Saturday, January 26, 2013

"Religious Freedom" double standard (updated)

As we know, those yelling most loudly about religious freedom are those who think their "freedom" requires you to live under their religion. From the WaPo
Half of Americans worry that religious freedom in the U.S. is at risk, and many say activist groups — particularly gays and lesbians — are trying to remove “traditional Christian values” from the public square. 
The findings of a poll published Wednesday (Jan. 23), reveal a “double standard” among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture. 
While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, “they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,” said Kinnamon. 
“They cannot have it both ways,” he said.
That's the problem-- these people argue that if their values aren't defining our cultural values,their freedom is inhibited.

No, you just don't like it that you are told you can't inhibit mine.

The Barna Group (who sponsored the poll) are interesting because they are conservative evangelicals. You can read more about the poll here.  From their summary:
Specifically, about three in 10 Americans (31%) say, “the gay and lesbian community is the most active group trying to remove Christian values from the country.” This perception is embraced by half of practicing Protestants (42%), one-third of practicing Catholics (32%), and three-quarters of evangelicals (72%). By comparison, people of a faith other than Christianity (16%) and religiously unaffiliated adults (11%) were much less likely to embrace this viewpoint.
 Thus, the effort of the right wing fringe to define gays as anti-Christian is working--at least with Christians.  Then:
Within this context, the research raises the question as to why Christians are so much more concerned about religious freedom than any other group—even adherents of other faiths? What is it Christians are trying to protect and why do they feel under threat? Is this an example of a historically privileged group losing some of their privileges? Is it possible that evangelicals are interpreting a loss of religious privilege as loss of religious freedom?
Ya think?


1 comment:

JCF said...

reveal a “double standard” among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty...While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, “they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture,”

The essence of fundamentalism, regardless of religious brand.