On Supposed Christian Privilege

Friend Xerxes has written a column, to my surprise, asking his readers to try to imagine what it must be like for Christians in India, where they are in trouble if they proselytize. Canadian Christians ought to recognize their privilege.

“In Canada, we treat Christianity as the norm,” he writes. “But what would it feel like if the Christian culture you take for granted turned you into a persecuted minority?”

I don’t really have to imagine. I have lived in Saudi Arabia and in China, both places where Christian proselytizing can land you in prison.

But I also never thought of Christianity as the norm in Canada. Secularism, not Christianity, is the norm.

Xerxes points out that four of our major holidays, Christmas, Easter, Hallowe’en, and Thanksgiving, have Christian roots. That is true, but they have been largely secularized: just a day off work, just gifts or candies for the kids. I think a good case can be made that the modern secular celebration of Christmas, or Hallowe’en, or Mardi Gras, is a subversion of the Christian meaning. Indeed, such arguments are often made.

Xerxes might have pointed out, but didn’t, that our grouping of days into weeks, and our weekend rest period, is also a Christian artifact; as is our counting of years from the birth of Christ. But how significant is that? Buddhist, Muslim, and Communist nations all also use this system now, without this expressing any deep Christian commitment. What once was Christian has been secularized.

A majority of Canadians are still nominally Christian, and, in a democracy, that makes active persecution less likely. Nevertheless, a recent report for the UK government concluded that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide, accounting for 80% of all cases. With the level of persecution at an all-time high, and growing.

Severe and open persecution of Christians in the past broken out in majority Christian countries: in France during their revolution, in Spain during theirs, in Mexico during theirs. In the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc for seventy years.

There is an automatic antagonism between the secular powers, who want to do as they will, and those meddlesome priests and preachers who insist on moral standards. It can reveal itself any moment the situation permits.

We seem to be heading into such a period now in Canada and the USA. People are trying to burn down churches, stab priests at the altar, show up at services with guns and intent to kill. The rioting in the streets is growing more clearly anti-Christian night by night. Last week, a statue of the Virgin Mary was beheaded at a church near me.

In recent years, declarations by the courts that there is an inalienable human right to abortion, and to homosexual sex, seem targeted against Christianity. Yes, targeted against Christianity, not in favour of those who want to get an abortion or to have gay sex. If that were the goal, it could be accomplished just as well with legislation. Making gay sex and abortion human rights instead renders traditional Christian teaching and practice illegal, and vulnerable to official persecution. Which has begun.

How can Xerxes’s perception be so different from my own? Because, I suspect, his “Christianity” is not Christian. In mainstream Protestantism, and too often among Catholics as well, what passes for Christianity is just the current social consensus, whatever it happens to be.

Christianity is essentially counter-cultural, from its inception. Jesus was executed as a criminal. It is not the easy or the obvious way: that way leads to destruction. To endorse instead the current social consensus, whatever it might be, is to endorse the anti-Christ.