From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/18/christian-persecution-american-schools
Unfounded fears have driven some Christian groups to co-opt the language of discrimination for their reactionary policies
TF Charlton
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 18 May 2013
Christians make up 78% of the American population, 90% of Congress, and 100% of presidents thus far. But to hear some conservative Christians tell it, they are a persecuted minority. Newt Gingrich recently claimed that LGBT rights have caused Catholic adoption services to be “outlawed” in Washington DC and Massachusetts. In a loaded speech on the House floor last week, Representative Steve King accused President Obama of racial favoritism and “[eroding] western Judeo-Christendom“, unfavorably comparing his congratulatory call to Jason Collins, the newly out NBA player, with strangely unspecified slights against Tim Tebow, “who will kneel and pray to God on the football field.”
Fears of marginalization because of Christian faith, even persecution, have deep roots in white American evangelical culture, dating back to the Scopes Trial and before. As with Representative King’s comments, they’re often steeped in white racial anxiety and resentment. This persecution complex is also taught – actively promoted and reinforced through fearmongering aimed at youth.
One example: “The Thaw“, a modest viral hit produced by Reach America, a “Christian youth leadership program” based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. In the video, about 20 local teens – all white except but one – list ways in which Christians are systematically “frozen out of the public sphere” and public schools. Christian students are expected to “check [their] religion at the door,” forbidden to pray, or to “write about God” in school. They hazard bullying and “rude and disrespectful” treatment, “dirty jokes” from fellow students, and “pornography” disguised as “sex education”. The curious notion that Tim Tebow has been punished for his public faith comes up here, as well.
The teenagers wax nostalgic for an America where “school prayer and pledge to the flag was welcomed [sic],” before God was taken “out of … history books” and the country was “stolen” by “people who do not love our God”. They call on students to join an “army … with Christ [as] commander”, to reverse this political and religious decline.
In stark contrast to this dour picture, Idaho reporter Maureen Dolan writes that two high schools near where The Thaw was made have active prayer groups that meet on school grounds. At Lake City High, principal Deanne Clifford prays with students. At Coeur d’Alene High, local churches “regularly” send “representatives … as ‘approved visitors’ [who join] the students for lunch in the cafeteria”.
It’s this cognitive dissonance that’s most striking, and disturbing, about “The Thaw”. The language of bullying and social isolation of students who don’t fit in, increasingly a concern for many parents and schools, is harnessed for a defense of the imagined good old (viz segregated) days when conservative Christian tenets were even more privileged in school curricula: abstinence-only education, creation science, mandatory school prayers, etc. The absence of such privileges – infringements on the equal rights of students and families who believe differently – is presented as bullying and persecution. As Reach America director Gary Brown says:
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/18/christian-persecution-american-schools
