islam have prompted Col. Steve Bauer, special White House aide under five presidents, to conclude that “we have a Muslim [note: the word “Muslim” is also underlined in red] in the White House.”
Isn’t that awesome? In the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia series, there’s an apocalyptic, Left Behind-ish story about the minions of the evil god Tash who set up an elaborate hoax to convince the citizens of Narnia that Tash and Aslan are the same god. They even give this fraud god a unified name: “Tashlan.”
Apparently, in the minds of some folks, children’s fantasies are indistinguishable from real life, and we now have a cross between Christianity and Islam called Chrislam. And you know what? I think that’s got to be one of the most awesome neologisms ever! Who hates gays? Chrislamic fundamentalists. Who tries to subjugate women? Chrislamic fundamentalists. Who tries to subvert science and wants to teach creationism in the public schools? Chrislamic fundamentalists. The list goes on and on.
So hats off to old Noah. He may have been motivated by racism and mind-numbing gullibility, but our vocabulary is the richer for it.
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PS — For extra fun, check out http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=1366 for more Chrislamic deliciousness. My favorite part is the caption that says, “The sign may be Photoshop, but the message it carries is all too real. Chrislam must be stopped now. If your church teaches this heresy – run!” Translation: “we were caught lying, but it’s still true anyway.” Way to go, guys.
The transition will be complete when Christians give up pork products in adherence to Chislam.
This will be the death rattle of a once-great nation.
Or muslims start eating pork.
Economic and dietary preference food fight!
As long as they don’t try to get between this Atheist and his Bacon!
Them’s fightin’ words!!! (Mmmm…bacon…)
Cool – so Jesus simultaneously is and isn’t the Son of God. P and not-P, dude.
This brings Deepak Chopra into the fold. Jesus is a quantum something or other.
Schrödinger’s religion? Christ’s messiah status is only collapsed after someone views him, perhaps?
On a slice of toast?
Yeah, Schrodenger’s Cat meets faith.
And as always, once the contradiction appears, the original supposition has been proven false. Was it “Suppose Abrahamic faiths are true…” or just “Suppose a man existed who was the Christ…”?
Well, that’s just great. Worst of both worlds.
F @1
The transition will be complete when Christians give up pork products in adherence to Chislam.
Not gonna happen. A good-sized chunk of the reason that Christians couldn’t stay Jewish was because of that whole “we want to let people in who like to nosh on a bit of pork, and maybe some shellfish”. Well that and they wanted to let in men who didn’t want to have a knife come near their genitals.
And, c’mon, bacon is a whole religion unto itself.
Christians liked partying more, period, which is one reason why they have so many holidays. The leaders had to outcompete the more Jewish end of the spectrum back when they were fairly interchangeable or interoperative.
Even if the Christian half does not abandon pork, this will only delay the destruction of America, as it will be contaminated by the Islamic half. They will burn the village to save it from the secular types, teh gay, and teh femiwimminz.
But you’re probably right. The National Pork Producers Council and other groups will try to ensure the consumption of pork even if most Christians lost a desire to eat it.
Much of the impetus behind this apostasy is that our president . . . has evidently made a special effort to entertain Muslim leaders at the White House, observed Ramadan, and has been shown on national television bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. The presedent’s many accommodations to Islam have prompted Col. Steve Bauer, special White House aide under five presidents, to conclude that “we have a Muslim . . . in the White House.”
If Christians want to say that Muslims do not worship the same God, even through Muslims all insist they do (Allah just means God), then Christians can’t claim to worship the same God and Jews. There is, in fact, less in common between Yahweh and the Christian concept of God, than there is between God and Allah. Both the Christian God and the Muslim Allah insist on belief as critical. It’s less explicit in Islam than in Christianity, but it’s there nevertheless. Judaism does not view their God as demanding belief, only respect of the covenant, and righteousness. Technically, a Jew can be an Atheist and still be a good Jew (you do have to do quite a few legalistic contortions to get there, but it’s all Kosher). But there is no way to reject belief in God and not be considered an apostate in Christianity and Islam.
Christianity and Islam have far more in common than either wants to admit to. And both ultimately reduce to a rejection of personal responsibility.
Technically, a Jew can be an Atheist and still be a good Jew (you do have to do quite a few legalistic contortions to get there, but it’s all Kosher).
I’d love to see the details of that, considering the text of the 1st Commandment of the Covenant.
Well, let’s see.
I am the LORD thy God
Thou shalt have no other gods
The first sentence is an identification. The second sentence says not to worship other gods. An atheist can pull that off, given those “legalistic contortions”.
Granted, this sounds to me like Pascal’s “you can trick God by pretending to believe” Wager.
Surely Christianity is the odd one out of Judaism/Christianity/Islam? Christianity insists that God suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which the other two deny. Jews and Muslims are both supposed to abstain from pork, and to slaughter animals intended for food in specified ways. Jewsih and Muslim men are both religiously required to mutilate themselves, while Christian men are not. The Jewish and Muslim calendars are both primarily lunar, while the Christian one is solar. Jews and Muslims both consider Jesus an ordinary human being, while Christians consider him to be his own father.
Jack van Impe is already hawking his theory that a New World religion called “Chrislam” is taking over the earth. Just buy his DVD!
Noah Hutchings of Southwest Radio Church is the nutcase that never seems to run out of material. He loves to prattle about numbers and science, but seems to know nothing about either.
The comments on….OH GOD THE COMMENTS THEY BURN MY EYES
In answer to the question: they don’t.
Christian orthodoxy mandates a belief in and worship of the Trinity; failure to do so makes one a heretic, according to the ancient Council of the church which defined Christian doctrine.
Islam rejects the Trinity quite vigorously, calling it polytheism. In fact, there are hadiths asserting that Trinitarians are not actual Christians, and thus not to be accorded the respect given to other “People of the Book.”
By that definition, Christians and Jews don’t worship the same God either. And yet you won’t ever see a Christian claim that the God of the Old Testament isn’t the same as the God of the New Testament (well, not since Marcion of Sinope, anyway).
Not all Christians buy the Trinity, and those who do, do not necessarily all buy the same brand.
Yeah. My grandparents were United Pentecostal Church and thus Oneness. But thus saith the Majority: UPCs aren’t orthodox.
I do so enjoy when proselytizers litter on other people’s property.
You’re repeating yourself.
The Chrislamic Creed:
I bear witness there is no god but God
And His Son Jesus Christ
No, not His Son, His Prophet Isaa
And the Holy Ghost
No, say not, “God is Three,” for God is One
And Muhammad is His Prophet
No, a false prophet and a pagan idol
Anyway, we really hate the gays, secularists and feminists.
Amen!
Ameen!
Chrislamic fundamentalists…
I kinda like it.
Gonna try it out.
Chrislamic fundamentalists are trying to deny women their fundamental rights.
Yep. Works fine. I don’t care who coined it — I’m keeping it.
I once wrote a spoof article — long lost now, alas — about the Pope canonising Mohammed and effectively merging Roman Catholicism with Islam. Arthur C. Clarke also mentioned “Chrislam” in one of his later books.
Anyway, I have long held the idea that there is no meaningful distinction to be drawn between various flavours of theism. There are atheists, and there are the enemy. And if you think “enemy” is too strong a word, you need to read more FTB.