Forthcoming in the next few days:

1) I owe anidada an interview. I will get to it soon.
2) A Post of Actual Content (PoAC for short) regarding the perceptions of Christianity's societal position in modern western culture. This will include perceptions non-Christians have about Christianity, and perceptions Christians have about how their faith is perceived and treated. (Please note: this is a very selfish post, in that it's about my faith. I realize many people have been hurt by the Church, and I have no intention of downplaying that. However, it is not the focus of the post, so I won't be paying much attention to that aspect of things.)
3) The usual banalities, including the following paragraph.

I have DRA's to mark, and I realized near the end of the day yesterday that I'd forgotten to do a survey of my kids that is necessary to finish the marking. It's a two-page survey of what they read, what they like to read, what they have recently read, and how they plan to improve their reading. (That is the only part of the entire DRA process that requires a little bit of teaching-to-the-test, and it only applies to grades four to eight.) Suffice it to say I've got another hour or two to go before I'm done with DRA for this year. I can't even reasonably state that I didn't get it done because of the work-to-rule. The fact is, I wouldn't have started much before yesterday even with the work-to-rule, because I am fundamentally opposed to adding several extra hours to my already over-used prep time. I always wait for the day the principal gives us to do these tests. That day makes the whole thing manageable, at the junior level at least. The primary teachers need two days.

Speaking of prep time - I have work to do. I'll decide when I get to the classroom if I'm going to mark DRA's or French or Math or Language. There's lots of selection, there. Oh, there's also social studies. Argh.

PoAC: The Perception of Christianity, from inside and outside

For the uninitiated amongst you, PoAC stands for Post of Actual Content. Term stolen from jinzi. Used by permission. :)

This will not be the most lucid PoAC I've ever written, because I do not have the time or energy this week to set it up properly and give it my full attention for an hour or two as I would like to do. There will probably be errors in logic and missing information. I apologize in advance, and humbly accept well-meant corrections. I reserve the right to stand by what I say if I have to disagree with you, though. :)

Here we go, then.

I made a statement the other day in danaeris' journal, asking rhetorically why it was always my faith that got slammed, and why I was seen as the person with the problem for not liking it when that happened. Though one or two people agreed with me that the slamming was wrong, at least one more pointed out that a) Christianity was not the only faith to get slammed in this way, and b) with the number of people who have been hurt by Christianity, some would say the slamming was deserved. The response highlighted what I had already privately recognized: that the statement was made in a fit of pique, and that it came more out of a collective Christian culture than out of honest anger on my part. Now, don't get me wrong: the event that sparked the statement did leave me angry. My reaction to it, however, was primed by my Christian upbringing and culture. (I use the word "culture" in the anthropological sense here, of anything that binds a group of people together. In this definition, each of us has a private culture that is formed of all the different parts attaching us to all the different groups to which we belong.) My feeling is that both parts of the response were also primed by the commenter's personal experiences with the Church, and that we had managed to point out what is probably the most fundamental difference in outlook between Christians and non-Christians in just a few sentences.

First, there's my statement. It has three parts: one, Christianity is always getting slammed; two, that it is the only faith that comes in for this treatment; and three, I'm expected by many people to laugh it off or stop being so darn sensitive about a joke.

Let's deal with part one first. Christianity has a martyr myth that is very, very well-developed. It goes something like this: the first Christians suffered and died for their faith. Jesus suffered and died to bring hope to the world. To be a good Christian, you must be like Jesus and (to a lesser extent) his apostles. Therefore, a good Christian must suffer for their faith. A Christian who doesn't "take up (their) cross and follow (Christ)" is not a good Christian, and a cross is not a comfortable thing to take up.

I've been primed by my faith to develop this martyr complex, always looking for ways in which I am being "tested", either to tempt me (Satan is involved at this point) or to make me stronger (this one I lay at God's feet) or, in many cases, both. The nice thing about this particular requirement of the faith is that there's no such thing as a perfect life. There is ALWAYS something going on that could be seen as a temptation or a test. Life is convenient that way. On the downside, though, when things are going comparatively well, there is a tendency to look for areas of persecution. Christians often feel the need to create this, or just exacerbate the little bit that is there, in order to satisfy the martyr requirement. (I'm grossly oversimplifying here, and I'm aware of it. Just let me make my point, please.)

Now, this is not to say that there is no persecution. There certainly is. I can think of half a dozen instances of popular culture that were extremely offensive to Christians of every stripe, just off the top of my head. But what happens in the West is a little like a teenager rebelling against parental controls. The criticisms launched by the teen (in this case, non-Christian groups) are sometimes valid, and sometimes way over the top, and sometimes overgeneralized to a wider group of people than really deserve them. The long and short of it is, the parents in the scenario have a lot more power than the teenager, even when they're feeling victimized by the teen. The feelings of victimization are out of proportion to the actual events. The Church, and individual Christians, blow them out of proportion because of a) the martyr myth, and b) the correct perception that the other faiths are attacking the power of the Church in society.

So, part one, that Christianity is always getting slammed, is true but exaggerated by Christianity itself. What's more, most denominations have some variation on this theme, so most Christians identify with the martyr myth in some way. The theory grows in the telling, until it becomes popularly accepted in the Church as a whole. In fact, it doesn't need to be accepted; it's already there. It needs to be reinforced, and that happens often.

Part two, then: that Christianity is the only faith that comes in for this treatment. This is patently untrue, though there are certain scenarios that support it. For example, I've discovered recently that launching a discrimination suit according to Ontario Human Rights legislation requires that one be part of a minority group being discriminated against. Christianity is not a minority, therefore I would have trouble launching a human rights case if I were discriminated against because of my Christian faith. (There are loopholes here, and cases like this have gone to the human rights tribunal only to be thrown out. It seems a majority never gets discriminated against.) The thing is, Christians believe this. They have been brought up on the martyr myth. The whole world is against them because they are following the difficult path of Christ. Every scenario that feeds this myth gets adopted as part of the mythos, until it becomes an accepted aspect of Western Christianity.

However, Christians' treatment of other faiths never comes under the same scrutiny that we apply to those criticizing us. We never look on our denunciations of paganism, for example, as anything but spreading the truth about a dangerous lie. It never occurs to most Christians to see that as slamming other religions. Christianity (or at least, most of it) defines itself as the One True Faith. Ergo, practitioners of all other faiths are at best deluded and at worst evil tempters of the faithful. Ergo, it is our job to either enlighten them or cast them out. From the Christian perspective, this is not anti-pagan propaganda so much as spreading the truth in the effort to save souls. The idea that this could be called a hate crime is beyond offensive to Christians. It's not about hate. It's about being right. It's about God's love.

So, the Church prepares us and teaches us to look on our relationship with the rest of the world as a martyrdom in progress: everyone is, indeed, out to get Christians, just because we are Christians. It also puts itself on the highest moral pedestal it can: the Church and the Church alone has the key to Truth, and everyone else needs to hear it for the good of their own souls. They may not like it, but it is a Christian's job to preach it and take the persecution that comes with that. (See how the myth feeds itself?)

Three: I'm expected to be able to laugh at jokes where my faith is the butt.

It wasn't that long ago that jokes about a Jew, a Negro, and an Arab were fairly common. I remember hearing them while I was growing up, with various other races/ethnicities substituted for those three, and I'm not yet thirty. It's been a while since I heard one. Why? Because the anti-racism movement, aka the political-correctness movement, has stifled jokes that are discriminatory in that way. People telling such a joke in public risk censure of various kinds; from polite laughter followed by avoidance, to being told off or complained about to employers.

Closer to home, I often find myself defending my faith and explaining it. I can see both sides, usually. I can see how a non-Christian would perceive the action in question, but I also know the rationale for it from inside the faith. In many cases, I might once have acted that way myself. I have been told to lighten up when I commented that such-and-such was offensive to me. I have been told that no other religion would have a problem with that kind of joke aimed at them. My response to that is: do they really have no problem with it, or have they learned to cover hurt with laughter? Have they decided to pick their battles, and to not pick this particular one as worth fighting at this time? Or did they start out covering hurt with laughter, and end up raising the next generation thinking they really were okay with that type of joke?

I have trouble believing that a group of people could take lightly a joke that was sacreligious and mocking of their faith. Exactly how much did they really believe if they were capable of laughing at their beliefs like that? I haven't managed to wrap my head around this one fully yet.

I know this: I find it offensive to hear and participate in jokes or performances that would be sacreligious to anyone. Sometimes I will tolerate it in the interests of social cohesion. Sometimes I will leave. Sometimes I will speak out against it. But I am never comfortable with it. If I'm aware of it, I will be uncomfortable with it. I have no desire to develop a thicker skin. I'm comfortable with the skin I've got. If it makes me more sensitive to some situations, it also makes me a more empathetic person, and I will not sacrifice that on the altar of humour. It's about respect. I would not do that to your faith, not even in the guise of enlightening you to the truth (unless you asked, in which case I'd tell it as I see it.) I expect the same respect from others.

In summary, then: Yes, Christianity gets slammed. I purposely didn't go into whether or not Christianity deserves that slamming. That is a subject for an entire university course, and I'm not willing to take on that particular battle at this time. Yes, Christianity exacerbates the slams it takes through the device of an ingrained martyr mythos. No, I'm not prepared to let my faith be ridiculed in my presence.

I'm going to bed.