Persecuted? Ummmmm....

Before we begin, A quick disclaimer. I'm not a Christian. I went to church as a kid and for a while as an adult but over time I fell away from it. There were quite a few reasons but we'll get into those below.

There's a film coming out later this year called "Persecuted." Basically it's a tale about ... oh hell I'd explain the plot but I'll let them do it.

Persecuted trailer

And of course being a leftie I'll let these people describe it too.

Right Wing watch on Persecuted

Okay, So, got it. Nice Christian dude, bad government, bad other religions, etc etc. I kind of hate to be flippant but perhaps I've been following the far right wing of the evangelical movement for a little too long. Since about the 1980's when they kept trying to take my music away.

The film and the concept tell us a lot about how the Conservative Evangelical movement sees the world and their place in it. That they are the people with the pure knowledge of the love of God, and all those other people are out to get them. That being Christian in America is a reason to be persecuted.

So if I may make a statement. Not getting what you want all the time does not mean you are being persecuted it means that you are being treated like every other citizen who lives in this country. To those of us watching you flip out when someone says "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", or when other religions are allowed a space near yours to have their own place of worship or, when you're beliefs have to share space with others rather than being paramount. Well I tend to think you look like a three year old having a fit of temper.

Freedom is not a zero sum game. Allowing others to experience the same rights as you does not take away any from you. What it does is put you in the same place other beliefs have been for some time, in a free marketplace of ideas. Nows the time for you to do a better job of selling your intellectual product. Not having privilege is not the same as losing rights, it means that now other have them and you have to play at their level.

It's a shock I know, and you'll likely moan about it for a long long time, but frankly this ones been a long time coming. I mean when you were by and large the only game in town it was pretty easy. You went to church or your local community thought you were weird and made you an outsider.

Ahhh the good old days. Which if you were white, male, straight and Christian were pretty awesome. If you were not one of those things well things kind of sucked by various degrees, and lets be honest the reason for a lot of that worldsuck came from religion.

Now you have to exist in a world were the truth about how it is Christianity spread across Europe and America is far easier to find than the myths you spread are. Where you have to coexist with systems of beliefs that do not make people feel bad for being gay, or weird or even for just having sex and linking it. Like I said your gonna have to up your game.

I knew the church and I weren't going to have a long lasting relationship fairly early on. At one of the churches we attended one of the ladies there would look at the books I would bring to catechism class and sniff at names like Joesef Heller, and Robert Heinlein. Telling me I was engaging in sin by reading them. To me though, they were broadening my world. And it was painfully obvious that she was annoyingl rude and probably batshit crazy. Then I looked at the rest of the congregation and saw various permutations on the same theme. People with perpetual blinders on, unwilling and afraid to look past what the preacher was teaching them.

By the time I hit the 7th grade I was pretty much ready to hit the back door on this whole experience. I liked the community but I hated what the teachings often did to the people in it. Limiting their ability to to see the world in a bigger picture.

Now those very people are saying they're being persecuted.

So I sigh and say the following. If you want to know what being persecuted means ask a Shia Muslim in Iraq and A Sunni Muslim in Iran. If you want to what it's like to be persecuted go out and find out what Tibetan Buddhists experience every day just for having a faith, or what it might be like to have to hide a Jewish identity should you live in Saudi Arabia where the penalty for being Jewish is death.

That's real persecution.

What you're going through i growing pains. The other siblings are no longer going to just sit there and take their place as second class citizens. Now that they're grown up it's time to act like an adult, because frankly the way you are acting now is not helping your case any.

For more on the subject I'll let this gentleman speak for me as he's way funnier.

Marcus Brigstocke on the three Abrahamic faiths.