I do think we are probably in agreement. I was playing devil’s advocate, to answer your question re any possible link between Western secularization and violence against Christians in the Middle East. I don’t know if the link is real and significant, but it has crossed my mind.

Btw, my interlocutors were people whom I thought should have known better, considering their social status—educated, multilingual middle class-plus professionals, some well-travelled. If they were so ignorant, how about their less sophisticated countrymen?

As to your second question, my answer is “no”! I am not on the side of the yahoos.

“[I] think that many Middle Easterners and Africans do not make a distinction between Western secularism and Christianity.”

1. Does it make sense to blame Middle Eastern and African ignorance on fairly obvious cultural divisions between the West on the West, as opposed to Middle Easterners and Africans who don’t understand the significant cultural divisions at work? You say that these people are not “stupid yahoos” with different worldviews, I have to say I’m not sure about that.

2. Does this wide-spread misunderstanding mean that social change in the West should be inhibited for fear it will be misunderstood by ignorant people and used to justify atrocities? Allowing violent ignorant people the right to overrule social changes in countries where these changes are quite popular seems wrongheaded.

I think I would largely agree with you, but i think that many Middle Easterners and Africans do not make a distinction between Western secularism and Christianity. In many of their countries, religion is in the air they breath and they take its existence and influence for granted in a way that most Americans cannot imagine. Such people are apt to think that the Western push for acceptance of premarital sex, same sex marriage, drug use, alcohol consumption, etc. are Christian notions. They do not want their societies corrupted.

I knew many who were taught that all Americans are Protestants or Jews. Most were astonished at the idea that there are agnostics let alone atheists except among the mentally ill. These were not stupid yahoos but their worldview is not ours.

I was replying to supertradmum’s statement that Christian persecution in the Middle East was consequence of “the past forty years or more of the erosion of Christianity and the disappearance of it from the public sphere”. How does that even work?

“It is somewhat distasteful to downplay the murders of thousands of innocent people by bringing up the fact that the US is still a majority Christian country.”

It’s simply bad argumentation to say that the persecution of Christians in the Middle East sets the tone for Christians worldwide, and–among other things–ridiculous to compare the situation of Middle Eastern Christians with American Christians.

Micha Elyi,

How do you know?

And please provide a link to the source of your FBI claims.

See
Hate Crime Statistics 2011 (the most recent available).

Religious bias
Of the 1,480 victims of an anti-religious hate crime:

• 63.2 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
• 12.5 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.
• 5.7 percent were victims of an anti-Catholic bias.
• 4.4 percent were victims of a bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
• 3.4 percent were victims of an anti-Protestant bias.
• 0.3 percent were victims of an anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
• 10.5 percent were victims of a bias against other religions (anti-other religion).

[A]ccording to FBI hate crime statistics, (of) religiously motivated bias crimes in the United States… 5.2% (were) against Catholics…
–David Nickol

The vandalism of our parish’s Lourdes shrine last year wasn’t counted as a hate crime by the FBI. But it was.

Try again. And please provide a link to the source of your FBI claims.

peg,

What number is enough to worry about? One or more. You simply ignored the last paragraph of my comment above. But the question Rabbi Alderstein asks is, “Are Christians the new Jews?” The answer is, “No.” Rabbi Alderstein says, “Christians have succeeded Jews as the numerically most persecuted people on the face of the earth.” It just makes no sense to generalize about a group of over 2 billion people. Christians may be the most numerically persecuted people on earth, but they are also the most numerically not persecuted people on earth. Quite probably more Christians die of heart attacks each year than members of any other religious group, but that is not because there is something about being Christian that causes heart disease. When you are by far the largest religious group in the world, you are going to be the record holder, numerically, for just about anything.

One of the great gifts that humans possess, is the capacity for freedom, liberty. And with this, we have the right to believe the way we wish, but we also must respect the liberty of every other human being. This is so basic, that it’s hard to understand why it’s not adhered to as it should. At the risk of sounding simplistic, following Jesus’s instruction, to treat others as we would wish to be treated, would likely result in a lot less suffering in the world.