Are American Christians "Persecuted"?

[cbayer]

http://religiondispatches.org/are-american-christians-persecuted/

BY ERIC C. MILLER FEBRUARY 20, 2015

Reflecting on the recent execution of 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS fanatics in Libya, Rod Dreher, writing at the American Conservative, calls the incident “a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like.” Coming from Dreher, for whom the future of American Christianity looks increasingly ominous, the line is sobering in itself. But he goes on:

Yet it is also the kind of thing that people in this country who fear and loathe Christians point to as an argument-ender when Christians complain about social injustice against themselves, e.g., “Get back to me when they’re chopping Christian heads off, then we’ll talk.” I would point out that ISIS is throwing gay men out of high windows to their deaths, and the crowds below are finishing off the job with stones. No secular liberal would — nor should — accept the argument that gays in the US have no right to complain against discrimination because they don’t have it as bad as gays in ISIS-held territory. So let’s put that cheap argument to bed.

At Patheos, Benjamin Corey shakes that cheap argument awake:

Can we stop complaining about this bogus idea that American Christians are persecuted now?

I mean, really. Can we stop? The world needs us to turn from ourselves and focus on this real persecution, because it’s evil and must be exposed and stopped. However, our own self-centeredness as Americans is getting in the way of the discussion on real anti-Christian persecution in the world today. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is actually distracting, offensive, and insulting to those who face real persecution for their faith.

It’s interesting that both Dreher and Corey distinguish “real” persecution from its less-than-real varieties. To his credit, Dreher has always balked at claiming membership in a persecuted class, though his concerns about the loss of religious freedom often toe a blurry line. Therein may lie a problem, or at least a source of confusion.

While Dreher often explicitly disavows the suggestion that Christians are “persecuted” in America, he also claims that they are increasingly marginalized and discriminated against. This may be a matter of semantics, but since persecution is a potent rhetorical resource, and since it is also a central theme of the Christian tradition, Christian complaints about systematic marginalization tend to blend quite seamlessly into a broader narrative of persecution.

more at link

[Htom Sirveaux]

1. Conservative Christian leaders aren't always the best determiners of persecution.

Some of them took it as persecution when Bob Jones University's tax exemption was yanked for segregation. Or decided that gay people having equal rights was persecution of Christians. As though Jesus died to keep gay people in the closet, and black people under Jim Crow.

Conservative Christians like this don't realize it (or won't admit it), but they are trivializing Christianity. If Jesus blesses the status quo, he can get in line behind many people with more worldly power than him who have already blessed it. We should just be satisfied with worshiping and obeying CEOs and military generals.

[cbayer]

5. Agree. They often see the slightest slight towards them as persecution,

but remain unable to recognize it when other groups are being blatantly persecuted.

[brewens]

2. I favor a don't ask don't tell approach to religion even though that didn't go so well

for gay people in the military. We already have that in ploitics actually, and it's working out about the same. Article six of the constitution says, "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

That's supposed to be how it works but we do exactly the opposite. Most politicians seem to feel obligated to make a show of how religious they are and be seen going to church.

Christians want to think they are being persecuted if you try and stop them forcing their superstition on others.

[cbayer]

6. So much of it is pandering, imo.

The show is targeted to specific groups.

Those who find this overt show of religiosity offensive need to be more vocal and form a bloc that can be courted by those for whom religion is not existent or is a private matter.

[safeinOhio]

3. 21 Coptic Christians beheaded

By ISIS. Then a week later 45 Muslims were burned alive by the same group. They may have been kinder to the Chritians.

[Igel]

4. It's not just semantics.

It's over ego, self-esteem, self-identity.

Those who claim persecution over anything that might be persecution are being hypervigilant. The "once bitten, twice shy" sort of mental illness that makes us paranoid cowards or aggressive paranoics. They need to proof; they know religious persecution when they see it and balk at any suggestion that perhaps those persecuting them really aren't persecuting them. I've seen Xians claim "discrimination" when they simply didn't get a job they were too obnoxious for (nobody wants to hire a salesman when during the job interview he pitches salvation to his friggin' would-be boss and threatens him with hellfire for not believing); I've seen Muslims claim "persecution" because a college didn't revise its entire academic year and course schedule to accommodate Friday prayers leading to pious students' failing or include ritual foot baths in its 1929 student union building.

Those who claim that unless everybody in a community is being beheaded there's no persecution (excuse the hyperbole and resulting scarecrow) are playing the same kind of game. "I'm not doing *that*, so my perpetual insults, discrimination, and ridicule isn't persecution at all and I'm a good, kind person who would never insult mouth-breathing neandertal idiots because I'm just plain superior and rise above that kind of subhuman."

Both also indulge deeply in that ice-cream variety known as "whole/part fallacy," thinking that skim is actually heavy cream because no skim milk ever has every molecule of fat removed, or heavy cream is skim milk because it contains molecules that aren't lipids. It's all or nothing with them. And I'm not above calling them close-minded and being rock-solid members of the Congregation of the Benighted Confirmation Biased.

The best way of putting it is that "some are, some aren't; some have more dire persecution, some have slight or subtle persecution." Then we can talk about percentages and proportions and about degrees of persecution, losing both sides in actual numbers and nuance. We can also talk about the acceptable levels of persecution and bias in government, law, society, and interpersonal relations (in which "all or nothing" is, again, a canard so true to canardness that it's best coated in orange glaze, slow baked, and then roasted to provide a crispy crust).

Take Persian Xians. They traditionally report no persecution. They've accepted their status as dhimmi: they get token representation, they get formal acceptance, as long as they accept their subjugation with meekness and a show of gratitude. It's rather worse than Jim Crow, but as long as they're not uppity it's all good.

Then there are Pakistani and Egyptian Xians, which report persecution. Both are ghettoized, have limits on their rights, and consequently legalized religious oppression is often a vehicle for personal vendettas. It's a standard for much of the Muslim world, from Andalusia to Indonesia, intermittently and never everywhere at once, for much of Islamic history. Even without head-chopping, there's very real oppression that's religious, social, economic, political. If a Xian girl's kidnapped, forcibly married and forced to convert, that girl and her family have often had no recourse. No rape, by the laws of those countries. And reversion to Xianity is a crime. For some, that's not persecution.

Now, Muslims in the US claim persecution--or, rather, advocates claim persecution on their behalf. Yet the crimes committed against Muslims are illegal, and not couched in the law. That makes that a different kind of persecution, but one that their advocates insist is true persecution.

In fact, that persecution is seen in unfavorable stereotypes, job discrimination, personal relations, and laws that restrict either the practice or spread of Islam using means that aren't overtly religious. Zoning regulations, for instance, or parking ordinances.

It doesn't matter that many Xian groups or Xians as a whole are subject to highly unfavorable stereotypes. Or job discrimination.

It doesn't matter that more than a few Xian groups have had the same kind of laws applied to control their practices. Some jurisdictions need tax money, don't want parking in a neighborhood glutted by home-based worship services, or resent having a new building put up because the church is simply unwelcome. "Holy rollers" instead of pious Presbyterians, for instance. Done to Muslims, it's persecution. Done to Xians, it's not. The bias is fairly obvious, so we resort, perchance to what can be called "structural persecution." It's not the attitudes, it's the pattern of bias sufficiently often or sufficiently accepted to justify the word that matters. Moreover, we calibrate the definition to meet our personal, psychological or community-level legal needs. And above all, we're hypervigilant. If it can be anti-Muslim persecution, it must be. By default. Exceptional proof is needed to show that a mugging is just a mugging.

We manipulate the semantics in hopes of that old Whorf-Sapir thesis in applied form: We can control and manipulate people by controlling and manipulating their language. (Which has been a staple of both right and left--on the left, it's just politics; on the right, it's historically mostly been advertising.) We also do it to justify ourselves.

However, I have seen Xians driven from the room crying because "good" people routinely insulted and abused them verbally. I have seen them turned down for employment. I've seen people who object to a cross as jewelry, but insist that Muslim women's head-gear is fine. Or insist on rescheduling for Ramadan but not for a required observe by Xians. I've also seen the reverse, with "Xian" and "Muslim" swapped.

It was always persecution for those who perceived themselves wronged, correctly or not. And those who engaged in the persecution (when real) never let the definition of "discrimination" or "persecution" slip so that they were in danger of being hit on the head with it.

The same kind of debate goes on about race and ethnicity, culture and language status, for all the same reasons. Thankfully the entire boxer/briefs wars are over.

[cbayer]

7. What is the advantage, the secondary gain, to taking the position that one is persecuted?

[Promethean]

8. Persecuted is a strong word.

It gets those sympathetic to the persecuted worked up and more likely to take action. So by declaring persecution they are able to prop up their failing ideology a bit longer by making those who follow it shout louder for a while. In the end its only delaying the inevitable. Just like with racial discrimination and every other little social injustice the christians backed and society eliminated once the change became the norm they lost even the ability to declare it persecution.

[cbayer]

9. Agree. It stimulates a circling of the wagons and feeds the tribalism.

It doesn't just happen with christians, that's for sure.