Friday, October 28, 2016

Northwestern University Historian Claims Christianity Poses Bigger Threat Than Islamic Terrorism

Tom Ciccotta

A "scholar" from Northwestern University argued recently that Christian Fundamentalism poses a greater threat to the United States than Islamic terrorism.

Catherine M. Wallace, who is a faculty member at Northwestern’s School of Medicine and a Christian herself, argues that fundamentalist access to United States armaments is the number one threat to the nation’s security.
Wallace argues that because radical Christians are in positions of power and control the nuclear codes, they pose a greater danger to American society than do Islamic terrorists.

“If [anything Islamic] wanted to attack an American city, they had to hijack an airliner. If they want to blow up a concert, they need to put bombs on their own children and send young men in to kill themselves… that kind of radicalism [Christian fundamentalism] in control of nuclear codes was a much, much greater threat,” Wallace claimed.
According to The Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper of the University of Chicago, Wallace believes that a literal reading of the Bible is responsible for the threats posed by Christian fundamentalists.

In Wallace’s view, this radicalism stems from a literal reading of the Bible. “Nobody in the ancient world would have read the Bible literally,” Wallace said. The idea of a literal reading is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, according to Wallace—church fathers of the past would discourage anyone from taking the Bible literally.
Therefore, according to Wallace, the fundamentalists have it all wrong. “Christian fundamentalism is a malignant form of Christianity,” Wallace said. In her opinion, their literalist reading creates misconceptions of what the Bible means, fostering a climate of hate and leading to increased and unnecessary conflict between Christians and the rest of the world. …
When asked a final question on how she thought Jesus would respond to the modern political climate, Wallace answered on a positive note. “Jesus was first a Jewish prophet reciting the Jewish rant in its standard edition, which is social justice, socio-economic justice. Care for widows and orphans, which is to say the unemployable. People who can’t earn their own living. And the just sharing of the world’s resources.”

Wallace concluded the conversation on the dangers of Christian fundamentalism by arguing that a modern Jesus Christ would be a socialist and advocate for “the just sharing of the world’s resources.”