"Christianophobia" - is there a double standard in the way Christianity is treated?

[Gyrate]

Continuing the discussion from Trump-haters: What things do you agree with Trump on?:

Duly following mod instructions to take a very off-topic discussion elsewhere (as it has nothing to do with Trump per se). We’ll see how long it lasts in GD.

@Velocity

On the topic of the thread, this may not so much be a Trump complaint as a MAGA complaint (although Trump himself plays it up a lot to win votes), but I agree that there is often a double standard in the way Christianity and other religions are treated, in the sense that Christianity is often the only religion that can be safely criticized or mocked freely by Hollywood, media, academics and others with no fear of being called a “-phobe” (the term “Christianophobia” carries no weight whatsoever, unlike “Islamophobia”) while every other religion is shielded by “don’t mock them, it’s bigotry to mock them,” followed by possible cancellation of someone who mocks those other religions.

You mention later - and then handwave away - the “punching up/down” point but it is extremely important. Those “other religions” have been – and continue to be – subject to serious persecution in America and other Christian-predominant societies. In much the same way as racial slurs, mocking or insulting the empowered majority does virtually no damage to them, whereas doing so to persecuted minorities inflames their active and ongoing dehumanization by members of that majority. To insist that it’s somehow a level playing field and that mocking one group is the same as mocking another is to deliberately ignore that.

And - ironically - part of the reason Christianity and Bible stories are the topics of so many jokes are because of their ubiquity. Even non-Christians in America are likely well-familiar with the stories about Christmas and Easter because they are so embedded into our secular society. Which - again - demonstrates that Christianity in America is privileged, not persecuted. Schools and the government literally shut down for Christian holidays (Constitution be damned).

Meanwhile: write jokes about the life of Muhammed and who’s going to laugh at them? The people who know the material probably won’t find them funny, and everyone else won’t get them. Because those stories aren’t told in public schools and entertainment and even the news in the same way Christian ones are. Which is another form of persecution.

That said, there’s plenty of material about modern radical Islam (I personally recommend the film Four Lions - it’s sharp and very funny) so it’s clearly not a taboo subject.

And as for Jewish jokes, well - no one writes better jokes about the Jews than the Jews themselves, frankly, whereas non-Jews making up Jewish jokes tend not to be doing so in the spirit of good humor. Maybe we can file that one next to the common “Why can black people say the N-word but I can’t?” whine.

And on top of that, it very much often does feel that Islam, for all of its patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, bad behaviors, gets looser and more lenient treatment compared to Christianity - which despite also being a similar Abrahamic religion, is arguably overall less bad than Islam.

“Arguably” is doing a lot of lifting here. Christianity - and particularly the American strains of it - contains and implements a vast amount of racism, sexism, homophobia, sectarianism, and assorted other bigotry and nastiness. And if you’re response is “Not all Christianity”, the answer is “Not all Islam” either. It’s just that when Christianity is the default (there’s that privilege again), people are more like to excuse its faults while amplifying the faults of others.

Islam has a long, long history of enlightened thought and tolerance. That is no more negated by the radical extremists in Islam than the good points of Christianity are by its own radical extremists.

Progressives will usually defend that by saying Christianity is the dominant religion, that it’s punching up and not punching down, etc. But the perception, and difference in standard, is real. This was likely a huge factor in propelling such a vast amount of the evangelical vote to go MAGA.

Yeah, what you and the MAGA crowd are “perceiving” is an ongoing resistance to both the supremacy of Christianity as the heavily-embedded status quo in Western society and the pushback against increasingly radical Christian nationalism (see pretty much everything Pete Hegseth is doing to the military, for a glaring example). Christians in America are privileged, and an unfortunately large percentage of them enjoy that privilege too much to want to cede any of it in the name of actual equality (again, Constitution be damned). And to those with privilege, losing any of it feels like persecution.

And yes, I’m also aware that the MAGA cohort suffer from a carefully-inculcated sense of aggrieved entitlement. That doesn’t mean that their sense of persecution is at all warranted, no matter what the talking heads on their preferred media tell them.

[Velocity]

I’m heading out to run some errands so I can’t give a very in-depth reply now, but I think the difference is that, IMHO, religions should be analyzed on basis of merits and demerits alone without regard to whether they are privileged or disadvantaged in a society. If a religion says vaccines are harmful and to be avoided, or that the Earth and universe was created just 3,000 years ago, then that religion should be rightfully criticized for its stance regardless of whether its followers are 1% or 70% of the electorate. Being a minority doesn’t make one any more right. The fact that Islam is a minority in the West by no means means that Islam’s merits or demerits are any better or worse. (I’m not saying Islam opposes vaccines or says the universe is just three thousand years old, I’m just giving a hypothetical example.)

So the difference all comes down to whether one goes by affirmative-action mindset or a level-playing-field-for-all mindset. If affirmative-action, then we’d have to prop up the minority religions and push down Christianity. If level playing field, then all religions are judged equally on their merits/demerits with no favoritism. (To be sure, some MAGA folks claim to oppose preferential treatment but in fact don’t just want Christianity treated the same as other religions, they want special boosted status. I agree on that.)

[Velocity]

For clarification, my point isn’t, “Don’t criticize Christianity” (as someone who spent 30 years in the church before leaving, I could write a whole book on the bads of Christianity.) It’s, “We should freely criticize what’s bad about a belief or practice without taking minority status into consideration.”

[Aspenglow]

@Gyrate

Duly following mod instructions to take a very off-topic discussion elsewhere (as it has nothing to do with Trump per se).

Quick aside: I’m sure I speak for all P&E/GD mods when I say a heartfelt, “Thank you!”

[Horatio_Hellpop]

My Catholic upbringing steeped me in the notion that Christians, especially Catholics, are maligned and oppressed. It skips the part where we have done most of the oppressing. It’s been a thousand years since Christians have had more to fear from lions than lions have had to fear from Christians. I don’t think it’s particularly phobic to point this out, or to push back against in-your-face proselytizing, which in this country is pretty unique to Christians. Muslims and Scientologists do it too, but seldom from behind a badge or position of government authority.

[Jackmannii]

Adherents of any dominant religion have a difficult time persuading others that they’re persecuted, especially when said persecution involves resistance to their further entrenching themselves into the power structure. It’s an article of faith among many Christians however that they remain persecuted, which seems essential to their worldview, but only occurs now in isolated pockets globally.

@Gyrate

Meanwhile: write jokes about the life of Muhammed and who’s going to laugh at them? The people who know the material probably won’t find them funny…Islam has a long, long history of enlightened thought and tolerance

Salman Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo would like a word.

[Wesley_Clark]

@Gyrate

And as for Jewish jokes, well - no one writes better jokes about the Jews than the Jews themselves, frankly, whereas non-Jews making up Jewish jokes tend not to be doing so in the spirit of good humor. Maybe we can file that one next to the common “Why can black people say the N-word but I can’t?” whine.

There are black people who supported Jim Crow too. The fact that you are so dismissive of mistreated of the Jews in todays climate shows, to me, that you are viewing this through the lens of political power. You see Jews and Christians as powerful groups and Muslims as powerless groups, and you are interpreting this issue through the lens of bringing down the powerful and lifting up the powerless. That is your perogative, but a lot of people do not subscribe to that.

A lot of people who reject Islam do so because they reject the misogyny, oppression, backwardness, cruelty, ignorance, tribalism, etc associated with some adherents to it. A lot of ‘Islamophobes’ are more just opposed to cruelty, oppression of marginalized groups. If educated muslims who believe in womens rights, secularism, jewish rights, gay rights, etc want to integrate a lot of people have no problem with that. The issue is the ones who want to oppress others. The leftist idea that ‘right wing theocratic oppression is horrible, unless a marginalized brown person does it’ is not an appealing argument to a lot of us on the left.

Having said that, there are movements among the right who reject Islam not out of a desire to protect marginalized groups (these right wingers want to oppress the same groups a lot of muslims oppress. Jews, women, gays, secularists, etc) but because they view society as an organism and they see brown skinned muslims from the MENA region as an impurity of their culture.

Also many of us reject all religion. The idea that we are supposed to make an exception for Islam just because they are oppressed within the western power structure is not persuasive. Religion is a backwards cancer on humanity. Life does not begin and end in the western power structure and a groups power within it, there is an entire universe outside of that philosophy.

[Aspenglow]

@Horatio_Hellpop

My Catholic upbringing steeped me in the notion that Christians, especially Catholics, are maligned and oppressed.

My very Catholic stepmother was apparently steeped in this same notion. She argued to me one day about how persecuted Catholics are in government. I pointed out that 6 Supreme Court Justices are Catholic, and one (Gorsuch) is formerly Catholic (now Anglican). Then I asked her to please name how many atheists are on the Court.

Oh.

As for Christianity being better or worse than Islam, I always remember this:

Bible Disguised as Quran Experiment

[Odesio]

@Gyrate

You mention later - and then handwave away - the “punching up/down” point but it is extremely important.

I’ve often found the line between legitimate criticism and punching down is blurred. Sometimes deliberately by people who want to protect something and other times by those who simply want to tear something down.

@Gyrate

And - ironically - part of the reason Christianity and Bible stories are the topics of so many jokes are because of their ubiquity.

I think John Cleese makes the same argument about Life of Brian. They poked fun at Christianity because it’s something a lot of British people have in common while jokes about Islam would have flown over their heads. Which is a pretty persuasive argument.

But Islam is a growing religion and is a bigger part of British and American life than it was in the 1970s. On the second season of their television series Bullshit, Penn & Teller aired an episode called “The Bible: Fact or Fiction” where they were pretty hard on biblical literalist. When asked if they’d ever do an episode on the Quran, Penn’s reply was something along the lines of, “No. We have families.”

We in the west seem to have accepted that certain criticisms of Islam must be avoided so there are no violent reprisals as with Charlie Hebdo or Theo Van Gogh.

[Gyrate]

@Velocity

Being a minority doesn’t make one any more right.

Nobody said it did. What it does is make one more vulnerable, especially when that minority has a millennia-long history of being violently persecuted and dehumanized.

@Velocity

So the difference all comes down to whether one goes by affirmative-action mindset or a level-playing-field-for-all mindset. If affirmative-action, then we’d have to prop up the minority religions and push down Christianity. If level playing field, then all religions are judged equally on their merits/demerits with no favoritism. (To be sure, some MAGA folks claim to oppose preferential treatment but in fact don’t just want Christianity treated the same as other religions, they want special boosted status. I agree on that.)

You’re treating this as an academic debate because you have the privilege of doing so. Members of those minorities often don’t have that luxury.

@Jackmannii

Salman Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo would like a word.

Which doesn’t negate what I said.

@Wesley_Clark

There are black people who supported Jim Crow too. The fact that you are so dismissive of mistreated of the Jews in todays climate shows, to me, that you are viewing this through the lens of political power. You see Jews and Christians as powerful groups and Muslims as powerless groups, and you are interpreting this issue through the lens of bringing down the powerful and lifting up the powerless. That is your perogative, but a lot of people do not subscribe to that.

I don’t know how you got this from anything I wrote.

It is true that Jews have a long, long history of self-deprecating humor.

It is also true that jokes about Jews created by non-Jews have a long, long history of having malign intent.

Which is what I said.

@Velocity

For clarification, my point isn’t, “Don’t criticize Christianity” (as someone who spent 30 years in the church before leaving, I could write a whole book on the bads of Christianity.) It’s, “We should freely criticize what’s bad about a belief or practice without taking minority status into consideration.”

Which assumes a pre-existing level playing field that very much doesn’t exist, any more than it exists in discussions of race or sexual orientation. For some, this “debate” can literally become an existential threat.

@Odesio

I think John Cleese makes the same argument about Life of Brian. They poked fun at Christianity because it’s something a lot of British people have in common while jokes about Islam would have flown over their heads. Which is a pretty persuasive argument.

The funny thing is that the Pythons realized very quickly that the humor wasn’t in mocking Christ (as there was little of substance to mock), but mocking the attitudes of many Christians was a rich vein to mine. The reaction of many of those same Christians to the film completely validated their point.

@Odesio

We in the west seem to have accepted that certain criticisms of Islam must be avoided so there are no violent reprisals as with Charlie Hebdo or Theo Van Gogh.

Oh, so it’s like Charlie Kirk?

[JRDelirious]

As far as Catholicism in the USA is concerned, there you can at least point to a long history of anticatholic bigotry among the WASP dominant group dating back to the Puritans and thru the Know-Nothings and the KKK to the point that JFK getting elected was a Big F’in Deal; and in our own day a lot of the Evangelical ecosystem still denouncing they’re “not really Christian”. Hard to shake off that heritage. Come think of it, Catholics would if anything be more worried that a more overtly “Christian”-Nationalist society would turn against them.

The “persecution complex” in some American Christians is something inculcated early on in life. No matter how White-Protestant may be the dominance of socioeconomic power, the Gospel says the Church will be persecuted. Ergo, dammit, we must be getting persecuted.

---

A kind of uncomfortable converse to the issue of Christianity as “deprivileged” is the frequent situation in entertainment media of “exoticizing” non-Abrahamic non-majoritarian traditions into some sort of stand-in mythical spirituality. So they are not ridiculed or vilified, but they wind up being actually fantasy wizards labeled as “Tibetan Monks” who taught Batman or Dr. Strange some cool trick, or a tribe of “one with the Earth” noble savages who are just there to contrast with the materialist and amoral colonizer/capitalist antagonists, and so forth.

[ParallelLines]

[ aside, I echo @Aspenglow’s feelings upthread as a mod 100%]

As a poster, I first want to apologize - I didn’t read the spawning thread recently, so I may have missed what are to me some very needed caveats when discussing the topic. The first was very well covered by our OP @Gyrate, about the social saturation of Christianity in the USA, so I’ll leave it out.

The second, is that the term “Christianity” is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. Outside Catholicism (and see the recent schism there), nearly anyone can claim to be a Christian, or even a pastor or religious leader with little more than their own say so. And they then tend to get the same blanket acceptance/protection/privilege as one of the majority - though individual Christian factions will be happy to argue over if they’re “real” Christian’s or not.

So often, criticism of Christians is being frames along the lines of a specific sect, group, or organization, or cult because it is such a wide variety: Prosperity Churches, Mega-Churches, Minor suicide cults, individual messiahs, quiet monks preserving history, and charitable orders who live in poverty are all Christians.

Which leads to the third major issue with categorizing and criticizing Christians - the increasingly visible and violent “Political” Christianity. Christian Nationalists (generalization of course) have plucked a few historical beliefs, Christian beliefs, and assembled them into a set of political demands that have very little to do with any of Christ’s teachings as far as I can tell. But they’re still “Christian” in the broad sense.

Now, to be fair to @Velocity - this is hardly unknown in two of the other sects mentions: Islam and Judaism. But plenty people are more than happy to say all followers of Islam “have to do something” about radicals, and hold the group accountable for their actions. Or (and I don’t think I need to provide examples) how Bibi in part bailed himself out of a political nightmare with a violent and wide-ranging war, and yet all Jews should be held responsible even if they disagree and/or aren’t even in the same country!.

But very rarely in modern history, has all of the many sects and flavors of Christianity as a whole been held responsible for actions of Christian (nominal or otherwise) leaders and nations acting in radical, extra-legal, or corrupt ways. Should Churchs (regardless of denomination) be firebombed in England because Trump bombs people?

NOTE - I am making specific examples of the nature of how Christianity in the USA is different, rather than trying to refight any of the above. This is not an invitation to discuss those specific examples, and even then I fully acknowledge RIGHT now there are plenty of “most”, “maybe”, and “some” involved.

That disclaimer leads me back to my first discussed point. It’s nearly impossible to discuss what “Christianity” is as a whole, because the super-penetration and fragmentation of it within the world (and probably especially the USA) means it’s always nuanced. I find that much of the criticism here and elsewhere tends to be nuanced upfront, but as discussions evolve, the fine focus gets lost.

[Odesio]

@Gyrate

Oh, so it’s like Charlie Kirk?

Have there been any violent reprisals for those who poked fun at Charlie Kirk’s murder? I know people have been fired, and some of them have received significant settlements in court, but I’m not aware of it being a major pain in the neck for anyone.

[Chronos]

As I said in the other thread, you don’t see other religions being made fun of in mass media because you don’t see other religions portrayed in mass media at all. Every sitcom will eventually show the characters in church. When was the last time you saw a sitcom scene in a mosque, or a Buddhist temple? Can you name any non-terrorist Muslim characters in any major American movie? Heck, we even get shows where angels appear to Christians in answer to their prayers: Can you imagine the outcry if that ever happened with non-Christians?

[susan]

Can you imagine the outcry if Jewish angels showed up? There are reasons we don’t normally beseech them.

Who are the Seraphim? Powerful Angels in the Bible

[Velocity]

Odesio mentioned another important thing, which is that some of the double standard is driven by a (very reasonable) fear of violent retaliation from Muslims. While not all Christians are peaceful, the incidents like Charlie Hebdo made it clear that mockery of Islam is not only politically risky but also physically risky.

[Velocity]

This thread is about Christianity, not Islam, but just to quote one QueerMajority article and cite one incident example:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/592117853482774 — Queer Majority

"At the 2017 London Pride march, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) marched to challenge Islamic Homophobia — with particular focus on Chechnya, where reports of LGBT persecution and gay concentration camps had outraged the community. They carried banners listing the countries that mandated the death penalty for homosexuality, and held witty, provocative placards and signs poking fun at Islam. Near them, a separate contingent of Pride marchers held signs poking fun at Christianity. Pride, after all, had always been a safe place to criticise homophobia whether it was religious, political, or cultural. During the march, police descended on CEMB to tell them that their signs were offensive and requested they be put away. However, they did not accost the holders of signs mocking Christianity."

(Emphasis mine)

So even at a pro-LGBT event where the point was to support LGBT, and it was clear that two Abrahamic religions were both anti-LGBT, the London police felt that mockery of only one of those two anti-LGBT religions was appropriate and permissible.

[Velocity]

But that’s partly because the portrayal of a sitcom happening in a mosque or Buddhist temple itself would likely lead to calls of “cultural insensitivity” or whatnot. It’s a symptom of the deference towards other religions that Hollywood or TV producers are reluctantly to even portray a scene in that setting.

[Andy_L]

@Chronos

When was the last time you saw a sitcom scene in a mosque, or a Buddhist temple?

Pretty sure Raj (on BBT) went to a Hindu temple at least once.

In Canada there was “Little Mosque on the Praire” (Little Mosque on the Prairie - Wikipedia) and “Ms. Marvel” had a bunch of scenes in Kamala’s mosque (I don’t know if “Ms. Marvel” counts as a sitcom). But your main point is taken - there’s a lot more church-going than synagogue, mosque or temple-going on TV

It would be nice to have more representation of all sorts of different people, but there is a tendency to decide to represent the most common denominator, which in the US is a vaguely Protestant Christmas and Easter-only church-goer.

[Little_Nemo]

@Odesio

But Islam is a growing religion and is a bigger part of British and American life than it was in the 1970s. On the second season of their television series Bullshit, Penn & Teller aired an episode called “The Bible: Fact or Fiction” where they were pretty hard on biblical literalist. When asked if they’d ever do an episode on the Quran, Penn’s reply was something along the lines of, “No. We have families.”

We in the west seem to have accepted that certain criticisms of Islam must be avoided so there are no violent reprisals as with Charlie Hebdo or Theo Van Gogh.

So you’re giving an example of somebody making a derogatory joke about Islam to support your argument that nobody criticizes Islam.