Grace & Peace!
I believe in the very near future in the US, practicing any form of christianity will be outlawed, you can see hints of this now, the mainstream media refusing to even mention certain things when it has to do with christianity, christians being persecuted and killed in other countries for their beliefs, and this is not reported by western media…???
Mikekle, has it ever been the case that mainstream media consistently and regularly reported on Christian persecution throughout the world? I don’t know that it has. I can’t remember a time when the persecution of Christians was regularly reported. As such, I find it hard to believe that such reporting has actually declined or has been actively discouraged or refused.
LOL Yet on the other hand media favors islam and muslim people.
I see no real evidence for this assertion.
I truly believe it will start out as the govt ‘encouraging’ people to NOT talk about christianity anywhere in public, we are almost at this point, in that all references to it in public places have been banned and these bans held up by the courts, would not take much to take it to the next step.
The it will go from a ‘suggested’ thing to a legal thing and they will outlaw it, close down the churches and make it a crime. …]
What you describe here is a bit fantastical. The government is not against Christians or churches. The problem with American government/civic culture is much deeper but also much more nuanced than that.
The problem with American government and culture is that its narrative is flawed. Liberal democracy tells a particular story about itself in order to empower as many people as possible (who may not share the same values) to participate in the civic culture–and the story that American political life tells is, “the only story you have is the story you make up for yourself.” Or, to paraphrase Hauerwas, “The only story you have is the story you had when you had no story.” This narrative is fundamentally anti-historical (denying the value of the past or of tradition to shape and condition us), anti-family (denying the value of familial relationships and ties to actually shape and condition us), anti-community (denying the value of broader human relationships to shape and condition us), anti-environment (denying the value of our environment and our relationship to it to shape and condition us) and pro-individual. Subsequently, this narrative finds it very difficult to actually affirm any value as universal: nothing, according to this narrative, can be affirmed as bindingly or universally true.
The consequences of this? Our civic identity has a legal quality to it–only the laws of the land can be said to bind us together as a people. Nothing else. Not tradition. Not family. Not community. Not religion. Not environment. Government is not interested in truth claims. It’s not interested in saying that anything is or isn’t true. It’s only interest is in upholding the law. That’s why, from a government perspective, same-sex marriage or abortion, for instance, are not moral issues–they’re questions of how to interpret and apply the law. What is moral or immoral is a question of actually affirming one value over another–and that simply will not happen.
How does this relate to the idea that Christianity will be persecuted in America? The fact is, it won’t be. Because the government simply cannot (by its very nature) affirm or deny Christianity and the claims it makes as either valuable or truthful. It cannot do it. The same goes for Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, Atheism–it cannot affirm or deny any of them, but
must (because it is liberal/Enlightenment democracy) create a space for all of them. Some folks may feel oppressed by that, feeling that their inner conviction regarding the truth is not particularly or especially respected by the public discourse or those who moderate it. But that’s the point: the public discourse in a liberal democracy will never be able to definitively and publicly affirm any value as universally true. Those who believe one thing and those believe the opposite are both right. The law doesn’t care–it’ll step in if someone gets hurt or can demonstrate that their “rights” have been abused or denied.
Christianity will never be illegal, but in the eyes of the government, it will never be special–it’s just one religion among many. It’s interests and claims need to be balanced, from the government perspective, against the interests and claims of a lot of other people. That’s a difficult tension, as a Christian, to live into. But no one said being a Christian would be easy.
This tension is exacerbated, though, when we believe or suspect that the government is or should be for us in some fundamental or explicit way. The truth is: it isn’t. It hasn’t been. It never will be. But the more we believe that it is or should be, the more we’ll be beholden to it; the more our Christianity will look more like it; the more we will speak of the importance of religious liberty as opposed to the liberty of the Gospel and the Royal Law of Love; the more we will choose legal recourse to defend or express our views as opposed to martyrdom and patterning our lives after the witness of the saints.
Im just curious at how many true christians will actually accept this new law and obey it though. I have a feeling 90% or more will suddenly change their beliefs or keep it secret to protect themselves and their families, jobs, incomes, etc, even if they know it means eternal damnation upon death…this is the truly sad part…imo anyway.
This is idle speculation.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
