[godlessgrrl]

I just wrote this up for a blog post scheduled to publish in March. Thought I'd post it here too. Enjoy!

* * * * *

Dear "Persecuted" American Christian:

Last week I published a blog post in which I mentioned briefly that many of you feel that you are persecuted for your faith. In this letter I thought I'd explore that belief, and write an open response to your perceived victimization at the hands of your alleged oppressors.

It's very true that your brothers and sisters in Christ who live and work overseas are often subject to real hardships for practicing their faith. Missionaries in North Korea and China face censure and death, Coptic Christians in Egypt are isolated and marginalized, Laotian church workers are regularly arrested, and so on. It should not be denied that religious persecution takes place, that it is devastating to the cause of international civil rights, and that it needs to be curtailed wherever possible. It should not be denied that Christians the world over have been the targets of violence, abuse, oppression, and discrimination. As a firm believer in human liberty and free religious expression, I stand with you in seeing such persecutions as the abhorrent practices they are, and in believing that they need to be halted and redressed.

I understand that many of you also believe that here in America, Christians face dire oppression as well. I can certainly recall my own days as a Christian, when I was taught that believers are beset on all sides by agents of Satan, who seeks to destroy our relationship with Christ wherever he can, using whatever agency he can. Like many of you, I believed that my right to worship was being restricted more and more, and that Christianity was under attack from a sexualized media, increasingly secular education, and a hostile political environment. The Bible told me that I would be persecuted and insulted for my faith, and like many of you, I saw such persecution quite easily.

But was I really being persecuted? Are you? Is there really a systematic, widespread oppression of Christianity permeating American society?

No. There isn't.

Oh, plenty of you complain about atheists picking on you with our books and our blogs and our criticisms of your belief. Plenty of you cry foul when atheists make our presence known in some way or another, as if our mere existence is a threat to your religious freedom. Plenty of you whine that our assertion of our rights entails a violation of your own. Plenty of you believe that there's a widespread War on Christianity, that enemies such as the "liberal media" or secularization of public schools or the division of church and state are destroying your perceived right to impose your religious morality on the rest of us.

But the real truth is: when you claim that America is a Christian nation, you're right.

I don't mean to say that America is a Christian theocracy, though some of you would like it to become one. What I mean is: Christianity is the dominant religion in America. Most Americans are Christians of one stripe or another. The Founding Fathers were affiliated with Christian congregations, and sought to create a secular government that nonetheless accommodates religious freedom. You're everywhere. Your churches count as non-profit organizations and are exempt from paying income taxes, and you are allowed to educate your children at home or send them to a private Christian school if you wish.

You are not arrested simply for being Christian. You are not fined for it. You are not put to death for it. Your houses are not raided in search of Bibles or Christian propaganda. You are not barred from marrying, owning property, or running for public office because you're Christian. You are not detained and beaten by police because you're Christian. Your women are not systematically raped for being Christian. You are not barred from receiving an education because you are Christian.

You can broadcast your beliefs via any media you like: radio, television, internet, or satellite. You can publish religious books, blogs, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, broadsheets, or posters. You can release Christian albums and play Christian music on the airwaves, on your very own channel if you like. You can take out ads or purchase billboard space in any major city to advertise whatever religious message you like. You can show up at women's health clinics with graphic images of bloodied fetuses smeared across sandwich boards and protest signs and scream whatever insults you like at the women seeking treatment there.

There are churches on every corner. There are Christian businesses listed openly in the Yellow Pages. You are allowed to pray, preach, or proselytize on any street corner you like. You can read your Bible openly, in public, at school, and sometimes at work. You are allowed to form private Christian clubs which exclude anyone you wish. You've managed to influence science education, sex ed, and medical research by electing officials that will use federal dollars and government oversight to shape public policy as you see fit. You've hijacked an entire major political party, turning its agenda to your own ends.

Under certain circumstances, you are even allowed to use your right to free religious expression as an excuse to discriminate against groups you don't like. You can bar women from serving in positions of authority in your churches if you want to, something that would never fly in either the corporate or government world. You can deny same-sex couples the right to marry, not only by citing your right to be selective about who your church will or won't marry, but also by banding together and contributing millions of dollars to political campaigns to make same-sex marriage illegal. You can deny someone a job in your church or religious organization because they're the wrong religion.

You put god on American money and into the Pledge of Allegiance. You can open sessions of public legislative bodies from Congress to town council meetings with a prayer, and if anyone other than a Christian says the prayer, some of you are rude enough to walk out or boo in protest - and it won't get you impeached. (In some localities, it'd even get you re-elected.) Every President has been a Christian of some sort. Christian displays are allowed in and on government property in many places, despite your belief to the contrary.

Moreover, you can freely insult and abuse atheists for our lack of belief without anybody batting an eye about it. You can convince the courts to deny us custody of our children just because we're atheists. You can force atheists in the military to attend religious services whether we want to or not. You can spread lies about who we are and what we believe, calling us immoral or un-American or questioning whether we're fit to hold public office.

If there's any widespread religious persecution going on in America, then Christians, you aren't the target of it. You are pampered, protected and supported by a nation that considers you the religious standard to which the rest of us must conform. You hold a position of power and privilege, not one of downtrodden disadvantage. Your noise is not the justly outraged cry of an oppressed minority, but the petulant whine of a spoiled child who suddenly finds that he has to share the playground with other kids too.

No no, dear American Christians, on this soil, in this land, you are not victims of persecution. The presence of atheists might make you uncomfortable, you might not like some of the more sordid parts of American morality, or you might not get to legislate that everyone else should live according to your beliefs, but such things do not constitute persecution. You inflict all sorts of indignities on nonbelievers, but you yourselves are only victims of your own persecution complex.

So I have just one question for you: what the fuck are you whining about?

Sincerely,
Godlessgrrl

[Franko47]

Good points. One of these days I will wake up and it will be the "The Christian Republic of America" and they will still claim persecution.


Oh, wait. It already is.

[Animania]

I live in the southeast so all that resonates especially strongly for me. I would be thrilled if I could get every christian I know to read that.

[Citsonga]

Excellent blog! Very well written and definitely something that a LOT of christians need to think about. Thanks for sharing it.

The only thing I would change is this line:

gwenmead, on 31 January 2010 - 08:42 PM, said:

(In some localities, it'd even get you re-elected.)

I've always thought that "it'd" looks odd, so I would say "it would" instead. But perhaps I'm just too nitpicky, so never mind me.

The blog really is fantastic.

[HRDWarrior]

excellent! and soooo true....

[Neon Genesis]

This reminds me of how the Christians at my parents' church were ranting about how poor Brit Hume was being persecuted because some people dared to be outraged by his bigotry to Buddhists. They never explained how Hume was being persecuted other than him being criticized. He still has his job and he can still say whatever outrageous things he wants to on Fox News, so how is he being persecuted again? Then they started whining about how persecuted they were because people at work can cuss whenever they want and insult their religion but they can't turn the workplace into church. How dare people have freedom of speech and persecute them with their free speech. You'd think with all the immorality that exists in the world, someone cussing would be the least of their worries, but apparently Jesus cares more about if someone cusses.

[Vixentrox]

Very good letter. Get ready for the hate from the persecuted Christians though.

[lunaticheathen]

AWOMEN! FUCKIN A!!!
I really get sick of the whole "oh us poor christians, America haaaates us!" As a Pagan, I always just scoffed and spat at it. It took the VA until 2007!!! to approve putting a pentacle on military headstones for fallen Pagan soldiers, and the first request was made TEN YEARS PRIOR! Excuse me, christians, you ALWAYS had your execution device on headstones issued by the VA. Kiss my unbaptised Pagan ass.
Not letting you walk all over us does NOT equal "persecution."

[TheTruthShallSetUsFree]

Amazing. You took the thoughts right out of my brain..

[qec]

This was pretty good. Well done.

[buffettphan]

That was great! I hate it when the christnuts cry persecution. Hope you'll share some of the responses you get -- bet there will be some real wacko ones.

[Ouroboros]

Gwen! Your letter is persecuting Christians!





Seriously, it was a great letter.

[ContraBardus]

I love this, one minor gripe though...

Quote

Every President has been a Christian of some sort

Not true. Non-Christian Presidents... [some at least possibly.]

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Tyler, and Abraham Lincoln.

All of these men were 'officially' associated with Churches, but are known through their own words and writing to have been deists at best. Lincoln may have even been an Atheist, and he was most certainly not a Christian.

John Tyler:

Quote

"The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent -- that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgement. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgement of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mahommedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions.... The Hebrew persecuted and down trodden in other regions takes up his abode among us with none to make him afraid.... and the Aegis of the Government is over him to defend and protect him. Such is the great experiment which we have tried, and such are the happy fruits which have resulted from it; our system of free government would be imperfect without it." -- letter, 10 July 1843

"The intolerant spirit manifested against Catholics, as exhibited in the burning of their churches, etc., will so soon as the thing becomes fairly considered, arouse a strong feeling of dissatisfaction the part of a large majority of the American people; for if there is one principle of higher import with them than any other, it is the principle of religious freedom." -- letter to Robert Tyler, 19 May 1856

Monroe is questionable. He never used religious language and left no indication of his religious beliefs. He is not officially affiliated with any church or religion. There are no records of him ever receiving communion, or any other religious activities. Many Historians classify him as a deist.

Madison pretty much laid the groundwork for the separation of church and state. No record of any religious affiliation of any kind exists in reference to him. His work and words suggest he was a deist. He is largely responsible for the separation of church and state contained in the US constitution.

Thomas Jefferson's words also do not support any Christian beliefs, though he does speak of 'God' there is no suggestion at all that he ever related the idea to Christianity. Quite the opposite in fact.

Quote

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

Lincoln was most assuredly a deist, if not an Atheist.

Quote

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.

I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.

"Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the usual acceptation of those words."
-- Mary Todd Lincoln

George Washington is sort of in the air. Washington reportedly did not take communion and was not considered an official "communicant" His words sometimes reflected Christian beliefs, but at other times were clearly deistic in nature.

His faith has been debated for quite some time. He may well have been Christian, but there's enough in his writings and words that suggest that may have only been a 'public persona' and that his actual personal beliefs were in fact Deistic.

There's no real way to know with him one way or the other, as he sometimes contradicted himself both ways. He was a regular church goer, though there's no indication he actively participated in services. Reports about his activities during attendance seem to suggest that he did not.

So, no, not every President has been Christian. Most of them assuredly, the point of your post still holds firm. Still, it is in error in this regard.

Great post though. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and concur whole heartedly.

This post has been edited by ContraBardus: 02 February 2010 - 04:18 AM

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

I think since she was writing this as though to Christians she was giving them the Christian presidents they believe they have. Although very true, explaining all that would detract from her overall point.

[R. S. Martin]

Excellent post. Now to get the Christians to take it seriously.

They will be sure to put it down to the "angry atheist," or to claim that most of the people in America are not Christian even though they might claim to be.

But surely they can see that they are not being arrested and executed for their beliefs? Surely they can see that many of the facts you mentioned are, in fact, true?

Still, be prepared for the hate mail and denial. They will invent it if they have to.

All the same, when I write for Christians, I like to think of the invisible and silent lurker whom I might be influencing and nudging in the right direction. For every exChristian and seeker who shows up on these forums, there must be many more out there asking questions. Some of them must notice the discrepancy between the goodwill of atheist search for truth and the Christian "defense of faith" at all costs, including the cost of truth.

Maybe this is wishful thinking but it is at times my only hope. Surely, there are others out there like us.

[R. S. Martin]

Ouroboros, on 01 February 2010 - 11:11 AM, said:

Gwen! Your letter is persecuting Christians!

[Brakeman]

May we have permission to use some or all of it in our own correspondence? I think it's a particularly well written piece.

[Creepy Doll]

Yeah doncha love that? They're all persecuted for their faith... Riiiigggggghhhht.

To the "persecuted Christians": Try being openly gay and transgender in this country and then talk to me about persecution. Until then shut the fuck up, bigoted assholes.

[Neon Genesis]

Creepy Doll, on 02 February 2010 - 02:15 PM, said:

To the "persecuted Christians": Try being openly gay and transgender in this country and then talk to me about persecution. Until then shut the fuck up, bigoted assholes.

Or they can try being an atheist. You can't even be an atheist and run for public office in the U.S. without some Christians trying to ban atheists from serving yet they want us to believe they're persecuted? Christians with persecution complexes are nothing more than spoiled crybabies.

[Creepy Doll]

Neon Genesis, on 02 February 2010 - 02:47 PM, said:

Creepy Doll, on 02 February 2010 - 02:15 PM, said:

To the "persecuted Christians": Try being openly gay and transgender in this country and then talk to me about persecution. Until then shut the fuck up, bigoted assholes.

Or they can try being an atheist. You can't even be an atheist and run for public office in the U.S. without some Christians trying to ban atheists from serving yet they want us to believe they're persecuted? Christians with persecution complexes are nothing more than spoiled crybabies.

Well OK then. Try being gay, transgender AND an atheist. I'd argue though, that there's much more persecution in being transgender than there is in being an atheist. Not only do the Christians hate us, but we get shit from pretty much everyone. As for running for public office, look at the shit Amanda Simpson has taken for being appointed by Obama as Senior Technical Adviser to the Commerce Department.