“Yes, Bricker. By that definition, you’re correct. What I mean to discuss is systematic, harsh treatment that involves serious threat.”
Now can you please either join the discussion or go away?
It’s a short discussion:
[QUOTE=Bricker]
They certainly suffer some hostility and ill-treatment, and can fairly be said to experience persecution.** But it’s not the kind of treatment that should engage a neutral observer to worry, because society as a whole remains comfortably monolithically Christian, and the persecution in question will not lead to any real threat.**
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis added)
In other words: there is no systematic, harsh treatment that involves serious threat levelled against Christians in American society today.
Asked and answered.
OK, who started the “Hail, hail, fire and snow…” chant?
Bricker has spoken!
Mods, could you please close the thread now?
Except “Are Christian’s persecuted?” isn’t the question asked in the OP. It’s “Why do they THINK they are?” Certainly, “Because they really are persecuted, and here’s why” would be on-topic, but I’m not sure “Christians aren’t persecuted” is really contributing anything.
What you mean to discuss?
I see nothing in the OP that defines persecution this way and it was to the OP that Bricker addressed his initial comments. Ever since it’s been a race to come up with some definition that would exclude Bricker’s points from the “discussion”, and failing that it appears now that an effort is underway to redirect the OP right out from under itself so as to exclude Bricker’s points from the “discussion”.
True enough.
And interestingly, also answered in that same prior post of mine:
And simultanously a thread Pitting me for having the gall to “derail” the thread by pointing out that the OP’s words apply to the treatment of Christians on this board. AND a thread in ATMB asking the mods how it is that I am permitted to offer dictionary definitions of a word when everyone knows what the word means when it’s used here.
I await with hopeful interest the remaining threads: a critique of the game theory of my debate in The Game Corner and a link to violently upset cats in MPSIMS with a suggestion that their discomfit arose from my using the OED to define “persecution.”
FYI: I’ve been reading Candida Moss’ book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, which IMO has a lot of relevance to this topic. The notion of systemic persecution is built into the DNA of Christianity in particular, while actual historic persecution is highly exaggerated.
Why is this important? From the book: “The myth of Christian martyrdom is not only inaccurate; it has contributed to great violence and continues to support a view of the world in which we are under attack from our fellow human beings.”
All of which is doubly amusing since it’s highly unlikely that anyone stopped on the street and asked if Christians have reason to feel persecuted these days would be likely to conclude that the question pertains to “systematic, harsh treatment that involves serious threat”.
They book seems to lay the foundation for the current belief that Christians are persecuted. I’ll have to pick it up to see if she discusses the problem of Christians claiming to be persecuted because of Biblical prophecies stating that Christians will come into power only after certain events take place. Because said events have yet to take place, they must still be persecuted in some manner.
If it is a myth, I wonder why non-Christian authors like Tacitus and Suetonius mention it. Unless torture and execution aren’t really persecution either.
I wonder why she feels so victimized. She isn’t being persecuted, and therefore has no basis for complaint.
Regards,
Shodan
Where does she say she feels victimized, and why do you see her research as a complaint?
Closed to hand off to the new thread.