Many Christians I know would say that you can’t be nice and culturally sensitive to someone when they are on the way to Hell…you need to get in their face and annoy them until they convert…it’s for their own good.

And yet there’s a subset of Christians who feel like they’re being persecuted for their faith. Utterly ridiculous.

I feel like there’s a strong overlap between the types of Christians identified by these statements. Not being allowed to get in people’s faces and annoy them until they convert for their own good is persecution, because their faith requires them to convert as many people as possible on their way to heaven. By extension, anything that makes aggressive evangelism more difficult, such as giving people various alternatives (“you can be good without God”) is also persecution.

It’s warped but it makes a weird kind of sense in that context.

Well, it means you can go into a department store and be greeted with a “Merry Christmas!” or feel entitled to complain about a “war” if you aren’t.

Well, there is that. And as noted above, one can use the secular component to pretend that one’s religion is more popular than it is. But it is pretending. I guess it’s an example of trying to have it both ways – on the one hand, you can complain about those secular types who don’t “get” Christmas like the true believers, but at the same time you can pretend that the mass consumer festival of late December is some kind of affirmation of the religious festival.

I have heard pastors tell their flock not to associate with non-believers (or other faith groups) except in trying to convert them.
So I would add as a benefit of being (an evangelical) Christian:
“I can view all other faith groups and specifically non-believers only as targets of evangelism and not as equals at the table of life.”

I’ve also heard that from a pastor, and he specifically said to make sure their children were not associating with unbelievers.

As a corollary to this one, it’s easy to get “your” people to support your business. Many cities these days have the “Christian Blue Pages” or some such alternative where you can seek out, for instance, a car mechanic who is a Christian and will presumably be “more moral” and trustworthy in providing you services.

And I would add to that it’s easier to get a job. I have a friend who’s having a ‘hell’ of a time finding work in her conservative little town at the moment. Every time she tries to network the conversation works its way around to what church she goes to. Problem is that she doesn’t go to church and if she is honest about not going they want her to come to theirs. She tried using the church she went to as a kid, but it’s the Catholic church, which apparently is no better as far as many people are concerned. On the plus side it means she may move out of the small town and come to the ‘big city’ and then I’d see alot more of her.

So I’d also add: Improved networking and work opportunities.

I have to ask: Was the title of this post based on the “Geto Boys” song of the 90’s (”Damn, it feels good to be a Gangsta”)?

That’s also what I assumed. Love it!

Even past that, there’s plenty of religious folks that aren’t allowed by their church to be friends with those that don’t have the same beliefs. Take mormons, for example. One questiont they are asked when being interviewed by their bishop for “worthiness” is if they fraternize with any apostates (like atheists…). They’d never consider anything different than themselves.

I have to ask: Was the title of this post based on the “Geto Boys” song of the 90’s (”Damn, it feels good to be a Gangsta”)? For those of us who are white, you may have also heard it featured in the movie “Office Space”.

It was! I *love* Office Space

My religious holidays are so completely “normal” that, in many ways, they may appear to no longer have religious significance at all.

Which ones have religious significance again? There’s that one that is quite close the the pagan Winter Solstice, the other one that is near to the Germanic fertility ritual in the spring and there’s also pancake day. Yay pancakes.