The Specious Persecution of Modern Christians

Driving home last night I listened to what I assume was a rebroadcast of WMUR’s show On Point about the supposed present-day persecution of “Christians” or what are really White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such dribble in all my life. Unfortunately, I could not call in as I was literally salivating to respond to the nonsense I was hearing from the Christian pastor asserting this inane claim.

Anyone following my blog, RaPaR knows, I been researching the the origins of Judaism & Christianity for many years. I was born Roman Catholic into an Italian-American family in Brooklyn, NY in 1955. I am now an Atheist since delving into the Bible to find alternative answers to Catholic doctrine that I believed to be man made. This lead me to some very unexpected skeins of inquiry, not the least of which is the history of Christianity.  And, unsurprisingly, you will find that no one group of people in history have done more persecuting than Christians. Even a cursory review of history bears this out.
While the pastor (forgive, I can not remember his name) was crying about why people are so intolerable of Christians today, let me make just two relevant points:

1) Christians have been persecuting people in America well before it was even a nation. They came to America, slaughtered most the inhabitants, enslaved others, and then encumbered them with Christianity as if this would help them in some way. The persecution of Africans (and African-Americans, as they were forced to become) was almost exclusively perpetrated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants or White Evangelicals. The result was to lull them into the false hope that there was some “Jesus” that would come from the sky and save them. So far it hasn’t happened and they’re still awaiting some kind of social justice to this day and continue to be discriminated against and persecuted by, white Christian society. A society that could lynch a black child on Saturday, sing hymns in the pews of their churches on Sunday.

2) The so-called Christian values and morality that the Pastor asserted can be found in the pages of the New Testament, in today’s society, is a non-starter. For instance, the Bible – Christian & Hebrew, collectively and individually – doesn’t say anything about abortion yet they hold their narrow-minded belief as something to which all of society must adhere. Therefore their belief is going to be crammed down the throats of others against their will. Why? Why can’t the supposed children of god keep their own moralities to themselves? Why must they insist upon changing the laws of our society-at-large even against the wills of a majority of Americans that believe that this should be a woman’s or a couple’s personal choice?  Remarkably they would claim that a twelve year old girl, raped by her father, should be forced to bear a child even against her will because this is a creation of their god. I can’t think of anything as cruel as this and yet they would have it encoded into our law whether society agrees or not. This kind of Christian hegemony has gone on since time immemorial and is just one example. 
Remember that the Ku Klux Klan was entirely populated by Christians, from Nathan Bedford Forest to David Duke, from beginning to end. They persecuted most “others” – although primarily African Americans but others as well; Jews, Catholics, Italians, etc. not to mention homosexuals – even into the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, they continue to assert their ignorant beliefs which they selectively extract from their Christian dogma in order to alter society against the will of the majority. And now they want to decry some self-perceived persecution perpetrated by the “rest” of the American people.

The Pastor also decried the injustice at the exclusive teaching of Darwinism or Evolution in public schools at the exclusion of “creationism,” as if the two are somehow equivalent. They are not. Creationism is mythology, pure and simple, and a ridiculous one at that. Argued against a massive corpus of scientific data is their myth that god created the entire universe in six days, created light four days before creating the sun and stars, and most puzzlingly, creating man in full, mature form day one. All without an iota of supporting data; in fact in the absence of such empirical data. If they would like to have a flat Earth curriculum, they are welcome to at a Christian or Catholic school. They can help themselves. I just will not have my taxes used to pay for it. 

What the Pastor perceives as persecution I consider to be the process of standing up against an oppressive and reprehensible minority. They need to keep their narrow-minded and offensive beliefs to themselves. If they can not then they should expect a vigorous and raucous fight.