Jason Pitzl-Waters of The Wild Hunt writes about “Invisible Christian Privilege“:
To many Christians their immense privilege seems invisible. They don’t understand how much of our society panders to their unspoken power. The churches on every corner, the holidays and celebrations structured around Christian dates, the pandering of politicians, the ceremonial deism that acts as a placeholder for state-sponsored religion. Even our vernacular is colored by Christianity. …
Yet despite this, many Christians, particularly conservative Christians, have a major investment in seeing themselves as part of a persecuted minority. …
Where does this inaccurate perspective come from? How can a group see itself as a minority when it holds so much power? Through constant propaganda that tells them that this is so. …
Bradley R.E. Wright explores this delusional persecution complex for Christianity Today in an article titled, “Americans Like Evangelicals After All.”
Surveying all the survey data, Wright discovers that evangelical Christian leaders tend to dislike people of other faiths or of no faith far more than they are disliked by those people.
Wright concludes:
If American evangelicals do have an image problem, it’s not our neighbors’ image of us; it’s our image of them. The 2007 Pew Forum study found that American Christians hold more negative views of “atheists” than non-Christians do of evangelical Christians. (The most recent Pew survey found similar attitudes; see the chart above.)
Now, I am not a theologian, but this seems to be a problem. We Christians are called to love people, and as I understand it, this includes loving people who believe differently than we do. I’m not sure how we can love atheists if we don’t like them.
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