Greg and Amy discuss whether Christians are facing persecution, pointing to examples of unequal treatment of religious expression and urging Christians to stand firm in their convictions without becoming bitter toward those who oppose them.
Transcript
Amy: All right. Let’s go on to a question from Linda Baker: “I have a family member that argued with me that Christians are not being persecuted; we’re only losing our privilege—that a good follower is a scared follower. What should I say?”
Greg: Well, first of all, I’m curious what this person thinks Christian privilege amounts to in our culture. What are the advantages that Christians have in our culture, in virtue of being Christians, that people who are not Christians don’t have? Okay? I’m not clear on that.
And when churches are told they have to close—say, for instance, a couple of years ago—but all kinds of other establishments were allowed to stay open, and by no, it seemed, rhyme or reason that was tied to the issues itself, like the so-called pandemic, why was it Christian churches that suffered the most? Why is it that Christian churches were the ones that were prosecuted for staying open? I mean, it just seems like an odd thing to say.
I just read an article or a case just recently about, if you homeschool, you get benefits—financial benefits—under the charter school kind of guidelines in the state of California or whatever state is in mind here—maybe it wasn’t California—unless you’re a Christian school, you’re a Christian family who homeschools with Christian principles or at least religious principles. So, I guess it would apply to others, but most homeschoolers are Christians. Then they say you can’t have this money. In other words, they’re saying the reason we will not give you the money we will give everyone else in exactly the same situation—which, by the way, was your money that we took and we earmarked for education—you can’t have it, because you’re talking about spiritual things.
The first question was, what are the Christian privileges that non-Christians don’t have in this country that are now being taken away from Christians who have privilege? This is kind of like a white privilege variation, which is very, very general. People throw it out there. It doesn’t have any detail to it, and therefore it’s easy to get away with it. So, you have to ask the question, what do you mean by that? What is the so-called privilege that’s being taken away?
Then, when you look at ADF (the Alliance for Defending Freedom) or the ACLJ (the Christian legal group) or you look at First Liberty (it’s another group), virtually all of the cases they’re adjudicating or that they’re litigating have to do with Christians who are being told no with regard to their genuine constitutional liberties. It isn’t anybody else. Everybody else has these liberties to do whatever they want, unless they’re Christian.
So, this makes no sense. If a person is making this claim, it is their job to defend it. It is their job to say, “Yes. See. Look at all these situations. All this is an example of Christian privilege, and they’re just removing the privilege. They’re not persecuting the Christians.” But it isn’t a matter of Christian privilege. It’s a matter of First-Amendment rights that are afforded everybody else but denied religious people, in particular Christians. So, that’s the kind of case I would make. I’d want to ask those questions. What Christian privilege are you saying is being denied here? And what about all these cases that are being now litigated? You cannot litigate against a parochial privilege that some people just get to defend it. You can’t litigate it to secure it. If it’s a parochial privilege—in other words, it’s a privilege just given to one person—there’s no legal basis to defend that. You have to defend based on the Constitution—the First Amendment—that ought to be applied equally to everybody.
Amy: And this is what I think is happening here, Greg. I think they are equating freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution with privileges. So, the fact that, okay, you can’t, as a Christian—we’ve talked about this not even too long ago—in a government office, they say you have to remove your Bible, you have to do all these things. Well, is that losing a privilege, or is that being denied a freedom? So, they’re assuming that means losing a privilege, but that freedom is not a privilege. It’s a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and we all hold it.
So, are we being put into jails and things like that? Well, for the most part, no. But someone like the baker in Colorado, he keeps getting sued by people because they keep trying to trap him and get him in trouble for not being able to do things according to his conscience. Well, that’s not losing a privilege. That’s someone trying to deny him his freedom. And so, maybe you could just talk about, well, here are the freedoms we’re allowed. And you seem to be treating Christians differently from everyone else. If someone else has a religious belief, it’s allowed to continue. And for the most part, we do pretty well here. But there are these cases you can point to and say, well, you can see this happening.
Greg: So, in a workplace where a Christian can’t have a Bible on the desk, can a Muslim woman wear a burka? Because a burka is religious clothing. It identifies her as a Muslim. It is consistent with her Muslim convictions to dress in this particular way, in this modest fashion. How is that different? Of course, people are going to immediately say, “Well, it’s different.” Well, how? Each of them is an expression in the public square of a parochial religious practice and conviction.
Amy: And that might be a good way to ask. Say, “Do you think that a Muslim woman ought to be able to wear a headscarf at work that identifies her as Muslim? Do you think that she should be given that freedom? Well, if she should be given that freedom, then shouldn’t Christians have the same freedom?” So, sometimes people are able to see it when it’s a minority group. They’re much better able to see the freedoms that the Constitution offers. And then maybe you can compare that.
Now, the other thing I would say—and this isn’t persecution, but this is something very curious and strange that’s happening in this society—I would ask, what would you think—and this is something I’ve been thinking about lately—what would you think if you were watching TV, and every time you’re watching a murder mystery of some kind, if a black person came on there, you would know immediately, oh, he’s obviously the murderer because every black person that comes on TV is evil and is manipulative and is a hypocrite and is judgmental and is terrible to everyone, and he ends up being the secret evil person?
Greg: That’s the way it’s characterized.
Amy: What would you think? Would you think that there’s something very bad going on here that needs to be addressed? I would hope you would. And yet, that is how I know who is the murderer on TV shows. If a Christian shows up, the Christian is a terrible person. It happens every time. There’s something bad going on here that shouldn’t be happening, because, for one, it’s not true.
Greg: By the way, just for the record, in either case, you’re making a parody. Okay? Just so this isn’t misunderstood.
Amy: The other example is to show how ridiculous it is. It’s not true in either case, and it shouldn’t be the case that people have these weird propagandistic depictions of Christians that are crazy and untrue and are making everyone afraid of Christians. I mean, this is not a good situation. So, you just have to look around the culture, and this isn’t—I wouldn’t call that persecution, but I would just look around the culture and say, “How is that going to lead anywhere good?”
Greg: Well, it certainly is a negative stereotype. And by the way, just for the record, I have met thousands and thousands of men of the cloth over the years. I have never met one that walks around with his hands folded in front of him or his hands folded behind him and continually says to me, “My son. My son. Oh, my son.” This is nonsense, but you see this every single time you see a priest on TV, for example, or somebody who’s obviously a man of the cloth. Hollywood, you know, prides itself in being authentic, except for when it comes this way. And they’re dishing out all of this negativity with regard to Christians.
By the way, there’s a case that’s being adjudicated right now by First Liberty, I think it is. And this is where a young man—let me pause for a second. Think about what the kinds of clothing kids are allowed to wear in school nowadays. The kinds of clothing. The messages on the t-shirt. All kinds of stuff because the ACLU has made sure that they have the freedom of speech for all these kinds of things. All right? And some of it deeply offensive and untoward and whatever. But when a young man wore a t-shirt that said, “There are only two sexes”—he’s a Christian—he got expelled. And so, he got a new t-shirt, and it said, “There are only,” and then he put “censored sexes,” like the “two” was censored. He got expelled for that, too. Okay? You can burn an American flag on campus, but you can’t wear a t-shirt that says there are only two sexes. If you wore a t-shirt that says there’s an unlimited amount of sexes, well, that wouldn’t be a problem, even though it deeply would offend the sensibilities of a whole bunch of Christians. No, that’s fine.
So, this person who makes this comment is not living in the real world.
Amy: Well, this is why I don’t know that anything you say is going to have an influence on the family member. You could just say, “Look, I’d love to talk to you about some of the cases that are going on and hear what you think and show you where I think freedoms are being denied. You’re defining that as losing a privilege, but it’s actually a freedom that we’re guaranteed that’s being denied.”
But one last thing I would say, regardless of what’s going on out there: We have to remember, as Christians, where our hope is. And we have to find a way to be like the apostles who joyfully accepted the seizure of their property. Actually, it was the early church. It wasn’t just the apostles. And the disciples were the ones who rejoiced that they were counted worthy of suffering for his name.
Peter talks about this in 1 Peter. If you do suffer for the sake of proclaiming Jesus’ name, that is when you rejoice because it’s proof that you’re proclaiming Jesus’ name. It’s proof that you are with Jesus, and you will suffer now, but you will have glory later. And this is just a short time.
We need to feel sorry for these people. They do not have Jesus. Right now, they have no relationship with God. They are headed for destruction and judgment. And we suffer a little bit now, and many of us won’t ever have a case brought against us, so our suffering is only vicarious anyway. But as Christians, we have hope, and we have a goal for our lives, and we know where we’re going, and we know God, and for those reasons, we should not go around angry, returning evil for evil or lashing out at our family members that argue that we should lose our privilege or whatever. We need to be as Christ was on the cross, where he did not return evil for evil, and he suffered for the sake of others. So, sometimes we take abuse from others for the sake of showing them grace so that we can show them who Jesus is, because he showed grace instead of returning evil for evil.
Greg: The very last Beatitude in Matthew 5 is, “Blessed are you when men persecute you and insult you and say all kinds of evil against you for my name’s sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in Heaven.”