The places where faith dies

[sigma7]

Devout Christian gets assigned the religion beat of the LA Times nine years ago. This was perhaps the worst thing that could've happened to him. Powerful piece, via mads.

Comments

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Christians are certainly persecuted in parts of the world, such as Eritrea, China, parts of the Middle East and far more.

But I have a lot of trouble reconciling the concept of the majority religion in the United States being subjected to persecution. Hell, I belong to a minority religion and I don't think I'm particularly persecuted. There are things that I wish were more accomodating to my faith, but nothing even close to a level I'd call persecution.

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

Pardon, but just out of curiosity, what religion would that be?

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

I'm Jewish.

[daethkow.livejournal.com]

No, we're not persecuted, but the trends in the culture are heading that way. Maybe not to the full-on persecution your ancestors went through, but definitely an intellectual marginalization, equating us to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and such.

And I know that FSM was made up to counter a very specific issue, that of science education, but the problem is that it gets expanded in the public consciousness, and the next thing you know, one can't quote anything Christian, whether it be Paul's letters or C.S. Lewis without getting a "OMG u iz a FSM lol!!111eleventy11" thrown back.

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

I don't know; you could argue that this is the most religious president ever*, which kind of counteracts that argument. From my perspective, we have the most conservative Supreme Court of my life, which is already making government far more open to religion.

I think too often what Christians interpret as persecution is what I see as separation of church and state. Not being allowed to have massive Christmas pageants in school isn't persecution, IMO -- it's ensuring that one viewpoint isn't presented as the correct one by public institutions.

You look at the presidential election -- every single candidate is Christian, and it's to the point that Romney's Mormonism is enough out of the orthodoxy that it's considered one of his biggest problems in the race. I find it hard to go from that step to saying you can't quote C.S. Lewis without being mocked (by rational people).