Christianity's Persecution Complex

Mary Kenny, in the Guardian, writes why she, as a Catholic, feels persecuted, and why this so-called persecution elates her:

To be persecuted — or at least, disapproved of — is the highest honour, because it means that the Christian is not fitting in with "the system": he or she is not part of any "establishment".

Quite. Christian culture is far outside the mainstream, and so antithetical to the establishment, isn't it? Christians have zero political power; no overriding cultural influence whatsoever; and apart from the tattered Bibles that they stealthily pass back and forth while hoping not to get caught, they really have nothing to call their own.

This is the norm everywhere in the West.

Except for every fucking place I've ever visited in the U.S.A., the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and so on.

It's bizarro world for any of Christ's followers to claim otherwise. Our entire Western culture is so absolutely steeped in Christian notions, Christian values, Christian traditions, Christian power, and Judeo-Christian laws, that it throws Ms. Kenny's observational faculties into some doubt. To be kind, perhaps she genuinely doesn't know any better; perhaps she can no more experience reality than a fish truly experiences water. In other words, when the stuff that constitutes your environment is so pervasive, it may just become invisible.

On a good day, I find Kenny and Christians like her amusing. On a bad day, they irk me no end. What do they know of persecution beyond what their pious ancestors did to heretics and freethinkers and "witches"?

Western Christians claiming the mantle of martyrdom, openly cherishing the delusional belief that they're spat upon and vilified at every turn — now that's some goddamn chutzpah.

In her broadside, Kenny also bemoans the fact that our culture has turned materialistic, that opulence has become a virtue:

The world rewards greed, pride, aggression, pushiness, clamour, and frocks and rocks that cost a million.

Christianity, she suggests, is the antidote to this cultural disease.

That's enough cognitive dissonance to make one's head asplode. I have some images I'd like to show her. My pleasure.

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P.S. Here, former Pope John Paul complained of a drop in living standards after he'd moved from the Vatican to the kingdom of Heaven. Another spot-on Onion spoof.

Comments

[Phelps]

What do they know of persecution beyond what their pious ancestors did to heretics and freethinkers and "witches"?

Crucifixion, being fed to lions, being burned in their own churches, and stoning come to mind. And that's just the first 200 years.

[Rogier]

I concede the point. Thanks. However, that's 20 centuries ago. Any major Christian persecutions in the West within living memory, or within the past millennium or so? Or might it be that it was all manner of Christianfolk doing the persecuting?

[GreginOz]

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6333&IBLOCK_ID=35

matt Taibbi; God can suck my dick.

[Don]

There's a huge amount of people still running loose on this planet with that horrifying, prehistoric disease known as *Jesus Clause*, in any of its myriad of completely customizable flavors, they just never evolved beyond the level of children.

What can you say about people that waste their time in THIS life planning for the NEXT life when there is nothing but blind faith to support such a thing?

I have no use for any of them.....

[hermesten]

I've lived all over the US and in my experience, the Bible Beaters whine the loudest about persecution where they have the most power and are part of the clearest majority. I was completely indifferent to religion until I had to live awhile in Oklahoma and had it constantly shoved down my throat in all it's most stupid and absurd variations.