{"id":2826,"date":"2013-03-30T12:47:56","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T12:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2826"},"modified":"2013-03-30T12:47:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T12:47:56","slug":"uk-is-persecuting-the-christian-minority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2826","title":{"rendered":"UK Is Persecuting The Christian Minority?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In something I first heard about in the Daily Mail<\/a>, so there was an instant credibility gap, it seems that Lord Carey<\/a>\u00a0has been blathering on about how Christians feel like a persecuted minority, and that the government is\u00a0discriminating\u00a0\u00a0against them.<\/p>\n

Which is of course complete rancid rhino bile.<\/p>\n

And any christian who feels persecuted against needs to take a good hard look at things.<\/p>\n

According to the 2011 census, 59% of the UK population claimed to be christian. Given that 59% is more than 41%, I’d say that any christian who feels that they are a minority probably needs to take their socks off to count above 10. It is the rest of us – humanists, secularists, muslims, buddists, hindus, atheists, agnostics – who have the right to claim to be a minority. Given that 2001 (72% christian) was the first time the question was asked, it is hard to make historical observations regarding levels of christianity in the UK. Christians would of course say that we have been historically a christian society where everyone was a christian; others would say those who weren’t christian were under a great deal of pressure to\u00a0pretend.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are occasions when we get forced to sit through some sort of christian ceremony, although it was more common in the past than today. And it can be quite creepy listening to you guys speaking to your imaginary friend (or is it friends?).<\/p>\n

Nothing to do with what goes on inside your churches of course, but christian ceremonies in public life\u00a0can<\/em> be excluding to those who are not christian. Take for example, the infamous council meetings where pre-meeting prayers are no longer permitted. Or rather praying out loud\u00a0as part of the meeting<\/em> is no longer permitted. If such prayers are part of a council meeting, they are effectively an\u00a0unconscious<\/em> expression of the kind of people who should take part in the meetings – that is\u00a0practising\u00a0christians. Or in other words, you are saying that the\u00a0real<\/em> minorities – atheists, muslims, etc. are not welcome.<\/p>\n

Not that a period of silent contemplation at the start of a council meeting is a bad idea – indeed, it is probably a very good idea. And nobody is saying that you cannot talk with your imaginary friend(s) in the silence of your mind.<\/p>\n

Carey specifically mentions the legalisation of gay marriage as one of the symptoms of “aggressive secularisation” within the government. Actually legalising gay marriage is simply doing the right thing; there is nothing in the legislation that forces anyone to get married to someone not of their choice! So it is merely allowing those who\u00a0choose<\/em> to, to get married to the person of their choice.<\/p>\n

What christians who oppose gay marriage are complaining about, is that they are no longer allowed to impose\u00a0their<\/em> views of what marriage should be onto those who believe differently.<\/p>\n

In other words christians are complaining about not being allowed to persecute others<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If christians still feel they are being persecuted in the UK, perhaps they should look at some of the\u00a0real<\/em> examples of christians being persecuted around the world (see\u00a0http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Persecution_of_Christians<\/a>). Any kind of inspection of what happens around the world will make any decent person claiming that UK christians are being persecuted thoroughly ashamed. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the case (and frankly in the case of the BA employee<\/a>, both sides could do with being told to just grow up), being unable to wear a cross in\u00a0jewellery\u00a0form at work<\/a> hardly compares to being stoned to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In something I first heard about in the Daily Mail, so there was an instant credibility gap, it seems that Lord Carey\u00a0has been blathering on about how Christians feel like a persecuted minority, and that the government is\u00a0discriminating\u00a0\u00a0against them. Which is of course complete rancid rhino bile. And any christian who feels persecuted against needs […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12,3,10],"tags":[1090,1089,1091,353,1092,197,348,1088,30],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-religion","tag-agnostic","tag-atheist","tag-buddhist","tag-christian","tag-hindu","tag-islam","tag-muslim","tag-persecution","tag-uk","category-12-id","category-3-id","category-10-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-JA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}