Really?

It is remarkable how ignorant the news media has become and that ignorance is mirrored across social media as well.  Historic Christian symbols have become markers not of the great Christian past but of their more recent kidnapping by supremacist groups and others on the edge of society.  No where does this show up more than in the strange case of tattoos.  Those who know me know I am not a particular fan of painting up the body but that is not the issue here.  The issue here is how ignorant our society has become of ancient and clearly mainstream Christian symbolism so that as soon as somebody sees a tat that has Latin or a Jerusalem Cross, the flag of racism or bigotry is labelled against the person when it should be left square at the feet of those who just do not know or want to know Christian history.

“Deus vult” is a Latin phrase meaning “God wills it,” and is often used by Christians, and in particular Catholics, to express belief in divine providence. The motto has been in use at least since the First Crusade of the late 11th century.   No less than the once vaunted the Associated Press (AP) published an article attacking then Secretary of Defense nominee and Army National Guard officer Pete Hegseth over his tattoo of that popular Christian motto “Deus vult.”  I have no interest in defending Pete Hegseth.  I do not know the man and had not heard much of him until Trump began speaking his name.  The bone I have to pick is how easily supposedly "normal" mainstream media types raise a red flag for something they simply do not understand or want to understand and therefore got wrong.

It is not about Trump but about how news media have become so ignorant and foolish in their handling of things that have to do with orthodox Christianity.  This is no different than the Justice Department's view of Latin Mass Roman Catholic folk as potential terrorists.  Really?  How did we go from being rather informed about Christianity as a whole to being completely stupid about a faith which has been and remains woven deeply into the fabric of American history and identity?  Those on the traditional side of things are often derided as ignorant and uneducated and easily manipulated by extremists but this is a clear case of how easily those on the liberal or progressive side are themselves caught up in ideology instead of facts.  Any student of history who has spent a moment on the history of the Crusades would have recognized the Jerusalem Cross as a legitimate Christian symbol with a long and storied history of use.  Any student who made it into high school a hundred years ago could have translated the Latin into English and known exactly what that phrase meant.  The fact that we do not know history means we are even more vulnerable to those who abuse history in pursuit of ideology that based not in fact but in fear.  That is a bad day for America.