That true Christians will be despised, hated, attacked and persecuted is a given. [No, it is not a given, as I’m sure comments will show.]
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And remember I started this article by speaking about “true Christians”. Fake Christians of course will know nothing about what is being discussed here. They will be getting along with the world just fine. So of course they will not experience persecution. As John R. Rice once put it, “The world never burned a casual Christian at the stake.”
Here I want to deal with the situation in the West. A few preliminary remarks: First, some will scoff when I and others speak of persecution in the West. Sure, we are not being tortured, beheaded and killed for our faith as is often the case overseas.
Not yet, at least. But when a person is forced out of his job because of his Christian beliefs, or heavily fined, or even incarcerated for periods of time, those types of suffering and hardship are very real indeed. I know some of these people, including those trying to feed their families but who have been unable to work for long periods of time because of their Christian beliefs.
The second thing to point out is that we need to see the big picture. We need to have a bit of historical awareness. It is easy to not see aright when we look only to today and to our local situation. But we need to see the bigger picture and what is happening not just now, but over a period of time.
From that sort of perspective, we find that genuine anti-Christian bigotry and persecution is not only happening in the West, but it has been ramping up for decades now. Things really are getting worse in this regard, and if we don’t wake up to what is happening, it may soon be too late for warnings like this to be penned.
For many years I and others have been trying to sound the alarm and alert people to the increasing persecution of Christians, often taking the form of the culture wars. As the culture around us becomes more and more ungodly, immoral and hostile to our faith, we can only expect to be respected less and less and vilified and harassed more and more.
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As I have said so often now, we have moved from being a Christian culture to a post-Christian culture to an anti-Christian culture. Long gone are the days when we could happily get along with the world and expect their blessing and endorsement of our beliefs and values.
Make no mistake, there still are some churches and denominations in the West today that DO have the full blessing and approval of the world. But they are apostate churches and church leaders. They are those who have long ago sold their birthright for the desire to be loved and accepted by the world.
They are the ones fully on the pro-abortion bandwagons, on the pro-homosexuality and trans bandwagons, and on the interfaith bandwagons. The world loves them because they have the same values and mindset as the world does. They are not counter-cultural as the true church of Jesus Christ will always be.
— Bill Muehlenberg, Culture Watch, The Stages of Christian Persecution, January 16, 2020
1) There always have been/ always will be scumbag, sociopathic types among us .Any/ all ‘good’ principles &morals ‘outlawing’ such behavior,( murdering, raping, stealing, habitually lying, etc. and so forth…..) are NOT UNIQUE TO CHRISTIANITY! When are these boneheads going to understand this, and stop claiming the Market Corner on ‘morality’?-rhetorical question of course! Such individuals couldn’t give a half a flying fuck about these rules anyhow, and it is indeed ironic just how many of them we find in the church, of all places! 2) At our core, the vast majority of us just want to be LEFT ALONE, to live out our lives in peace and quiet. To love who we want to love, screw who we want to screw, drink, smoke what we will, blaazee, blaaazee, and it is exactly US whom ;Christians’ don’t want to leave alone. They just can’t stand the fact that we don’t/ no longer see fit to want to place the entirety of our existence under the authority of some mythical old man in the sky with pretty clear cut insecurity/ rage issues. They love to attack our personhood, then can’t stand it when we’ve had enough, and hit back! THIS is the essence of what they understand as being ‘persecuted’. As Bill Maher once said, ‘Who from a Christian perspective are lost sinners, doomed to an eternity in hell? Why that would be anybody having more FUN in life than they are with their miserable rules, and prohibitions’!! Or something like that. 🙂
There’s a bigger picture here. It’s one they don’t want to face. They no longer have the right product anymore. They find they R no longer “competitive” in America. It’s all about competition. Secularism seems to have a better product but we R neophytes when it comes to marketing and sales. They know what will happen when we latch on to these two. It’s over. This is really what America is about! And if they have nothing to offer new, well …. it’s like a car slowly running out of gas. It stops. It rusts. It dissolves into dust. Maybe we will build a museum one day and place the remnants on display?
You are correct in a sense, but they are going to claim, ‘HEY, WE CALLED IT FIRST’! Our Lord said that ‘Wide is the road that leads to destruction’. IOW- Most of us will quite ‘happily’ go to hell, preferring what ‘The World’ has to offer. What I want to know is, what kind of MONSTER exactly devised such a sick, twisted, and evil plan???
Author is delusional. When Christians can’t force others to do what they want, they claim persecution.
Actually, he has a point. Consider the early Christians. They were persecuted by the Roman government off and on because they were seen as perturbing the stability of the Empire. The Romans were sort of okay with the Jews being weird (not accepting, let alone tolerating, public worship of the Roman civic gods); the Jews had always been weird, and besides they were a conquered people. But after Paul got Christianity seriously off the ground, now there were actual Roman citizens rejecting the civic religious practices because of this new religion. Those people in turn riled up people who were placed well enough in the government structure to get an emperor’s attention, and it was probably easiest to just ban this annoying new religion, send some soldiers to seize and burn their papers, and toss their local leaders in jail for awhile. Yes, that absolutely was persecution. But the root cause was not beliefs about Jesus, or the resurrection, or the end of the world, or any personal belief. From the Roman point of view, the Christians were not being good citizens. Persecution was how they dealt with those folks. Hey, justice is nice, but it requires nuance, and we’ve got an empire to run here!
(Oh, and when I talk about Jews being weird, I hope it is obvious that I’m speaking from the point of view of the Romans. Speaking for myself in the here and now, I’m not going to throw shade on any group of religionists and/or members of a particular culture unless they try to hijack my government and pass evil laws that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or force THEIR religious beliefs on myself and my friends.)
But as regards modern Christian persecution in the West, True Christians are losing jobs, being fined, or incarcerated if they’re not being good citizens. They aren’t behaving professionally in the workplace, or refusing business based on characteristics of the customers they dislike, or intentionally damaging property, or injuring or even killing others. I think, if I were a True Christian, I might see the parallels.
And the truth is, there is a strong social conflict, and there will be whenever Christianity isn’t allowed to run a theocracy. Employees who insist on trying to proselytize co-workers and/or customers after being told to stop, bakers who won’t make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, and people who bomb Planned Parenthood clinics really are NOT being good citizens in my view. Things are somewhat better today, since our society pays a bit more attention to the nuances of justice, and most especially so for white Christians. The oligarchy, bad though it is, is not an empire (despite what a certain 45th president might think).
Limited persecution?
The difference is Jews never forced their rules onto others. Christianity has long judged not only themselves but everyone around them who isn’t in step with their own belief system. Believing in equanimity in marriage, etc., was never stated BY JESUS as unacceptable. Men wrote the bible. Not God. Not Jesus. The lack of tolerance in Christianity which inverts to feeling “persecuted” because everyone else simply isn’t going along with them is absolute fiction. Believe what you want to believe and practice it in your own home! Who cares? Just stop force feeding your morals onto others. Christianity, more than any other religion, has made it their mission to “mission”, disrupting native cultures who believed otherwise (No America, So America, Africa, etc.) and forcing them into their own belief system. Why was this necessary? Why can you just believe and practice on your own with your community and not feel a need to go viral unless someone walks up and expresses interest?? I’ve never understood this having been raised as Southern Presbyterian myself and completely offended by my own religion and the amount of bloodshed it has caused due to simple lack of tolerance of things different than itself. Tolerance is what Jesus taught. It’s been so twisted and perverted since then, it boggles the mind.
The Christian groups that promote inequality and are hell-bent on curbing human rights are being told that’s inappropriate in our society, and now they are crying “persecution”. Yet they have no qualms about telling immigrants they don’t belong here, LBGTQ people that they can’t and shouldn’t have the rights of straight people, women that they must be submissive under the headship of an authoritative father or husband, and they wonder why so many people are saying, “you can’t treat us this way in a free society”.
Hugh Young …. “Wide is the road that leads to destruction …” Okay. So how wide is the Christian faith? Several thousand religious sects WIDE. 80-90 % of the world’s people have a religion. Atheism has none. Atheism treads the path of science, and that’s pretty narrow. A far narrower path would B 2 become a dedicated NAZI.That kind of narrowness lead straight to total destruction. Total obedience to a higher authority is what most of the WIDER sects really want. These R not our kind of Americans. Also …. no one person dreamed any of this crap up, at any one time. It is simply HUMAN NATURE.
“80-90 % of the world’s people have a religion. Atheism has none. Atheism treads the path of science, and that’s pretty narrow. A far narrower path would B 2 become a dedicated NAZI.That kind of narrowness lead straight to total destruction.”
The path of Science is dark and deep, dale M. It allows for the onion to be peeled and it acknowledges the layers revealed. Evangelical religion does not….. Fundy Islam does not! What are you trying to say? How on earth do you start with Atheism and then make a totally unrelated statement about Nazis? And the phrase, “our kind of Americans” means what?
Brian Vanderlip …. Naziism was a very narrow belief system. It was extremely rigid. Christianity is not as narrow. Anything goes. So it’s pretty “WIDE” !!! This fellow who thinks Christianity is a “narrow path”, is way off balance. On the other hand, science is a pretty narrow path. U have 2 have evidence, publish it, submit it 2 peer review. But not religion. Often, anything goes. Your interpretation. U don’t need to prove anything. U don’t need to submit it to anyone outside your specialty. Just go with your “personal” interpretation. Naziism is a direct and most peculiar form of fundamentalism emanating directly from paganistic beliefs mixed with Christian beliefs. A double whammy. Naziism is very narrow as it is derived FROM Christianity and became a sub cult of that religion.
Now. “Our kind of American”. What did I mean by that? It wasn’t me who initiated that concept. The last 4 presidents. Remember? Bush Sr. did NOT consider 20% of Americans as “our kind of Americans”. The next president reiterated that sentiment loud and clear for every non-religious person in the U.S. Obama included that 20% of Americans back under the American umbrella in his State of the Union address. Then along came that 4th and current president who once again reiterated that America was a Christian Nation …. hint, hint ….
Science is our only hope. Free Enterprise is our only hope. Science is just a tool. It’s not even knowledge but, placed in the wrong hands ….. You R blaming the tool that has brought civilization out of the caves. Yes. It is not safe to go outside the cave. Handling tools like science and technology could get U burned if U use them improperly. If U want to learn to play it SAFE, U can always go back. Nobody stopping U.
Greetings dale M, I prefer to stay out of the definitions of Nazi perspective but certainly have seen how Hitler’s power of oratory was used to whip up his crowds in much the same manner as a tent evangelical preacher! Of course, not all Germans were wild-eyed Nazis but they were driven to extremes by the rigid dogma hurled at them as Law. And if by using the term, narrow path, you are seeking to claim it from the old ‘straight and narrow’, then great. Science is ‘narrow’ in the specific sense that it applies the method to all and everything and it has the unique character that allows itself to be subject to proofs and not founded in a God-said-it-and-that’s-the-end-of-it.
Not sure what tool I am blaming that brought us out of the caves? I think we are still crawling out of the caves. I kind of feel that religion would prefer us to remain in darkness so the offering plate can be eternally passed around. Let’s build Ham arks all over the world!
As for the term ‘free enterprise’, I tend to agree but my vote would be for a more socialistic free enterprise, a term that is ridiculous to many many Americans. Go Bernie!
Brian Vanderlip …. The term “socialistic free enterprise” is a solid terminology. That’s what China and Russia currently use. The term fits these two like a glove. I think what U R looking for is “free enterprise with a social conscience”. This would best describe the likes of Henry Ford and Elon Musk.
The tools R “science and technology” that brought us slowly out of the caves. Well …. some of us.
“free enterprise with a social conscience” is preferable to me. A government with too much power is almost by definition a disaster. The horrid conditions under which two Canadians are now being held in China as opposed to the ankle bracelet house arrest of a Chinese citizen in Canada now, demonstrates what can happen when government takes over for ‘the good of all’. Evangelical Christianity does the same sort of thing as China, crushes freedom, supposedly ‘for the good of all’.
Based on my own experiences on both sides of the track…are American Christians hated more because they follow Christ, or more because of the way they accost, corner and hit people over the head with the Bible, putting them on the spot to convert right this second?
Fair point, DOUGK, and I don’t really see people going after Christian believers unless they are being preached at and condemned, cajoled, seduced. Of course, the narrow believers feel that a time is coming when there will be no tolerance for Jesus folk… that meme is perpetuated by evangelicals reading their Bible and making non-believers like me the bad guys. Who else would go after them and not tolerate them. (As far as I know, only the atheist Bruce G. snacks on BBQ’d babies but all of us are thrown in with him!)
The Bible is designed to doublespeak, to well and truly mindfuck. And the very best at it are evangelical preacher types hooting and howling from pulpits. The way I see it nowadays Christians like to hurt themselves and others and are confirmed by their hurt. My simply not believing their horse-plop hurts them. If they don’t save me from myself, evil self, how long will it be before I start really persecuting them.
The Trump presidency is invested considerably in this fear and mines it incessantly. Just watch as November approaches. He’s already babbling about the death penalty (a seduction of the Christian Right) and how the Boston bomber should be killed. Trump could care less about the bomber but he knows talk like this will make his Christian hardliners all giddy with votes.
When the reptile changes its colour to blend in with the surroundings, it has two things in mind: First, to be invisible. Second, to be Trump. Trump is already devouring USA while we watch, shocked and befuddled, anxious and afraid.
Leonard Cohen: Democracy is coming to the USA…