- Banned
- #1
One particularly startling quote came from Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, who said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”
You read that right: a cardinal of the Catholic church believes that the United States is just a few years away from outlawing Catholicism.
It’s not just him: the film as a whole unsubtly suggests that the US is poised to crush American Christians in the same way that Hitler’s Germany did theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. According to Right Wing Watch’s report on the film, the Nazi analogies fly fast and furious: one interviewee even said that “the American church is slightly more attuned to the rumbling heard in the distance than the German church was in the 30s. The bad news is, only slightly, right?”.
These Christians equate not getting their own way in the political sphere – not being able to impose their idiosyncratic religious views on others with the force of law – with brutal and unjust persecution. As America becomes more diverse and less religious than ever, white conservative Christian men are losing their disproportionate influence on politics and, because they think of themselves as the natural and deserving custodians of that power, having to share it feels like a shocking injustice.
But part of the justification for their victim routine is theological: the Bible predicts that Christians will be persecuted, so these conservatives believe that it must be true. Acknowledging the true extent of both their current and historical power and influence would generate an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance with a text that often takes the side of – and venerates leaders who serve – the low and the downtrodden.
The only remedy is thus to declare, despite the evidence, that they are truly a persecuted minority in a country filled with other self-identified Christians, which makes a mockery of the true victims of religious oppression all around the world.
Help help I m being repressed How conservatives make a mockery of the oppression of religious minorities Adam Lee Comment is free The Guardian
Christophrenia running wild
You read that right: a cardinal of the Catholic church believes that the United States is just a few years away from outlawing Catholicism.
It’s not just him: the film as a whole unsubtly suggests that the US is poised to crush American Christians in the same way that Hitler’s Germany did theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. According to Right Wing Watch’s report on the film, the Nazi analogies fly fast and furious: one interviewee even said that “the American church is slightly more attuned to the rumbling heard in the distance than the German church was in the 30s. The bad news is, only slightly, right?”.
These Christians equate not getting their own way in the political sphere – not being able to impose their idiosyncratic religious views on others with the force of law – with brutal and unjust persecution. As America becomes more diverse and less religious than ever, white conservative Christian men are losing their disproportionate influence on politics and, because they think of themselves as the natural and deserving custodians of that power, having to share it feels like a shocking injustice.
But part of the justification for their victim routine is theological: the Bible predicts that Christians will be persecuted, so these conservatives believe that it must be true. Acknowledging the true extent of both their current and historical power and influence would generate an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance with a text that often takes the side of – and venerates leaders who serve – the low and the downtrodden.
The only remedy is thus to declare, despite the evidence, that they are truly a persecuted minority in a country filled with other self-identified Christians, which makes a mockery of the true victims of religious oppression all around the world.
Help help I m being repressed How conservatives make a mockery of the oppression of religious minorities Adam Lee Comment is free The Guardian
Christophrenia running wild