Last week, Channel 4's excellent documentary series 4thought.tv ran a week long series asking whether christians in Britain are being persecuted. Of course, this is not the first time that the word persecution has been thrown out by christians but lately it seems to happen with increasing frequency. Vatican-oriented news agency Rome Reports has just released a new report which "shows" that christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.
The report opens by suggesting that 7 out of 10 people cannot freely practise their faith and that christians are the most persecuted religion. What an amazing blinding flash of the obvious. There are approximately 2.1 billion christians worldwide. There are 500 million more christians than the next biggest group, muslims. It stands to reason that if you select a group on the basis of a universal characteristic (i.e. religion or in this case religious persecution) that the composition of that group will be greatly influenced by the composition of the entire population. Simply put, there are more christians persecuted because there are more christians. I'm sure that if you looked at the next most persecuted group it would be muslims.
Of course, the most telling thing about the whole report is that it was conducted by a catholic group called "Aid to the Church in Need". If instead, the report had been conducted by the RAND corporation or the CATO institute then people would sit up and pay attention, but a christian group talking about christian persecution, not so much.
Another factor in the "persecution" of christians highlighted in the report is that religious persecution is necessarily a function of religious conflict. Religions are like spiritual encyclopedia salesmen, eagerly trying to flog their own worldview while disparaging all rival products. It's no different than any other white goods.
The report in this case highlighted 21 out of 194 countries which it analysed for religious persecution. Naturally the countries on the list include Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and China. It is noted, however, that the cause of persecution can be split into two categories: political and religious. The first one, we are already familiar with; countries with a despotic regime rarely tolerate anyone who speaks out against it. The second category is persecution by other religions and this is really a situation caused by christians themselves. When a country has a majority religion or a state religion like Saudi Arabia or Iran the people there may not take too kindly to missionaries invading their country and telling them that their deeply held beliefs are bullshit. This is something that christian missionaries have been doing for centuries. They have manipulated indigenous cultures into destroying their cultural heritage for the sake of some theoretical promise of an eternal life by eating crackers which are the body of a dead guy.
I have to agree that the human rights of christians in the countries listed in the report are being seriously infringed. The thing is though, so are the rights of all the other people living in those countries. Countries where religion takes over rarely tolerate dissent. Atheism too can lead to it, just look at Stalinist Russia. (Oh and a note to all the people who like to point out the tendency of atheism towards despotism, remember that at the top of the list of despots is Hitler, who was a Catholic.)
I would like to suggest to all christians out there that like to complain about religious persecution to remember these incidents:
Ok, so there are no deaths in the stories above, but persecution is persecution, whatever form it takes. And before anyone says that christianity doesn't lead to terrorism have a look at the picture below because it's one that we should never forget.
And if anybody out there doubts the obvious connection to christianity maybe this Spanish easter parade will help.
Finally, I leave you with a quote from Johnathan Swift who perfectly describes the reason behind the repeated claims of persecution that are heard so often from christians:
The report in this case highlighted 21 out of 194 countries which it analysed for religious persecution. Naturally the countries on the list include Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and China. It is noted, however, that the cause of persecution can be split into two categories: political and religious. The first one, we are already familiar with; countries with a despotic regime rarely tolerate anyone who speaks out against it. The second category is persecution by other religions and this is really a situation caused by christians themselves. When a country has a majority religion or a state religion like Saudi Arabia or Iran the people there may not take too kindly to missionaries invading their country and telling them that their deeply held beliefs are bullshit. This is something that christian missionaries have been doing for centuries. They have manipulated indigenous cultures into destroying their cultural heritage for the sake of some theoretical promise of an eternal life by eating crackers which are the body of a dead guy.
I have to agree that the human rights of christians in the countries listed in the report are being seriously infringed. The thing is though, so are the rights of all the other people living in those countries. Countries where religion takes over rarely tolerate dissent. Atheism too can lead to it, just look at Stalinist Russia. (Oh and a note to all the people who like to point out the tendency of atheism towards despotism, remember that at the top of the list of despots is Hitler, who was a Catholic.)
I would like to suggest to all christians out there that like to complain about religious persecution to remember these incidents:
Ok, so there are no deaths in the stories above, but persecution is persecution, whatever form it takes. And before anyone says that christianity doesn't lead to terrorism have a look at the picture below because it's one that we should never forget.
And if anybody out there doubts the obvious connection to christianity maybe this Spanish easter parade will help.
Finally, I leave you with a quote from Johnathan Swift who perfectly describes the reason behind the repeated claims of persecution that are heard so often from christians:
No comments:
Post a Comment