It’s not the stuff of headlines, Christianity having been tossed into the toxic oppression dungeon by decolonialist studies
If you’re into Bible verses at Christmas, unlike the craft store clerk who didn’t know what a “nativity scene” was even after I mentioned wise men, Mary, Joseph and the “Christ child,” I suggest Matthew 5:11. Which, for her and her millennial ilk, says “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” So there’s a lot of blessing worldwide.
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It’s not the stuff of headlines, Christianity having been tossed into the toxic oppression dungeon by decolonialist studies. Its adherents are pilloried as cruel, hypocritical and mighty despite being arguably the most persecuted religion globally.
Even in Canada they are targets, from the nativity scene Moncton city council tried to nix along with its traditional Hanukkah menorah to the creeping ban on Christian prayer by military chaplains on Remembrance Day. And the creeping ideology behind it whereby the Canadian Human Rights Commission just denounced Christmas as a toxic part of so-called “Canada’s history with religious intolerance … deeply rooted in our identity as a settler colonial state.”
Unlike what paragon of enlightenment? The Soviet Union? Saudi Arabia? Iran?
Wikipedia allows delicately that “The contemporary persecution of Christians includes the genocide of Christians by the Islamic State and persecution by other terrorist groups, with official state persecution mostly occurring in countries which are located in Africa and Asia because they have state religions or because their governments and societies practice religious favouritism.”
If you’re wondering which “state religions,” well, “non-state actors” of “particular concern” to the U.S. State Department including Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Yemen’s Houthis, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban and Syria’s Tahrir al-Sham. Though give credit also to Communists in Cuba, China and North Korea.
The Vatican estimates that over 360 million Christians, “one out of every seven” worldwide, “suffers high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” And “persecution” here doesn’t mean living in countries where stores have Ramadan displays. It means blowing up churches and forced marriage after rape. Where are the feminists?”
A report by Open Doors lists “the 50 countries where Christians face the worst persecution” which seems like a lot. Where are the liberals?
Of course the history of Christianity, as it involves human beings, is not spotless. But who else ever really expressed concern over slavery, women’s equality or other core enlightened “human rights” we assume are universal though they only ever seem to roil “the West?”
As Tristin Hopper wrote, Canada’s remarkable history of religious tolerance going back before Confederation to the 1851 Freedom of Worship Act in the Province of Canada failed to impress the CHRC. But it’s real, and exists because the “Dominion of Canada” was founded on explicitly Christian principles, with its name and motto “From Sea to Sea” coming from Psalm 72, as Canadian Heritage scrupulously avoids noting.
No non-Christian country ever had an abolitionist movement, let alone went to war to stop non-Christians enslaving other non-Christians. But the CHRC blathers “No one is free until we are all free,” particularly from patriarchal religion, though maybe we get to keep a plastic Santa or two, plus an elf in a rainbow shirt.
Tom Holland, author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, later explained that in studying antiquity’s “apex predators,” especially the Romans, “I came to feel they were increasingly alien, increasingly frightening to me.” They, and the Greeks, glorified power and lacked compassion in ways we had renounced so completely even atheists in a “Christian” civilization found them intolerable.
As Holland explained, “It took me a long time to realize my morals are not Greek or Roman, but thoroughly, and proudly, Christian.” But take the CHRC’s view and we’re back to Stalin’s sneer “How many divisions has the Pope?” Not that Canada has any divisions either, if we wanted to oppose the worldwide trampling of Christians and the meek generally.
Our prime minister, cornered on the CRTC, said “Obviously Christmas is not racist.” But he added “We all need to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, all the different festivals.” Just more dress-up fun, see? And Pierre Poilievre babbled “We love our great Canadian traditions including Christmas.” But reduce the Nativity to quaint habit and we’re back to Roman euthanasia, abortion, and contempt for the weak.
Thus it’s a well-meaning blunder for a Conservative MP to try to make December “Christian Heritage Month.” It turns Christianity from the foundation of our society and values to one of a dozen amusing antiquated habits, like Scots-descended folks eating haggis on Robbie Burns Day. But nobody would kill, or die, over haggis.
Around the world they do over Christ. But this global persecution elicits shockingly little attention or sympathy in Canada because we’re increasingly just not that kind of people.
National Post
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