{"id":111854,"date":"2019-05-17T00:20:20","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T07:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=111854"},"modified":"2019-05-31T06:31:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T13:31:13","slug":"right-now-is-the-greatest-persecution-the-church-has-suffered-in-its-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/05\/right-now-is-the-greatest-persecution-the-church-has-suffered-in-its-history.html","title":{"rendered":"Right now is the Greatest Persecution the Church has Suffered in its History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Newsweek is covering it<\/a>.\u00a0 So is the BBC<\/a>.\u00a0 The New Yorker<\/em> is on it too<\/a>.\u00a0 And CNN, locus of all evil in the universe is covering it too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, here\u00a0an experiment to try. The next time somebody gripes that \u201cnobody in the liberal media is talking about THIS!\u201d, see if a) they are linking a story in the liberal media as they say it and b) do a quick Google search to see how many jillions of times that story is, in fact, being covered by the media.<\/p>\n

In my experience, the whole \u201cthe damn liberal media are refusing to cover this story\u201d thing is completely bogus.<\/p>\n

Of course, this does not count for fake news stories that are not covered because they never happened.<\/p>\n

So, for instance, nobody in the liberal media is covering the story of the imaginary persecution of white conservatives, (an overwhelmingly Christian demographic) that 75% of whites hallucinate is a real thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Because it\u2019s not a real thing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the real thing: things like the massacre in Sri Lanka, the suffering of Christians in certain Islamic lands, the suffering of Christians under Communism.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: because American conservative Christians in the thrall of the Right Wing Noise Machine are overwhelmingly self-centered and so easily manipulated by that Machine, when persecution of Christians strikes abroad, they are well-trained by their media masters to turn such tragedies, not into a chance for concern for victims, but into a chance to attack their culture war enemies in yet another Panic du Jour.<\/p>\n

So, for instance, after Sri Lanka, some American liberals sent their condolences to Sri Lankan Christians and (gasp!) referred to them as \u201cEaster worshippers\u201d.\u00a0 The conservative professor Harold Hills in the Noise Machine turned that into a two day Panic and ginned up the faithful with hysteria that these Incorrect Trigger Words were a sign that liberals hated Christians.\u00a0 The suffering of the Church abroad disappeared from Right Wing Noise Machine discourse without a trace and the conversation was successfully turned back to the imaginary persecution of conservative white Americans in a nation gripped by ruthless liberal godlessness\u2013all because some liberals sent their condolences to Sri Lanka as monsters do.<\/p>\n

\n

Meantime this<\/a>, not culture war BS about nice people who say \u201cEaster worshippers\u201d in their condolences, is what the Panic Mongers of the Right should<\/em> talk about. But that would require facing the fact that many of the Christians being persecuted are being\u00a0 tortured, bombed and killed by them<\/em> as well as by the Islamists the Lie Machine hates. It would mean facing their hero\u2019s love of Duterte and Kim. It would require facing the brutality of Israel to Palestinian Christians. It would require facing the bombs we have rained on and the abandonment we inflicted upon Iraqi Catholics, including the ones ICE are trying to kick out of the US. It would, above all, require facing the brutality we are meting out to brown Christians in central America whom we are treating like vermin at our borders. It would require facing our brutal treatment of Christians in South America in the past in our support for evil regimes. It would require facing the fact that black churches are burning right here on our soil due to the white supremacists who are the backbone of Trump support. That\u2019s why the Panic du Jour about \u201cEaster worshippers\u201d was ginned up at Easter: to keep the focus off the cynicism of the Right Wing Lie Machine that hijacks real stories of persecution abroad to moan about coffee cups at Christmas and keep it on the Liberal Bogeyman who had the gall to send a word of kindness and common decency to Sri Lankans.\u00a0 Liberals cannot be allowed to be thought of as Christians too. It\u2019s copyright infringement in the eyes of the Party of God and Life.<\/p>\n

Yet funnily enough, the people having hysterics because culture war enemies used Incorrect Trigger Words in the heinous act of consoling the victims of terror and murder\u2013thereby somehow proving their contempt for Christians and Easter\u2013have had absolutely nothing to say about the man of whom Michelle Bachmann declared, \u201cTrump] is highly biblical, and I would say to your listeners, we will in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think we can all agree that this passionate declaration of faith in the Resurrection makes Trump a regular St. Paul. Clearly no reason to think he<\/em> plays upon the pieties of American conservatives or perverts the Faith into a political tool at war with gospel like damned libruls do.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Relevant Magazine<\/em><\/a> seems to have grasped the real dynamic.\u00a0 If you are a white conservative Christian in the US, you are not among the persecuted. If you are using \u201cEaster worshippers\u201d as an excuse to feel persecuted, you are, in fact, narcissistically stealing<\/em> attention from the real Christian victims of persecution in order to conduct a petty culture war with people who extended condolences, not to you\u2013since you are snug and safe in the Land of the Free\u2013but to the victims in Sri Lanka. And if you are stealing attention from the real victims in order to make war on nice people offering them condolences, you are in fact helping their persecutors in order to feed your self-pitying ego bent on taking thin-skinned offense over every dumb thing from coffee cups to Incorrect Trigger Words in Tweets. If you are doing this, get over you and start thinking about the real victims of persecution. We live in the era of the greatest persecution of Christians in history. Don\u2019t contribute to western blindness to that reality by being a selfish narcissist. Most Americans don\u2019t get a chance to see the Church abroad. They see only the MAGA hats here on our soil or the horrific headlines about abusive clerics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newsweek is covering it.\u00a0 So is the BBC.\u00a0 The New Yorker is on it too.\u00a0 And CNN, locus of all evil in the universe is covering it too. Indeed, here\u00a0an experiment to try. The next time somebody gripes that \u201cnobody in the liberal media is talking about THIS!\u201d, see if a) they are linking a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":112113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-111854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-suffering-church"],"yoast_head":"\nRight now is the Greatest Persecution the Church has Suffered in its History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Newsweek is covering it.\u00a0 So is the BBC.\u00a0 The New Yorker is on it too.\u00a0 And CNN, locus of all evil in the universe is covering it too. 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