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The Warrior Code vs. The Da Vinci CodePosted By Will iam Kilpatrick On June 2, 2010 @ 12:03 am In FrontPage | 3 CommentsWeve grown accustomed to video images of ten-year-old boys in Palestinian training camps,

dressed like mujahideen and wielding AK-47s. Luckily, the West knows how to respond to suchshows of aggressiveness. For instance, in the last few years tag and similar games have been

banned from numerous school playgrounds in the U.K. and the U.S. on the grounds that they arehazardous and inappropriate. So there, take that, you little jihadist!As it did in the seventh century, Islam is taking on the appearance of an unstoppable masculine

force. But in the West the masculine spirit looks more like a ghost. In The Suicide of Reason, LeeHarris puts the matter in stark biological terms: While we in the West are drugging our alpha

boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boysto be tough, aggressive, and ruthless.Sounds like Harris is talking war, but in reality his book is more about cultural conflict than

armed conflict. War isnt necessary if the males of one culture can cow those of another cultureinto submission. Such intimidation might seem unlikely in the U.S. where the percentage of

Muslims in the population is in the vicinity of one percent. Still, very small but determinedminorities can sometimes impose their will on much larger majorities. For example, homosexuals

make up only two to three percent of the population, yet gay activists have been highlysuccessful in advancing the twin agendas of same-sex marriage and gays in the military.

Likewise, thanks to CAIR and other activist groups, Muslims in this country have already begun towield an outsize influence.Then, too, there is the conversion factor. Conversions to Islam in the U.S. are hard to track, but

as yet there seems to be no flood of conversions. On the other hand, during the first ten years ofMuhammads ministry, Islam looked like an initial public offering that would go bust. Then,

suddenly, Islams stock (in terms of conversions) went skyward and continued in that directionfor centuries after. In short, conversion rates can accelerate dramatically. At certain tipping

points in history, time seems to speed up and decades of change are compressed into years.Are we at such a tipping point now?In line with Harris alpha male musings, the one place where conversions to Islam are exploding

is in the U.S. prison system. Roughly 80 percent of inmates who find faith during theirincarceration choose Islam. That works out to 30,000 conversions per year among federal

prisoners. Many of the men are in prison in the first place because they were attracted to themasculine world of gangs. And since Islam is doing a better job of appealing to basic masculine

psychology, it seems the logical choice. Its not for nothing that the progenitor of all currentjihadist groups is called the Muslim Brotherhood.Meanwhile, Christianity, which ought to be the rival for the affections of wayward young men,

seems to be undergoing a prolonged sexual-identity crisis. There is a serious problem inChristianity today, but its the exact opposite of the one the popular media focuses on. To read

the papers and certain works of popular fiction you would think that the main problem withChristianity is that it s too patriarchal: no women in the priesthood, no voice for women, no

recognition of the divine feminine.But the reality is a different matter. Look around you the next time youre in church, and count

the ratio of women to men. Normally, its about two-to-one in favor of the women. Moreover,women are much more involved in church activities. The Notre Dame Study of Parish Life showed

that 80 to 85 percent of those involved in parish ministries or in teaching religion were women.As one writer put it, the Roman Catholic Church has a rather rigid division of labor. The men

have the priesthood, the women have everything else. As for Protestants, all the mainlinedenominations have female priests or pastors, and the Episcopal Church even has a female

Presiding Bishop (who prayed to our mother Jesus at her installation). About twenty-fivepercent of Episcopal priests are women, as are about twenty-nine percent of Presbyterianpastors. But this has fai led to produce the miracle of renewal that Catholic advocates assure us

will follow upon womens ordination. Instead, mainline congregations have dwindled. As recentlyas 1960, mainline churches accounted for forty percent of American Protestants. Today its about

twelve percent. If present trends continue, the mainline churches will end up with an all femaleclergy, preaching to mostly female congregations in the few remaining churches that havent

been converted to mosques or condominiums.

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Contrary to what liberal Christians think, the feminization of Christianity is not the solution to the

problem, it is the problem. Christianity is unattractive to many, not because it is perceived as toomasculine, but because its perceived as too feminine. Moreover, when you add the gospel of the

divine feminine to the fact of lopsided church attendance, the problem only gets worse. Da VinciCode theology is highly titillating, but it wont bring the men flocking back to the churches. Men

have enough trouble as it is with female spirituality and with sentimentalized hymns andsermons. To think that the notion of Jesus as the first feminist will sit well with them is sheer

fantasy. Men are not inclined to take up their daily crosses to follow the androgynous one. If mencan be persuaded that the picture of Jesus presented in The Da Vinci Code is the true one, thatgives them one more reason to avoid church.But many Christian leaders still dont get it. As David Morrow points out in Why Men Hate Going

to Church, many of the songs now sung in church have the same breathless feel as top fortylove songs. In addition, women are now encouraged by some Christian pastors and writers to

think of Jesus in frankly romantic terms. Naturally enough, such forms of piety tend to createpsychological barriers for men. The idea of Christ as our brother challenges a man to become a

better man, but the idea of Christ as boyfriend is challenging in a different sense.A feminized Christianity may work to attract a certain type of man, but hes probably not the

man you want around when the local Imam starts practicing taqiyya on your congregation. WhenIslam, historys most hyper-masculine religion, is experiencing a worldwide revival and is looking

to recruit more young men to its ranks, it might not be the best time for the Church toemphasize its feminine side. So, Christians had better address the feminization and emasculation

of Christianity in a serious way if they hope to counter the attractions of Islam. Churches that arelong on sensitivity and short on manpower might want to lay in a supply of prayer rugs.Of course, feminization is not just a problem for Christians, but also for the culture as a whole. If

Islam is all about submission, Western culture, of late, seems to be all about submissiveness.Each day brings news of some abject accommodation to Islamic law or practices. The latest is the

American Academy of Pediatrics decision (now apparently reversed) to sanction a less radicalform of female genital cutting as a concession to Islamic cultural traditions.Its also telling that in Europe, where Christianity exerts much less influence, the submissiveness

is more pronounced. So feminization and its attendant emasculation are not problems that arespecific to Christianity. Nevertheless, because its a large part of American culture, the health of

Christianity ought to be of concern to al l. Our culture derives much of its strength from itsChristian faith, but a Christianity without a strong masculine presence wont be able to keep

young men from defecting to the religion of guns n poses. There are a lot of young men in ourworld who are uncertain whether to follow the sign of the crescent moon or the sign of the cross,

but its a good bet not many of them will be interested in following the yield sign which somecontemporary Christians have taken as their emblem.William Kilpatricks articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, First Things, the

National Catholic Register, Catholic World Report, World, Jihad Watch, and InvestorsBusiness Daily.

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