There are different levels of persecution, and different ways to be Christian. In my old denomination being persecuted by individuals, not by the government or anything, was a step in development. Someone who hadn’t been mistreated, condemned or denied service somewhere for talking about his or her faith was considered a wet-behind-the-ears youth with a little growing to do yet. It is very liberal here. You can get thrown out of a college class now and then just refusing to take part in a discussion or refusing to let someone restate and wildly misinterpret what you said. There are certain things everyone is expected to say as matters of etiquette that are actually specific religious ideas, such as “what’s right for you may not be right for me,” and other expressions of moral and epistemological relativism, and you have to be very careful mentioning holidays by name in public schools or governmental meetings, even in passing. People sneer at people wearing religious jewelry and talk down to you. I’ve been screamed at by strangers and old acquaintances simply because I’m a Christian. I hadn’t done anything, I was just walking down the street.
I’ve been an atheist, pagan, Buddhist, New Ager, occultist, and then as a Christian I’ve been an Evangelical Friend (Quaker), Nondenominational, Trintiarian Neo-Pentecostal and now I’m happily Catholic. Every one of those periods, I had enemies, and friends too. As an atheist, I was never harassed or disdained or excluded because of my beliefs; it was an elite claim. The same as a Buddhist. As a New Ager, I got some flak, but rarely, and in my time as a pagan and an occultist, I knew who liked me and who didn’t, but most people treated me as someone who knew things they might want to know, though they thought I also might be dangerous. When I became a Christian, I discovered that there really is an anti-Christian undercurrent in mainstream society around here. Sure, if you live where 90% of the people go to church and 45% got oyour church, it probably won’t touch you. Maybe even most of your professors believed your exact theology. But if you live where about 50% have a religious identification with any group or church at all, and perhaps 10% are pagan, New Age, Buddhist etc. and they are the culturally upscale beliefs, and perhaps 25% see themselves as “Christian but with their own version of what that means” and don’t believe in going to church or organized religion at all, and add and subtract things as basic as commandments, like saying they believe in adultery or whatever… Well, going to church is considered anything from a silly old-fashioned custom we’re expected to get over when we realize no one does that now, like the Charleston, to a dangerous custom that could mean we’re in there planning to hurt the atheists or New Agers.
With that said, some of my pagan and other non-Christian friends are actually delighted that I’m Catholic now and some thought it was sweet when I was a Quaker. Some are not, though. I get many reactions. I get yelled at out of the blue. I try to be thick-skinned.
