[lit-ideas] Re: The Strident Voice of Defeat

I see that metaphor and symbolism, not to mention subtext, are not your  
natural modes of communication.  I'll try to spell it out more clearly and  
succinctly tomorrow.   In the meantime I happily stand  corrected.
 
Julie Krueger

========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: The Strident 
Voice of Defeat  Date: 1/11/2007 3:08:43 P.M. Central Standard Time  From: 
_lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    

Well Julie, here is the  trouble you can get into by not developing an 
argument as I asked you to.   The juxtaposition of this hymn with my note 
suggests 
that you believe that  Christians are just as bad as Islamic Fundamentalists, 
or that this Hymn shows  that Christians are just as warlike as Islamic 
Fundamentalists.  Perhaps  there are others, but these two occur to me first: 
that 
you intended something  hostile to Christianity for reasons known only to 
yourself – for they aren’t  developed as an argument.   Now if you had 
something 
benign in mind,  something that hasn’t occurred to me, you should not blame 
me 
for not having  thought of it.  It is your responsibility to be clear.    
Who wrote this hymn and  what is it about?  A British preacher wrote it for 
school  children. 
Baring-Gould wrote  about this hymn, “Whit-Mon­day is a great day for 
school fes­tiv­als  in York­shire. One Whit-Mon­day,  
thir­ty 
years ago, it was ar­ranged that our school should join  forc­es with 
that of a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage. I want­ed the  
child­ren to sing when march­ing from one vil­lage to another, but  
couldn’t 
think of any­thing quite suit­a­ble; so I sat up at night,  
re­solved that I would write some­thing myself. “Onward, 
Christ­ian  
Sol­diers” was the re­sult. It was writ­ten in great haste, and I 
am  
afraid some of the rhymes are faulty. Cer­tain­ly no­thing has  
sur­prised me more than its pop­u­lar­i­ty. I don’t  
re­mem­ber how it got print­ed first, but I know that very soon it  
found 
its way into sev­er­al col­lect­ions. I have writ­ten  a 
few other hymns since then, but only two or three have be­come at all  
well-known.”  _http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/o/n/onwardcs.htm_ 
(http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/o/n/onwardcs.htm)  
So he wrote it for  school children to march to but isn’t it about Militant 
Islamic type war as  Julie seems to suggest?  Any Christian will recognize that 
Baring-Gould  takes his theme from Ephesians 6.  Paul uses warfare as an 
analogy for the  Christian’s fight against evil.  Christian war against evil 
and 
not against  physical forces.  “For our struggle is not against flesh and 
blood, but  against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of 
this 
dark  world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” 
 Ephesians 6:12 
Lawrence 
 
  
____________________________________

From:  lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:25  PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Strident Voice  of Defeat
 
Onward,  Christian Soldiers  
Text: Sabine  Baring-Gould, 1834-1924 
Music:  Arthur S. Sullivan, 1842-1900 
Tune: ST. GERTRUDE, Meter: 65.65 D with Refrain  
  
____________________________________

1.  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, 
    with the cross of Jesus going on before. 
    Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; 
    forward into battle see his banners go! 
Refrain: 
    Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, 
    with the cross of Jesus going on before. 
 
2.  At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee; 
    on then, Christian soldiers, on to victory! 
    Hell's foundations quiver at the shout of praise; 
    brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise. 
    (Refrain) 
 
3.  Like a mighty army moves the church of God; 
    brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod. 
    We are not divided, all one body we, 
    one in hope and doctrine, one in charity. 
    (Refrain) 
 
4.  Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, 
    but the church of Jesus constant will remain.
    Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail; 
    we have Christ's own promise, and that cannot fail. 
    (Refrain) 
 
5.  Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng, 
    blend with ours your voices in the triumph song. 
    Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King, 
    this through countless ages men and angels sing.
    (Refrain) 



========Original  Message========       
Subj:  
[lit-ideas]  The Strident Voice of Defeat   
Date:  
1/11/2007 1:59:06 P.M. Central  Standard Time   
From:  
_lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx)    
To:  
_Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)    
Sent on:      
I noticed quite a long  time ago in Islamic theology that they believe God 
decides who wins a battle or  a war.  I also noticed that American politicians 
were paying little  attention to that.  During the Bush Sr. & Clinton 
Administrations the  U.S. gave various Islamic  groups reason to claim victory. 
 
Whether it was Al Qaeda or Saddam’s  Iraq, they were encouraged and  exerted 
themselves even more because Allah was on their side.  Allah had  given them 
the 
victory.  We need to be especially careful of that now in  Iraq.  As Thomas 
Barnett  said in the interview Brian posted, if we don’t do it right, we 
shall very  
likely have to go back.   
I’ve been reading the  Brian-recommended The Looming  Tower,  Al-Qaeda and 
the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright.  Wright  provides an excellent example of 
how defeat is viewed.  On page 38 Wright  writes, “. . . The speed and 
decisiveness of the Israeli victory in the Six Day  War humiliated many Muslims 
who 
had believed until then that God favored their  cause.  They had lost not only 
their armies and their territories but also  faith in their leaders, in their 
countries, and in themselves.  The  profound appeal of Islamic fundamentalism 
in Egypt and elsewhere was born  in this shocking debacle. A newly strident 
voice was heard in the mosques; the  voice said that they had been defeated by 
a 
force far larger than the tiny  country of Israel.  God had turned  against 
the Muslims.  The only way back to Him was to return to the pure  religion.  
The 
voice answered despair with a simple formulation: Islam is  the solution. “ 
“. . . The primary  target of Egyptian Islamists was Nasser’s  secular 
regime.  In the terminology of jihad, the priority was defeating  the ‘near 
enemy’ 
– that is, impure Muslim society.  The ‘distant enemy’ –  the West – 
could 
wait until Islam had reformed itself.  To Zawahiri and his  colleagues that 
meant, at a minimum, imposing Islamic law in Egypt. 
“Zawahiri also sought  to restore the caliphate, the rule of Islamic clerics, 
which had formally ended  in 1924 following the dissolution of the Ottoman  
Empire but which had not exercised real power since the thirteenth  century.  
Once the caliphate was established, Zawahiri believed, Egypt would become a 
rallying  point for the rest of the Islamic world, leading it in a jihad 
against 
the  West.  ‘Then history would make a new turn, God willing,’ Zawahiri 
later 
 wrote, ‘in the opposite direction against the empire of the United  States 
and the world’s Jewish government.’”   
The Schmoos slogan,  the more Islamists we kill, the more we create is of 
course nonsense.   There is nothing like that in Islamic tradition.  If we kill 
the Militant  Islamic enemy and in the process defeat him, then Allah has 
somehow allowed  this.  It is inconceivable to them that Allah would favor 
infidels, so  there must be some other reason.  A variety of other reasons have 
been  
produced but the one we are most concerned about is the reasoning of Islamic  
Fundamentalism.  Islamic Fundamentalists argue that the less than orthodox  
Muslims who were defeated deserved to be defeated.  The way to achieve  victory 
is to return to pure religion.  What we see now in Iraq are many who fancy 
they  adhere to Pure Religion fighting against us and our protégées in the 
new 
Iraqi  state.  Yeah, it’s expensive but we need to tread carefully now.  If  
when we leave, the Islamic Fundamentalists can declare victory, that is if we  
don
’t leave the present Iraqi government in a very strong position, then we  
shall be buying trouble for ourselves.  As Barnett suggests, we shall  probably 
have to go back again.  We won’t save money by leaving  prematurely. 
Lawrence

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