t\u2019s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>which makes for a concerning read. On the one hand, I am a bit sceptical that Christians are a persecuted minority in the USA. Let\u2019s be real, every president at least makes the effort to feign some kind of faith. And Christians in Raleigh, however secular it might seem, do not suffer like Christians in\u00a0ancient Rome or in\u00a0modern Ramadi. What is more, conservatives need to be careful that they cry \u201cmartyrdom\u201d so frequently that it ceases to be meaningful. However, it is clear that many secular progressives are somewhere between indifference to antipathy to hostility to traditional Christian beliefs. I think we see this in the increasingly made claim that religious freedom is about freedom in private worship and not freedom to practice religion in public. Of course, to limit religion to the private sphere is by definition the very repression of religion. It is like telling LGBTI people to keep their sexuality in the bedroom. If something \u2013 religion, sexuality, ethnicity \u2013 is part of someone\u2019s identity, then they have the right\u00a0to exhibit it in public and to practice their way of life without fear of punitive actions.<\/p>\nMost sobering, Eberstadt notes that the old liberals would have been aghast at the prospect of closing down anybody\u2019s institution because of their religion, shaming anyone out of public debate, and shouting down dissent. However, the new social progressives are not above\u00a0this, in fact, it is their primary\u00a0strategy. If anyone is known to be, or associated with, pro-life or pro-traditional marriage positions, it is license to practically destroy them. Eberstadt\u2019s\u00a0hope, and it is a good one, is that liberals would live up to their own ideals of diversity and tolerance.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m reading through Mary Eberstadt\u2019s\u00a0It\u2019s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies\u00a0which makes for a concerning read. On the one hand, I am a bit sceptical that Christians are a persecuted minority in the USA. Let\u2019s be real, every president at least makes the effort to feign some kind of faith. And Christians in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>I\u2019m reading through Mary Eberstadt\u2019s\u00a0I<\/a>t\u2019s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>which makes for a concerning read. On the one hand, I am a bit sceptical that Christians are a persecuted minority in the USA. Let\u2019s be real, every president at least makes the effort to feign some kind of faith. And Christians in Raleigh, however secular it might seem, do not suffer like Christians in\u00a0ancient Rome or in\u00a0modern Ramadi. What is more, conservatives need to be careful that they cry \u201cmartyrdom\u201d so frequently that it ceases to be meaningful. However, it is clear that many secular progressives are somewhere between indifference to antipathy to hostility to traditional Christian beliefs. I think we see this in the increasingly made claim that religious freedom is about freedom in private worship and not freedom to practice religion in public. Of course, to limit religion to the private sphere is by definition the very repression of religion. It is like telling LGBTI people to keep their sexuality in the bedroom. If something \u2013 religion, sexuality, ethnicity \u2013 is part of someone\u2019s identity, then they have the right\u00a0to exhibit it in public and to practice their way of life without fear of punitive actions.<\/p>\n