{"id":61304,"date":"2018-05-27T13:03:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T19:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=61304"},"modified":"2018-09-05T09:53:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T15:53:40","slug":"winding-up-for-the-moment-with-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/05\/winding-up-for-the-moment-with-lebanon.html","title":{"rendered":"Winding up, for the moment, with Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Paris<\/a>
Formerly a great and beautiful city, Paris has now, I\u2019ve been told by one American commenter on my blog, become a \u201cthird-world hell-hole\u201d owing to the influence of Muslims. \u00a0I confess that I\u2019ve never noticed that transformation, and that I still can\u2019t see it even now. \u00a0Paris still seems to me a great and beautiful city. \u00a0But then, I seldom visit<\/em> Paris. \u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s been almost a year since my previous stay here. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Concluding the second-to-the-last chapter of my book manuscript, at least as it currently stands:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Misunderstanding was also the problem when the American Marines were sent to Lebanon in 1982. The United States thought, as well it might, that it was sending the troops in to prop up the legitimate government of Lebanon and to help it reestablish its con\u00adtrol over the entire countryside. What the Americans did not realize was that the government of Lebanon was controlled by the Maronite Christians, largely for their own benefit, and that it really was simply one among the many warring factions of the country, with little more claim to legitimacy than any other of the country\u2019s warlords. In fact, the government of Lebanon called in the Ameri\u00adcans to help in its battle against other sectors of the population, most particularly against the Druze with whom the Maronites shared the Shouf Mountains. The American problem was that it was reading the Lebanese situation in the light of its own concepts and experience. It was deceived by the appearance of parliamen\u00adtary democracy and republican presidency that Lebanon had cop\u00adied so well from its contacts with the West. The Lebanese, too, would read the Americans in the light of their own experience. To many of them, the American Marines would come to be merely one more of the nation\u2019s private militias, one that happened to be in the pay and control of the Maronites. Thus, to the Shiites and the Sun\u00adnis and the Druze, the Americans became the enemy. The United States had entered a tribal conflict on behalf of one of the tribes and did not even know it. (This case ought, by itself, to illustrate the imperative need for more knowledge of foreign countries and cultures among our policymakers.)[1]<\/a> That is why the American Marines were blown up. It was an act that seemed full of irrational hatred to most in the West. Within the framework of Lebanese his\u00adtory and society, though, it had a certain logic.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the mid-1980s, the Shiites had emerged to dominate Beirut. Their fiery religious absolutism, a far cry from the old and rather decadent tolerance of the Levant, had fundamentally changed the atmosphere of the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is into this Near East, surging with passions and boiling with a newly reenergized Islam, that the Church must someday bring the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The time is clearly not yet. Never\u00adtheless, because of our own deep interest in the region, and because of our mandate to preach the gospel to all mankind, we are in the area now. Indeed, although it is little known among the Saints, we have been in the area for quite some time. The next and final chap\u00adter of this book will sketch the history of Latter-day Saint contacts with the Near East and will attempt to outline the direction the future of the gospel will take there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Certain writers, notable among them Frances Fitzgerald, have made a compelling case that a sometimes spectacular American failure to understand Vietnamese culture played a major role in producing the military disaster that occurred there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Paris, France<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Concluding the second-to-the-last chapter of my book manuscript, at least as it currently stands: \u00a0 Misunderstanding was also the problem when the American Marines were sent to Lebanon in 1982. The United States thought, as well it might, that it was sending the troops in to prop up the legitimate government of Lebanon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWinding up, for the moment, with Lebanon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Concluding the second-to-the-last chapter of my book manuscript, at least as it currently stands:   Misunderstanding was also the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/05\/winding-up-for-the-moment-with-lebanon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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