Christian (dominant group) activists want to claim
the victim role.
It's not merely a claim. Christians may, in this country, be numerically dominant. But they are also widely victimized in numerous ways.
First, in many countries, men and women are still being killed and jailed simply for professing to be Christians. I'm not aware of any nation which kills and jails people simply and solely for professing to be black, or female, or even disabled (the other groups you named).
Second, in this country, Christians can be and are said of and done to Christians that if said of or done to any other minority (and practicing fundamentalists, of which, BTW, I am not one, are a minority) would bring outrage. Look at some of the hostility which has been openly expressed on this thread. If the term Christian in many of the posts here were replaced by black, or female, or Irish, the thread would, rightly, explode in outrage.
My own personal involvement here is twofold. First, I consider myself a civil libertarian and classical liberal, and in both positions I believe on individual liberty and the right to do what you want to do and be left alone. Second, as a member of a historically very small quite liberal religion, I feel threatened when any religious minority -- be it fundamentalist Christian, Muslim (minority in this country, at least), Buddhist, Taoist, Wiccan, you name it -- is persecuted. I am very mindful of the quote attributed to Bonhoeffer which I expect we are all familiar with. I am very mindful that the protection of any minority demands the protection of all.
So I find myself protecting a group I have little if anything in common with because a threat to them is a threat to me, and, if only we could all recognize it, a threat to all of us here. |
