How perception of Christian persecution in America could become self-fulfilling

Great Debates
21

While I refuse to predict that fundamental Christians will be “persecuted” by the secular left in the future, which would be inconsistent with the left’s fundamental belief in diversity and inclusion, I did come across a piece a while back that speculated that there might be a correlation with young people’s growing secularism and their revulsion at the worst aspects of right wing evangelicalism.

It seems that Millennials and Gen Z, raised in a technological and diverse society, react negatively to a culture which rejects science and new social norms. It’s akin to the GOP doing so badly with young voters (by about a 2-1 margin) because those voters are not wed to the idea that any step off the beaten traditionalist past is fraught with danger.

22

To many evangelicals/fundamentalists, revulsion, backlash, or negativity/criticism are tantamount to persecution (regardless of whether it is or isn’t.) And one can only expect that to increase in the decades to come.

23

Well, if you define persecution by any sort of negative reaction, then sure, they will probably consider themselves persecuted.

I agree that their sensitivity to anything less that complete acquiescence to their demands will be more and more seen as persecution by them.

But, that’s less self-fulfilling, and more self-delusion.

24

^This.

Just one more aspect of the well-worn saw around here that treating a privileged person as just average will make them feel like they are being disrespected.

To the ruling class (whether in financial, skin color, gender, religion, or … terms), receiving anything less than the lion’s share enthusiastically given up by those lesser folks is an affront.

“Screw that noise” is my response to such whining.

25

I think it’s more that privileged people (sincerely) don’t perceive themselves as privileged. The punch-up, punch-down phenomenon is therefore deeply troubling to them, because it doesn’t come across as “leveling,” but rather, an injustice.

Suppose you have a white man who genuinely believes that white people have no advantage. Then he’s likely to be irked by the fact that jokes directed at white people are generally considered far more acceptable by society than jokes pointed at black people. Rather than thinking, “I start out as a 7, and black people start out as a 3, so it’s good for us to both become a 5,” he will think, “We both started out as 5’s but society wants to prop the black people up to 7 and push me down to 3.”

26

I fully understand the phenomenon; human nature is a bitch. But note that your hypothetical person’s beliefs are false at their very core.

There’s an old saying in academia: “As you assume, so shall you conclude.”

It may be understandable that someone whose worldview is based on fantasy will feel and act aggrieved by being treated equally with others. But the doesn’t excuse their behavior.

Hell, the whole of the last 4 years of Trumply shenanigans is about what happens when people are given free reign to behave in accordance with self-convenient fantasies. That way lies ungovernability and chaos.

IMO your OP skates very close to JAQing that we should indulge these poor benighted fools. A far better question to have asked would have been:

How best to dispel the dangerous fantasies at the center of some Christians’ false, confused, and counter-productive sense of persecution.

27

B-E-A-utifully put.

28

I’d never heard that one before! It’s pretty! Much more elegant and poetic that “garbage in, garbage out!”

29

I imagine one of our resident linguists could convert it to Latin. Then it’d be very academically impressive.

Though given how much Latin uses declensions, endings, etc., to convey stuff English uses auxiliaries for it might read a lot like this. (Warning to purists: totally made up pseudo-Latin ahead; avert your delicate eyes):

Asssumae ex concludio.

Which would be disappointingly telegraphic.

30

Grin! As Walt Kelly asked once in an old Pogo strip, what language did the Romans use when they wanted to bamboozle someone?

31

Koin Greek. Every Roman knows those shifty Greeks can’t be trusted.

32

This remark was posted in another thread, but it’s pretty much perfect for this one too:

33

I had high hopes before I read the story that one of the Congresscritters from a non-religious constituency had deliberately tweaked the noses, not of the gender neutral language directive, but of the Xian’s who think their religion is part of our secular government.

34

I think one of the reasons Christians insist on thinking of themselves as persecuted, is that this a religion that was established in persecution. That is, at the time that most of scripture was composed, much of the original theology was established, and most of the stories to which traditions trace their origins (whether they are apocryphal or not), Christians were, in fact, a minority, maybe not as persecuted as a Jew in Germany in 1941, but there were prejudices against them, biases against them encoded in the law, and they were bullied and ridiculed.

The oldest known image of a crucifixion is a guy kneeling before a crucified person who has the head of a donkey, and the caption “Alexamenos worships his god.”

Much of how to be a Christian that is described in the bible, and the works of the earliest church fathers is about how to live as a persecuted minority.

So people trying to be Christians are trying to live as a persecuted minority, in a world where they are actually the powerful majority. And they don’t realize that there is a parallax distortion. Or maybe cognitive dissonance, I guess-- their attempt to resolve this dissonance seems to be to try to goad people into persecuting them. Some join minority sects of Christianity, and claim they are the only “true” Christians, set up a lot of strictures that makes their lives difficult, hunt up proof texts for them, and then say they are being persecuted.

At least, that’s how it looks to me, and yes, I have read the Christian bible. I took a class in early Christian history (Paul through the year 500CE), and had to read the gospels, Acts, all the epistles, and Revelation, in addition to the early church fathers, the gnostic gospels, and some other things that were considered for inclusion as Christian scripture, but not used.

Got an A.

35

Well, for the past 500 years or so, half of Christianity has been busy persecuting the other half - and vice versa. And not just small sects - Catholics versus C of E in Elizabethan England, for example.

36

Being the subject of persecution means, by definition, you are ‘Christianing’ correctly,
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&source=hp&ei=2fn0X4nxErGJggfI-oCgCg&q=know+they+will+persecute+you+for+my+namesake&oq=know+they+will+pers&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgBMggIIRAWEB0QHjIICCEQFhAdEB4yCAghEBYQHRAeOggILhCxAxCTAjoICC4QsQMQgwE6CwguELEDEMcBEKMCOgIIADoFCAAQsQM6BQguELEDOgIILjoLCC4QsQMQgwEQkwI6CAgAELEDEIMBOgsILhCxAxDJAxCTAjoICC4QxwEQowI6DgguELEDEIMBEMcBEK8BOggIABCxAxDJAzoFCAAQyQM6BggAEBYQHjoFCCEQoAE6CAguEMkDEJMCOgoIABCxAxDJAxAKOgQIABAKOggIABAWEAoQHjoJCAAQyQMQFhAeOgsIABDJAxANEAUQHjoICAAQDRAFEB46CAgAEAgQDRAeOgUIIRCrAjoGCAAQCBAeUIMVWImsAWDguwFoAnAAeACAAbMCiAHaGZIBCDYuMTMuMy4xmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdperABAA&sclient=psy-ab
So, acting in a way that results in your ‘’‘persecution’‘’ is the bestest way to ‘Christian’.

37

Christians will never face real persecution in America for the same reason white people never will; you don’t persecute the majority.

38

Actively practicing Xians are decreasingly in the majority. And in some parts of the country they are a minority; just the largest single one.

Just like with whiteness, the best way for a fading majority of Xians to avoid sealing their fate to be one of endless retribution, is to treat the current minorities less beastly than they have been treated heretofore.

Rather than ratcheting up the hate as you inevitably turn into the minority, how about ratcheting up the equality, the civility, and yes, the love. WWJRD? What would Jesus really do?

39

I agree with you in general, but there are cases where the majority is persecuted in other countries (Iraq, for example, persecuted the Shiite majority, right? Maybe South Africa as well?).

40

Yeah, but that is only because the minority in those countries is propped up, being given economic and military aid by outside forces, primarily the US.