Repudiating The Myth Of Christian Persecution In The United States

[cleanhippie]

Many Christians walk around with a Gibralter-sized chip on their shoulders, crying about how they are being treated unfairly and compare themselves with David in that mythical story we all know so well. They fly into rages when unbelievers have the unmitigated gall to throw up a billboard here and there about godlessness because we all know there are almost NO Christian billboards out there…

The fact is that Christians are very much privileged in the United States. Christianity is an ideology in the US that enjoys implicit, unrelenting, and uncritical acceptance and one would have to be a complete idiot to counter the fact that the mythical delusion of Christianity is dominant here. Christians are continuously told that they are special and deserve privileges. Many stores take the Christian Sabbath into account and are not open for business on Sundays. Most Christians don’t have to work on their holidays. They can assume that television programming will be geared toward their holidays. They can generally construct holiday displays such as nativities without fearing vandalism. “Merry Christmas” is a greeting that they will most often hear during this time of year and can, with impunity, ignore and be ignorant of the holidays celebrated by other religious groups. In fact, many school events will probably address Christian holidays. There is no shortage of churches for a traveling Christian to worship at and whenever someone talks about or thanks god, Christians can assume it’s their god. Almost every hotel in the United States has bibles in their rooms and when there is a need, Christians have many charities to donate to or get assistance from.

Persecuted? Please… Unlike those who do not believe in a deity, Christians won’t be discriminated against because of their religion and can assume that their opinion won’t be ignored because of their religion and they never have to worry about living in a place where they are not welcome because they will almost never encounter groups that exclude Christians. While it can be a gut-wrenching decision for an unbeliever to “come out”, Christians don’t worry about revealing their religion to parents, friends, etc. Without worry of being labeled a bigot amongst their own, they Christians can discriminate in ways not otherwise allowed.

Christians can wear evangelistic clothing or jewelry without fear of persecution, as well, and can promote their religion on cars or houses without fear of vandalism. They rarely have to worry if their religion will hinder their professional ambitions, but if you are known as atheist, it becomes very difficult to find or keep a job. In fact, Christians can assume that most neighbors and coworkers share their beliefs and many Christian owned businesses participate in advertising in directories of other Christian-owned businesses. In short, Christians can assume that almost anywhere they go and anything they do, they’ll feel normal.

--snip--

There is a reason so many unbelievers refuse to be accommodating and stand idly and quietly on the sidelines. It’s because so many unbelievers get routinely thrown under the bus. There is a reason so many unbelievers cannot keep their mouths shut while the children of our Nation are getting indoctrinated every Sunday morning, rendering them totally and completely unequipped to integrate into a post-modern society. It’s because they are being taught that the earth was created six-thousand years ago, that a nine-hundred-year-old man crammed an army of animals into a boat for forty days, that donkeys and snakes talk and all the other countless and totally insane fairy tales that they are taught as unmitigated truth. That unbelievers should be tolerant and accommodating is an insult to the collective of human intellect and against the very backbone of basic human rights.



http://atheists.org/blog/2011/09/03/repudiating-the-myth-of-christian-persecution-in-the-united-states

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The particular "Christians" liken themselves to victims of the Roman Empire,

subject to crazy emperors and lions.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. The only Christians who consider themselves persecuted in the U.S. are the ones

who listen to Pat Robinson.

He's the one who started that crazy meme in the 1990s. I've called a lot of people on it over the years.

It usually goes, "Christians in America are as persecuted as Jews were in Nazi Germany."

Well, I happen to have a copy of the Diary of Anne Frank, and it lists the restrictions that the Nazis placed on Jews in the Netherlands. I ask the "persecuted" fundies if any of these things have ever happened to them.

Of course, they haven't. They're still allowed to drive, to practice their profession, to attend public schools, to shop anywhere and any time they please, etc.

So then I say, "If Pat Robertson says that Christians are as persecuted as Jews in Nazi Germany, then he's either stupid or lying. Which is it, and how can you trust him on anything?"

[LeftishBrit]

3. Exactly

Unfortunately it's having an impact here, and I suspect it involves copycatting from the American religious right. The proportions of very religious people in Britain are smaller than in America, but the role of Christianity in the state is to some degree institutionalized (bishops in the legislature, the Queen is head of both the state and of the Church of England), and no way are Christians persecuted. And until recently they weren't in the habit of claiming to be, either. But there have arisen some rather nasty groups and people, notably Andrea Minichiello Williams and her cohorts, who allege that Christians are persecuted every time they are prevented from discriminating against gays, or defeated in attempts to prohibit abortion. And there are some right-wingers in the media, not always particularly religious themselves, who use this sort of allegation as a stick with which to beat 'the left'.

[Thats my opinion]

18. Hey, I'm a Christian

and I am certainly not persecuted for being one. I take a few shots in these parts, but I hardly call that persecution. I am willing to take on the so-called right-wing persecutors, particularly in Pat Robertson tradition. They don't have any idea what persecution means when you are in the majority. Silly stuff.

[Kurmudgeon]

4. When an article starts with an assumption of prejudice, their bias is obvious.

[cleanhippie]

5. Uhm, yeah, ok, thanks.

[Tikki]

6. Beautiful California woman crowned Miss Wonderful..

California woman crowned Miss Wonderful

Beautiful woman crowned...

Woman crowned Miss Wonderful...

Miss Wonderful crowned..

So beautiful California woman crowned Miss Wonderful is prejudicial? or maybe just informative!!


Tikki

[rug]

7. Pastor Al is trying his dmandest to make up for his years as a Pastor.

[trotsky]

8. Ad hom.

Can you address the topic, or will you retreat with one-liners?

[rug]

10. Yes I can.

[trotsky]

11. By all means then, go right ahead.

Tell us how tough it is for Christians in the USA.

[rug]

12. That's not my premise, it's Pastor Al's.

The classic stuff the scarecrow, then beat it.

[trotsky]

13. I asked you to speak about the topic rather than attack the author.

I haven't told you to defend any straw men. So let's hear you address the topic.

[rug]

14. Then I won't defend his straw men.

That's all he's doing.

[trotsky]

15. Once again, no one asked you to.

But regardless, millions of Christians right here in the U.S. believe that they are indeed persecuted. If you are not one of them, then you were wrong earlier when you said you could address the topic.

[The Magistrate]

16. A Bit Of Documentation, Sir

http://www.worthynews.com/1710-persecution-of-christians-growing-in-the-united-states

Persecution of Christians Growing in the United States

According to some experts a pattern is emerging reminiscent of Jewish persecution in post war Germany. "Isolation of, and discrimination against Christians is growing almost geometrically" says Don McAlvany in The Midnight Herald. "This is the way it started in Germany against the Jews. As they became more isolated and marginalized by the Nazi propaganda machine, as popular hatred and prejudice against the Jews increased among the German people, wholesale persecution followed. Could this be where the growing anti-Christian consensus in America is taking us?"

Tolerance of anti-Christian attitudes in the United States is escalating. Recently, a woman in Houston, Texas was ordered by local police to stop handing out gospel tracts to children who knocked on her door during Halloween. Officers informed her that such activity is illegal (not true), and that she would be arrested if she continued. In Madison, Wisconsin, the Freedom from Religion Foundation distributes anti-Christian pamphlets to public school children entitled, "We Can Be Good Without God." The entertainment industry and syndicated media increasingly vilify Christians as sewer rats, vultures, and simple-minded social ingrates. The FBI and the Clinton White House brand fundamentalist Christian groups as hate mongers and potential terrorists. The Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago warns that plans by Southern Baptists to hold a convention in the Windy City next year might foment "hate crimes" against minorities, causing some Christians to fear that speaking openly about their religious beliefs will soon be considered a crime. All this, while Christianity itself is often a target of hate-crime violence.



http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=294133

Half of Americans believe U.S. Christians persecuted


Almost half of Americans believe that Christians in the United States are being persecuted by homosexual "marriage" advocates who take legal action against them over their religious beliefs

The scientific telephone survey was conducted April 19-21 and has a margin of error of 3.23 percentage points. It found that 49.2 percent of all respondents consider the legal activism against Christians and their beliefs regarding homosexuality to be "persecution."



http://www.ethicsdaily.com/conservative-christian-panelists-u-s-christians-persecuted-cms-18019

At a conservative Christian conference designed to flex political muscle, a top Southern Baptist leader joined other conservative Christian activists in claiming that U.S. evangelical Christians are the main victims of religious bigotry.

Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spoke on a panel at the second annual conference of the Faith & Freedom Coalition (FFC). The FFC is a conservative Christian political organization founded by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

Joining Land on the panel titled "Fighting Religious Bigotry" were Tim Goeglein (a vice president at Focus on the Family Action, a political offshoot of James Dobson's Focus on the Family) and Colby May (a lawyer at the American Center for Law & Justice, which was founded by Pat Robertson).

[Rob H.]

19. Those articles are from at least one fundagelical wingnut site

specifically, WorldNetDaily, or at the very least cite right-wing fundagelicals. (Seriously, we're now giving credence on DU to things said by Richard Land?!?)

[The Magistrate]

20. If You Want To Know What Bee-Keepers Think, Sir, You Buy 'Bee-Keepers' Monthly'

The point at issue is not whether there is actual persecution of Christians in the United States, but whether a goodly number of people in the United States believe there to be such persecution. For that purpose, a site frequented by Christian fundamentalists committed to right wing political views is a highly appropriate citation, as its claims of such persecution both cater to, and shape, the views of its habitual audience. Similarly, the fact that Land says this indicates a great many members of his sect share that view.

[Rob H.]

22. I owe you an apology

I think I misunderstood the point you were trying to make when you posted those links--sorry 'bout that. :blush:

[The Magistrate]

23. No Problem, Sir

We have here a member who pretends almost no one actually thinks Christians are persecuted in the United States today, and so it seemed right to present some creatures from the mainstream of the Christian right who state exactly that belief.

[trotsky]

25. Thank you very much for that, Sir.

It is most appreciated.

[cleanhippie]

9. And doing a fine job at making amends, which is more than can be said about child-raping priests

and the church and its adherents that hides and protects them.

[Igel]

17. Silly article.

Makes assumptions and claims and then deduces the "truth" from them.

"Power" has to be defined by context. If you're a Xian in a place where atheism is the rule and there are constant atheist jokes and a hiring committee chair says that they'd never hire a Xian because they're all stupid, you keep quiet and feel uncomfortable. If you're an atheist in a place where everybody else is a Xian and they rail on you, it's uncomfortable.

So I've seen Xian persecution. Even had one fellow student, hearing that I went to church, shout out that I was a fucking racist Nazi, on the main quad, during the change of class at a university. He had no idea what my church was like; being Xian merited wearing a yellow star.

The church employee when she applied for a secular job insisted on just saying she worked for an NGO. When I was a reference for her, I had to tiptoe around the name of the NGO. She honestly feared that she wouldn't be hired because she was Xian; I think there was a good chance she was right.

I'm white. I was told by my Asian boss that he didn't want to hire a white, they're all stupid and lazy. He wanted to hire a fellow Asian, even extended the deadline for a while to get a more qualified applicant. Still, I'd worked out okay. Before that place hired me I had previously applied at a company in a mostly white area that defied the statistical odds by having a black owner and something like 20 employees, all black. I handed in my resume and application and the black clerk behind the counter asked me if I really saw a reason to hand it in, looking behind her. I shrugged, nodded, and said, "Yes." I suspect that the resume hit the trash before I was out the door.

[The Magistrate]

21. True, Sir: Everybody's Down On The White Man, He Just Can't Catch A Break Nowadays

Specially if he believes in Jesus....

[Humanist_Activist]

24. Aren't you a privileged whiny white boy.

That wasn't a question, but rather a statement of fact, and I say this as a white boy myself and I've given your opinion all the respect it deserves. Assuming you didn't make up the bullshit you just spouted, I say you are dealing with this discrimination in the most immature of fashions. First off, imagine EVERY employer being like the 2 you mention, or EVERY NGO being like the one your friend applied to.

Again, assuming you are telling the truth, which seems rather unlikely, the discrimination you and your friend have faced are miniscule compared to what minorities of every stripe have faced and will face every fucking day. So if you are trolling for sympathy, you failed, if you want to complain about being a poor persecuted, white, Christian, there are other boards for that where people will be more sympathetic.

[NMMNG]

26. I was a Christian for 20 years

I never once felt the slightest bit "persecuted", or anything remotely close.


I've felt plenty of it since returning to atheism, and for being gay.