Debunking Christian Privilege

Apparently, failure to recognize Christian holidays with special treatment is an "insult."

Google's Cesar Chavez Logo Insults Christians On Easter: posts gathered from the forums include Posting a picture of Chevez on Easter makes me feel uncomfortable and creates a "hostile web environment". Please replace Chevez with an Easter-theme.

Got that? It is "hostile" to not make special Christian-holiday-themed pages. Maybe not if you don't ever do them (Yahoo had no Easter theme and got no flak for that, but Yahoo doesn't make themed search pages), but it's certainly insulting to honor something *else* that happened on the same date as a Christian holiday.

A couple of weeks ago, I switched to DuckDuckGo.com because of privacy concerns. The Easter Chavez logo, and surrounding controversy, makes me less twitchy about still using Google for those searches where DDG just doesn't have what I'm looking for.

The headline nobody is carrying: CRAZED CHRISTIAN GUNS DOWN SCHOOLCHILDREN.

If Adam Lanza had been Muslim, the early reports would have blared that loud and often, and there'd be a whole drama, possibly bigger than the gun-control debates, about whether Islam is, or is not, an innately violent faith. If he had been atheist, the fundamentalist crowd would've jumped on that as proof that America's future safety lies in a return to church-based laws and mandatory attendance. Had he been any kind of Pagan, there would've been a flood of articles wondering if he thought the shooting was some kind of bizarre human sacrifice.

Since he was, instead, Catholic, there's only a side mention of his religion, buried in an article about how the community is mourning at the church he and his family attended.

Because it's not *news* when a Christian is a violent criminal. His religion can't possibly be part of his psychological problems; it doesn't matter if his religion allowed him to justify his acts by thinking "they're innocents; they'll be going to heaven anyway." No media campaign wants to inform the public when the disturbed criminal whacko is Christian, just like no media campaign calls Adam Lanza the "white" shooter. However, while his race is obvious, his religion is not--and that feeds into the privilege-blinders that allow Christians to believe that their religion is "better" than other ones.

Tip from herlander_refugee: "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" should stir thought, scholar says

They've got a bit of text in which Jesus refers to his wife:

The fragment, which measures 8 cm by 4 cm (3.1 by 1.6 inches) includes words in ancient Coptic in which a scribe writes: "Jesus said to them, my wife ...".

Another section of the fragment, contains the phrase "she will be able to be my disciple"

So far, so good. However, Karen King, Professor at Harvard Divinity School, doesn't want us to rush to any conclusions:

"I want to be very clear that this fragment does not give us any evidence that Jesus was married, or not married," she said in the interview during a break in the congress.

Fascinatingly, she also said, "this is the first unequivocal statement we have that claims Jesus had a wife," but apparently that claim is not "evidence" in her mind. Because if it were "evidence," then all those churches would be wrong, and we wouldn't want to say that. At least, not in public.

Head, meet desk.

Shorter University, a Baptist college in Georgia, has been making news by requiring its employees to sign a "lifestyle pledge" including the statement,

"I reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality."

So far, over 60 staff members have quit over it. It's getting a lot of attention. What's not getting nearly as much attention? The statement of faith they have to sign, which apparently went into effect last October.

( They require staff members to be Christian. )

thnidu points out in What First Amendment? that the PA House of Reps has declared 2012 to be The Year of the Bible in a supposedly "noncontroversial resolution."

Text of the bill is short ( and about as overtly theocratic as you could imagine )

The city of Bay Minette, Alabama has a new option for some misdemeanor convicts: attend church for a year to stay out of jail. This saves the department $75 per day per inmate, and they hope it will "change the lives of many people heading down the wrong path."

56 churches in the county are involved. (The city has ~8000 residents.) I couldn't find a list of the churches. Want to guess how many are Jewish, Islamic or Pagan? (Hint: the AU couldn't find any.)

Even the Christian Post notes that it's problematic, reporting that the policy advisor for AU says "the ROC program is offensive to nonreligious people as well as people of other faiths, since offenders are not given a choice that represents their beliefs." So, apparently, "church" means "Christian church."

AU is in contact with them, so I won't step on their toes trying to find out the list of churches. I'm sure that if it's a public-info document (it should be; participation in gov't funded programs is kind of a public thing), we'll soon get a list of the churches involved.

I decided to poke around for articles about "how to witness to Pagans" today (apparently, my life does not have enough irritations; I need reminders of of what really annoys me), and rounded up a collection of links. A clever researcher could watch the shape of evangelism change by tracking similar posts on a timeline--these range from 2003 to 2011, and how the tone changes as Wicca became more public & gained legal protections is interesting.

None of these are packed with hatespeech, because they're all focused on "how us wunnerful Christians with the inside line to the Real Truth can help our poor lost Pagan siblings, well, not quite siblings yet but we're working on that part."

( 7 links with quotes )

Post title from a rant about the nasty Pagans in the military.

It's graduation time, and that means time for "moment of silence" in the presentation, to allow those who have specific religious faiths to contemplate how those helped them learn & grow. Except, of course, when the speaker introducing the "moment of silence" decides to use that moment to recite the Lord's Prayer instead:

“I was initially chosen to deliver the invocation but I was recently informed that I would be leading the moment of silence,” Barlow said. “However, before I fulfill my obligation, I would like to say that I am of the Christian faith and I respect those who do not share the same beliefs as I do. But at this time, I would like to give thanks to the God that has made the class of 2011 a great success. For those who share the in the same beliefs as I do, may I ask that you please bow your heads as I pray.”

Amazing concept of "respect" she's got going there. Apparently, that means "I don't think they should be shot on sight or thrown out of public events, but certainly we shouldn't allow them to be comfortable just because they've got a legal right to be here."

Privilege:

1) The ability to make whacked-out unsubstantiated claims about imminent future events, based on interpretations of mistranslations of multiple fragments of scripture, and be taken seriously by major news media corporations. (Not that major news media are claiming it's true, but they're claiming it's news that some religious nutjobs are claiming the end of the world is nigh.)

2) The ability to disagree with aforementioned imminent future events, and just expect everyone around you to accept that, despite being a member of the same group, you are not part of that particular Tinfoil Hat Brigade.

3) The ability to expect not to be publicly ridiculed the day after the future events don't happen. This applies to both believers in the IFE and people who share the privileged category but do not claim the IFE is going to happen. Well, at least, not the way *that* group is claiming it.