I guess I have to say it again.
Recently I’ve seen some posts on social media from folks and from groups who are expressing their fear that Christians and the Christian faith are somehow under “attack” and the precious truths of the Christian religion are being erased, forgotten, or even banned in America because . . . Christians and the Christian faith are losing their dominant place as the default religion in the nation. And that is causing anxiety and fear and even anger to erupt because this is wrong—Christians are losing respect and admiration and we need to push back!
Well . . .
Christians can certainly get the same respect as all other adherents of all other religions (or no religions).
What cannot be allowed is for any sect of Christianity to become the voice of all Christians. And what absolutely cannot be allowed is for any one faith to have supremacy or primacy in our nation, which is founded upon an entirely secular document (the Constitution) that superseded all previous documents, and that opens with the words that instantiate America: “We the People.”
No God or Scripture or Savior is the founder of America according to its own founding documents. There is no mention of any religious deity or scripture in the Constitution. As a religion, Christianity is excluded from political power (Christians themselves, of course, are not), and there is no requirement for any belief for anyone to serve faithfully in government at any level, and there is no requirement that any city or state or even nation must force any one religion to be followed by all.
If the Christian faith that you hold is superior in your eyes, then go ahead and live it out in your own lives. It does not matter whether you “show the world your faith.” Your faith is about your personal relationship with your values, and it should not matter in the slightest whether anyone knows why you behave as you do when you behave better because of your faith. You aren’t believing in your faith because it puts points on the scoreboard, are you?
So what you don’t get to do is use your Christian faith to erase the presences of others, whether they are migrants or Muslims, Black people or People of Color, gays or lesbians or trans or anyone in the genderqueer communities—or even those who are Christians but not the right kind of “Christians” according to your definition.
You don’t get to forbid anyone from marrying, from renting a room in your business, from buying a cake from your bakery, from buying flowers from your flower shop, from serving them food in your restaurants, from treating them for their illnesses in your doctor’s offices and hospitals, from worshipping as they will in their religious assemblies.
Christians and Christianity are free to operate in America, more so than in any other nation. But that freedom is not, in any way, carte blanche to supersede the religious freedom of any other person in the United States.
The moment you demand that your version of Christianity be forced upon the rest of us is the moment that you have become the religious oppressors.
You don’t speak for all Christians. You don’t speak for me as a Christian. You speak only for yourselves—which is fine—but you don’t get to push your nose into the lives of anyone else.
That is what “freedom” is.