Conversion

To March to Jerusalem:

Spengler of the Asia Times has a piece that builds on what has been a long-time theme of his: a conflict between Islam and what he sees as (hopes to see as?) a resurgent Christendom.

After Pope Benedict XVI showed unprecedented courtesy to visiting American President George W Bush last week, much has been written about the Christian faith that binds the pope and the president.

It is not only faith, but the temerity to act upon faith, that the pope and the president have in common. In the past I have characterized Benedict's stance as, "I have a mustard seed, and I'm not afraid to use it."

...

As Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, "From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem."

Islam is in danger for the first time since its founding. The evangelical Christianity to which George W Bush adheres and the emerging Asian church are competitors with whom it never had to reckon in the past. The European Church may be weak, but no weaker, perhaps, than in the 8th century after the depopulation of Europe and the fall of Rome. An evangelizing European Church might yet repopulate Europe with new Christians as it did more than a millennium ago.

Conversion has become a secular sin in the West. It is easy to understand the reasons why. We had a bloody history over religious conversion, especially the time of the Thirty Years War, which informed early Enlightenment thinking. The Scots who devised most of the thinking on which America itself was based saw continuing wars, as the victors of the English Protestant split ignited a feud between Covenanter and Anglican Protestants. And so on.

Yet there is a basic command in Christianity to attempt conversion: not through force, but through persuasion and example. In guarding against forcible conversion, we have come so far as to have made it rude to attempt philosophical conversion.

Case in point: I've been running this blog for more than five years. I regularly quote Chesterton, speak approvingly of the Pope, and yet it is clear that I was raised Protestant and am not Catholic. Not one of my Catholic readers has ever tried to convert me. Not so much as a, "You know, given how moved you were by The Ballad of the White Horse, you might want to read..."

Neither have any of my Protestant readers, even those of you who would call yourselves Evangelical, ever attempted to convert me to your particular church. We just don't do that anymore.

Yet this is a period when people switch religions at the drop of a hat. Neither my sister nor I still follow the religion in which we were raised. I sought out a degree in comparative religions, studying now Buddhism and now Hinduism, now Chinese folk religions and now historical pagan ones. I spoke the other day of my wedding, in which one of my groomsmen was a converted Muslim, and the other a Quaker who had become a Jew. The third had passed from agnosticism to Methodism, on the strength of a loving woman's faith. One hundred percent of the men in my wedding party had changed religions within a decade of the ceremony. People are adrift, and seeking truths to which they can moor their lives.

It is worth reflection. What do you believe is true, beyond what you can prove is true? Is there a tradition left that is strong enough, and deep enough, that you can trust your weight to it? Or must we each wander alone?