That's privilege, not persecution.

[juldea]

Standard fine text applies: this is someone else's words, not mine; I agree with much of what they are saying, but not all, and not every nuance of how they say it; this is directed at/covers certain people who make certain claims, and not the entirety of a religious group; I'm probably preaching to the crowd; etc etc.

Christians have convinced

Comments

[tiamat360]

So. I went back to read the original post to try to glean some background. And I have to say, now I'm very confused. In what way do Christians think they've been persecuted in the US? I mean, I realize that the point of the original post was to show how privileged Christians are, I'm just trying to figure out why the people who inspired the post claim that they're persecuted. Gay marriage? (Cuz obviously gay people can't be Christian...) Muslims wanting to build mosques in this country? People upset because some Christians want to burn the holy text of another religion?

Oh wait. I forgot. The religious right, pretty much by definition, makes no sense. Fucking hell...

[londo]

"Christians are being persecuted," when I see it, is usually a reaction to people trying to enforce the separation between church and state.

It's sometimes difficult to objectively tell the difference between persecution/punishment and a rolling back of privilege.

[tiamat360]

It's sometimes difficult to objectively tell the difference between persecution/punishment and a rolling back of privilege.

Yes but. No one is trying to take privilege away from Christians (at least, none of the privileges listed above*, or anything else I've heard of**), they just want to give some of those same privileges to other groups. That's not nearly the same thing.

*An aside: one of the problems I have with the post as-written is that I think that things like "Christians know they can publicize their religion in their business and attract customers, not rocks through the windows" are, in fact, a lack of persecution rather than a privilege. Not that I think anyone is trying to take that away from Christians, mind, but I don't think some of those examples work quite the way the author would like them to.

**To be fair, I'm in med school and sort of living under a rock, so it's entirely possible that there are examples that I'm unaware of. Can you think of any?

[londo]

Uh... I can't think, off the top of my head, of any organized campaigns to remove any particular sort of privilege from American Christians/Christianity. On the other hand, I'd be happy to see Christianity and politics be a whole lot more orthogonal than they are now, and if I never again heard anyone assert that America is-and-should-be ideologically a Christian nation, I'd be happy with that.

I know that I've heard cries of persecution when people dislike "one nation under god", "in god we trust", or nativity scenes at city hall.

[alexx_kay]

Relevant quote from L. Sprague DeCamp's time-travel classic _Lest Darkness Fall_:

"You don't like the Goths?"
"No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!"
"Persecution?" Padway raised his eyebrows.
"Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever."
"I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased."
"That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is!"
"You mean that you're persecuted because the heretics and such are not?"
"Certainly, isn't that obvious?

[tiamat360]

Aaand looking back at this it was a bit ironic to use the term "religious right," which I at least invariable take to mean "Christian right." Not that, probably, there aren't politically conservative Jews, Muslims, etc. who vote based on their religion, but I think of the term as uniquely referring to Christians. Another privilege, for the term to be used this way? :P

[breakinglight11]

I would tend to think that would NOT be a privilege-- who uses the term "religious right" with a positive connotation these days? Kind of suggests to me that Christians are the only ones who get tarred with the "religious reactionary" brush when there are certainly those among every religion.

[juldea]

Completely off-topic: that user icon is intriguing. What's the story behind it?

[tiamat360]

It's me dressed as Mazikeen from the comic Lucifer (and Sandman). occultatio and I dressed up as Lucifer and Maz respectively for Vericon one year (if you dig around his LJ posts from Jan/Feb of 2006 you can probably find more photos).

I tend to use it as an "I am pissed" icon.