Go forth and find me some persecution!

I just read Chris Brodda’s latest post over on FTB about the irony of working on a Christmas gift drive through the Military Religious Freedom Foundation while that organization is being vehemently criticized for ruining Christmas by, for example, trying to destroy the “Operation Christmas Child” drive by the Air Force.  But of course the MRFF did no such thing; they simply stated that it was inappropriate for secular military officers to be officially promoting a faith-based program and that it should be put under the auspices of the chaplain service – which it was.

This is all part-and-parcel of the annual “War On Christmas” meme that’s blasted from countless media outlets every year starting just a few weeks before the traditional bombardment of Christmas music and store Christmas displays gets underway.  (That puts it, I’m thinking, sometime in mid-September at this point.)  It seems that the War On Christmas is now being fought with a sinister biological agent, though – one which spreads highly contagious Christian Persecution Syndrome among believers who encounter those already infected.  Because each holiday season, it seems to me, there are more controversies centered around church/state separation issues, and nearly always these stories are framed as incidents of whiny non-believers attacking the rights of Christians.

Often these controversies occur simply because Christians are denied, for one reason or another, the exclusivity or near-exclusivity to which they’re accustomed.  A prime example this year was the Christmas display in Santa Monica, California, where atheist groups won all but two of the spots in an annual Christmas display lottery through the simple expedient of having submitted more entries.  It’s unfair to be suppressed based on a numerical advantage, say believers there, who next year when most or all of the displays are again nativity scenes will brag about their victory over the heathen because of their numerical advantage.

But sometimes it’s about the rights of atheists to put up any display at all, and these times are why it’s critical that every potential violation of church-state separation is challenged.  The Rock Beyond Belief blog has chronicled the attempts to add a non-religious display to a series of religious ones at Travis Air Force Base.  It was denied before complaints got it approved, censored before complaints got it uncensored, dimly lit until complaints got it lit up (along with the Jewish and other displays), and vandalized multiple times.

These battles aren’t just limited to holiday season arguments over Christmas displays, of course.  There’s also the annual “National Day of Prayer” where groups try to prevent the use of our tax dollars to pay for a state-sponsored prayer event, or Rick Perry’s local Texas rain dance day of prayer for rain (which seems to have caused his state to catch fire, as Bill Maher pointed out – though luckily God finally got around to sending some drought-easing rainfall the same weekend the big atheist convention came to town).  There’s the Camp Pendleton Cross and there’s the Tennessee mayor who called the Freedom From Religion Foundation terrorists for expressing opposition to a town-sponsored cross mounted atop a water tower.

All of these cases have two things in common:

• Each of them involve government funding and/or use of government land in what is perceived by the atheist groups involved to be a violation of First Amendment rights through the exclusion or limitation of expression of some religious viewpoints in relation to others.
• Each of them has been portrayed as a further attempt to unjustly persecute the Christian majority.

What I haven’t seen, though, is any instance of real censorship or persecution here in the US, by which I mean removal of rights outside the sphere of Separation.  Where are the attempts to silence Christian speech, privately or publicly, outside the purview of fighting perceived government endorsement of said speech?  Note that I’m not claiming this never happens; atheists can be overzealous and just plain wrong sometimes, just like anybody else.  There probably are real examples out there.  I just haven’t seen them, and haven’t the patience to Google “Christian persecution” and wade through the results.

I thought I’d maybe caught an example earlier this year when I read about the military cemetery that allegedly was prohibiting non-pre-approved prayer at soldiers’ funerals – it sounded suspicious, but I was willing to entertain the possibility that some anal-retentive bureaucrat somewhere was trying to implement an overzealous interpretation of the rules.  Of course, when the facts of the story were presented outside the evangelical echo chamber, it turned out that what really happened was that a group was showing up uninvited at soldiers’ funerals to utter Christian prayers whether the families wanted them or not, and they were told to knock it the hell off already.  If Odin worshipers got chased away from a funeral procession for singing a dirge to open the gates of Valhalla for a fallen warrior, the controversy would be centered around why the government failed to block their entrance to the facilities in the first place.

So what I’m trying to get at, in a long-winded and roundabout way, is this:  I’d like to find some of the real examples of atheists trying to erect barriers to the free expression of religion where there is not a church-state separation issue.  So please, if you’re actually reading this and not a search engine process or a viagra-selling spambot from a .RU domain:  if you know of a real instance of persecution against Christians by atheists or government institutions, add a comment below with a supporting link or two.  I ask this because I truly believe that everyone should have the right to subscribe to whatever theology they want (no matter how wrong or silly it is), and because I believe that the atheist community is best served when it’s willing to call out its own and say, “Hey, I think you’re doing it wrong.”

A few handy notes for CPS sufferers who might take up this challenge:

• When I say “not a church-state separation issue” I mean that there is no argument to be made that public lands, public facilities, or public funding are being used to promote a religious stance.  Stopping official organized prayer in a public school is, by my definition, acceptable.  Stopping individuals from saying private prayers on school grounds is not.
• Disagreement with the tenants of your religion is not censorship.  “I don’t think so” is not going to harm anything but your ego.

Alright, you’ve got your marching orders.  Now go forth, and find me some persecution!