Both Mitt Romney and President Obama gave lengthy interviews to the National Cathedral’s magazine, “Cathedral Age”. I believe that we live in a secular republic where the government ought to be religiously neutral. There is no religious test to hold office but this interview did gives us a case study in Christian privilege that some like Mitt Romney believe they deserve. While he tore into the wall between church and state, in another interview he tried to use his religion as an excuse not to reveal his tax returns.
Tag: Christian privilege
I was doing some “spring” cleaning by finally digitizing some old VHS tapes I had. These contained TV show clips and news stories I saved over the years. One of the news stories was about a controversy over a Nativity scene in Lancaster Ohio back in 1999. I wrote about it for my website back then but had no way of embedding a video clip. I watched it again and found a perfect example of Christian privilege and persecution complex in the space of a short 15 second comment from someone interviewed by the reporter. I now have a short clip I can show people who don’t know what Christian privilege is or don’t understand their expressed irrational persecution complex.
Like the ubiquitous terror warnings we all enjoyed during the Bush administration, the “War on Christmas” is another conservative dog whistle meant to piss off conservatives and other believers who fall for the false warnings from conservative propaganda machines like FOX “news”. The latest “fire storm” was the lighting of the holiday tree in the capital building in Providence, Rhode Island. The incident shows that efforts to be inclusive in what is a religious holiday, is shouted down by conservative bigots trying to protect Christians privilege.
I hate writing about this fake war so I’ll let Jon Stewart and the Daily Show talk about it:
Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, responded to two recent citizen petitions asking that ‘In God We Trust’ be removed from the currency and ‘Under God’ be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. As I expected, DuBois makes a long reach to justify rejecting the petitions.
One recent method of citizen engagement that the Obama administration is trying is called “We the People” that harkens back to the Declaration of Independence and our current right to petition government for redress of grievances. The White House set up a website for people to create petitions on issues and the administration promised to respond if the petition got a certain number of “signatures”.
American Atheists have filed a lawsuit challenging a recent addition to the 9/11 memorial in New York. A piece of rubble from the World Trade Center terrorist attack that is in the shape of a cross. The suit has generated a lot of “bad” press from the media, death threats, and other nasty messages from the “peace and love” Christians. Some freethinkers and seculars might be complaining about picking this fight but I admire American Atheist for standing up for what they believe. I think they have a good case and so do the directors of the memorial.
The “cross” was found in the debris and then worshiped in the following days by believers working the site of the tragedy.
After only a week, one of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) billboards placed in Columbus was removed after a church complained about it. Yes, we have to see church propaganda all the time but a church gets the vapors about an inoffensive billboard and the owner removes it quickly. Can you say Christian privilege?