The REAL Christian Persecution in America: Affirming Churches Hit with anti-LGBT Hate Crimes

Christian persecution is very real in some parts of the world, with parts of the Middle East and Africa immediately springing to mine.  Of course, if one listens to American Christofascists, they would have you believe that they are being persecuted, especially by gays.  The truth, of course, is something very different and if one reviews the history of America, historically it's been the Christians persecuting others - especially those they deem non-believers.   Now, with the Christofascists finding their ability to persecute others and their ability to impose their beliefs on others rapidly eroding they are disingenuously playing the victim card.  Meanwhile, as noted in a previous post, they are attacking progressive Christians and in some cases, such as in the image above, vandalizing gay-accepting churches.   Here are highlights from a piece in Patheos:

Christian persecution in the United States is real. It’s just not what you think.

Christian persecution isn’t about having to offer birth control to women. It’s not about having to serve wedding cakes to gay and lesbian couples.

Christian persecution isn’t even having people call you out when you spout homophobic, sexist, or racist opinions, veiled blasphemously as biblical.

Real Christian persecution is having your church burned to the ground because black people worship there.  Real Christian persecution is having your church graffitied hatefully because gay and lesbian people can worship there.

Real Christian persecution in the United States terrorizes people — often Christians themselves. It calls to mind violence, done in the name of God, continuing in the name of God. And Christianity — particularly as it has been historically practiced by white, heterosexual people in the United States — has a very deep, very long history of perpetrating this kind of violence.

The latest victim of such persecution is the Church of Our Redeemer, a Metropolitan Community Church in Augusta, Georgia (MCCOR). It’s an open and affirming church in the midst of a deeply homophobic culture that birthed the Southern Baptist Convention. The church is a beacon for LGBTQ equality, a home and safe haven for many in the town.

And just an hour away, the KKK, a self-professed Christian organization, is protesting the Confederate battle flag being removed from the South Carolina capitol in the most vile and hateful of ways.

Certainly, these two shouldn’t be simply equated with each other, but at their core, both are motivated by hate and by violence toward difference. Hate, it seems, has become a “Christian” value for some.

[I]n the United States, it has almost always been Christians terrorizing Christians?  White Christians terrorizing Black Christians for 400 years.  Heterosexual Christians terrorizing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians for decades and longer.

And those categories aren’t mutually exclusive mind you. But I put these examples together because it bears remembering that hate crimes in this country have tended to be committed overwhelmingly by Christians.

Christians like Franklin Graham fret and worry about attacks on the Christian faith from Muslims or other vague bogeymen who aren’t white, who aren’t Christians, or who aren’t heterosexual. But the real attack on Christianity is coming from Christians.

We need to stop giving undeserved deference - and special rights - to those who profess religious belief as justification to harm and discriminate against others.