[Mb-civic] What war on Christians? - Cathy Young - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  What war on Christians?

By Cathy Young  |  April 3, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

LAST WEEK, a conference in Washington, D.C., featuring prominent social 
conservatives including former House majority leader Tom DeLay 
(R-Texas), examined the ''War on Christians" -- not in Afghanistan where 
a man has narrowly escaped a death sentence for converting from Islam to 
Christianity or in communist dictatorships where preaching the gospel 
can land you in prison, but here in the United States.

Once, conservatives used to deplore the left's cult of victimhood and 
ridicule the obsession with real or imagined slights toward women, 
minorities, and other historically oppressed groups. Now, the right is 
embracing a victimhood cult obsessed with slights toward a group that 
makes up 85 percent of the American population.

According to a Washington Post report, one conference speaker, Navy 
chaplain Lieutenant Gordon James Klingenschmitt, compared himself to 
Abdur Rahman, the Afghan convert. Showing slides of himself and Rahman, 
Klingenschmitt inquired, ''What do these two Christians have in common?" 
and answered: ''Perhaps we are persecuted." His persecution consisted of 
being disciplined by a commander for saying sectarian prayers at a 
sailor's memorial service.

DeLay, ousted as House majority leader after being indicted for money 
laundering and conspiracy, was touted as another victim of religious 
bigotry, targeted for being outspoken about his faith, and his legal and 
political woes were compared to a crucifixion. (Isn't that offensive to 
Christians?) One is reminded of race-obsessed zealots who see a racist 
conspiracy in every prosecution of a prominent African-American, from 
O.J. Simpson to a corrupt politician.

There is a nugget of truth in some complaints of anti-Christian bias. 
Many people in the academic and journalistic elites do turn up their 
noses at anything that smacks of faith. Some activists, courts, and 
public officials have misconstrued the prohibition on state 
establishment of religion as banning any mention of religion in the 
public square, from a tiny church with a cross on a city seal to a 
reference to God in a high school graduation speech. The ''War on 
Christians" conference featured such an incident: An artist's three 
paintings for a Black History Month art show at the City Hall of 
Deltona, Florida, were rejected because they included a man in an ''I 
love Jesus" cap and a minister with a Bible. (The ban was reversed under 
threat of a lawsuit.)

Such bizarre secularist excesses should be condemned. But the 
complainers go much further. They cry persecution when religious 
conservatives are denied the ability to impose their beliefs on everyone 
-- for instance, to ban abortion or gay unions. In fact, much of the 
hostility they encounter is directed at this political agenda, not at 
religion as such: People who bash the religious right seldom object when 
faith is invoked to protest war, poverty, or racism. This is a double 
standard, to be sure, but it's just as hypocritical for religious 
conservatives to suggest that Christians who don't subscribe to their 
brand of values aren't ''real" Christians.

Thus, at last week's conference, the Rev. Tom Crouse of Holland, Mass., 
lamented that his idea of holding a ''Mr. Heterosexual" contest to 
''proclaim the truth that God created us all heterosexual" encountered 
widespread disapproval and found no support even from ''Bible-believing 
churches" because ''it wasn't loving." Apparently, Christian churches 
that accept gay men and women are part of an anti-Christian war.

Attempts to portray Christians as a beleaguered minority are 
particularly ludicrous since, outside a few elite enclaves, prejudice 
against the nonreligious remains widely accepted in America. Half of 
Americans agree that belief in God is necessary to having good moral 
values, and more than two-thirds say they would not even consider voting 
for a nonbeliever for political office. Georgia state legislator Ron 
Foster ruffled no feathers a few years ago when he noted, in defense of 
posting of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, that judges or 
public officials who don't believe in God are ''more likely to be corrupt."

This soft bigotry has consequences, and not just for godless 
politicians. In the May issue of New York University Law Review, UCLA 
law professor Eugene Volokh documents discrimination against 
nonreligious parents in child custody disputes, based on the assumption 
that raising your children in a religious faith makes you a better parent.

To be sure, there are atheists who are militantly hostile to all 
religion, and reinforce negative stereotypes of nonbelievers. But there 
are also believers who give the faithful a bad name -- like the whiners 
and zealots who wring their hands about a mythical ''war on Christians."

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/03/what_war_on_christians/
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