Christians have put up with far too much. America continues on a dangerous path of secularization that threatens the right of Christians as a whole ‘ states have banned the teaching of creationism through narrowly interpreted Scripture, prevented the use of the Bible in classrooms to teach important lessons of vengeance and basically trampled on the rights of God-fearing Christians, such as myself. That’s not even mentioning the war on Christmas that’s stripping Santa of his faith!

There is no denying Christians had it rough in at least one period of history, along with any other group of people you decide to look up and read about on Wikipedia. Therefore, we need to reclaim our holy land. When it comes to God, sharing won’t cut it. Jerusalem’s place in the life of Jesus gives it great importance to us Christians. According to the indisputable evidence of the Bible, Jerusalem was where Jesus preached and healed, was buried, and even had his last supper.

Another land that should be on top of the to-do list for conquering is Bethlehem, Jesus’ hometown. In this case, it should be conquered and then used as a good destination to hold a yearly homecoming on New Year’s. We’ve all seen how impressive homemade rockets look over that part of the world on TV ‘ imagine a multi-million-dollar light show on New Year’s Eve. If that doesn’t convert people, I don’t know what will.

The fact of the matter is, this land belongs to the Christians as much as anyone else and we should take it back even if it results in the displacement of millions and starts an ongoing cycle of violence in the form of terrorism and hatred in an already disrupted part of the world. Christians deserve that much.

Not to mention, the establishment of the Christian state will have benefits to the area as a whole. It would be an established democracy in the area, and if the Iraq war taught us anything, it’s that people in the Middle East just want to be free. Similar to Iraq, our invasion and occupation will be met with cheers from the locals. This nation will be a guiding light and serve as a beacon of hope to neighboring nations and soon-to-be friends.

The best part of establishing this area as a Christian state would be that it would allow Christians to have blind loyalty to a state, no matter how far removed or how rarely they practice Christianity. The closest thing we have to supporting a state now is the Republican Party. Now don’t get me wrong, blind faith in the obviously righteous right wing movement is great, but we only get to support them once every few years in elections. We need to be able to rally for something more often; perhaps create a unified image we can all root for. The Catholics had the right idea with Vatican City and idolization of the Pope, but we need to have something to unite other Christians as well.

This, naturally, can only be accomplished by reclaiming our roots and our rightful place in the world, as defined by people who lived over 2,000 years ago.

‘ Branko Blagojevic is an SOM major. He reminds everyone that the Rev. Franklin Graham is coming this summer to continue this argument.