Though Cowards Flinch

How should we approach the Christian narrative, that their religion is persecuted here in the West? Two recent articles from the blogosphere attempt to do so from the point of view of the religion itself, and the contents of its founding documents and traditions. Yet I think there are more complex issues at stake, an examination of which is useful.

The belief in persecution cannot stem merely from the founding documents or common heritage of Christianity. If it did, then all Christians would exhibit such a complex – and they do not. Many Christians in the past have been persecuted, and have developed themes in art and politics that reflect that. The plight of Catholics under Elizabeth I, for example, begat the Motets of William Byrd.

Yet, however slanted my experience, and I draw on my own upbringing in the Catholic Church and the many Christians I have met through two faith schools and life generally, the primary idiom of the Christian experience today is not persecution. Not in this country, as far as I have ever seen.

Amongst the Anglican clergy, Dr. Williams himself has declared that the picture of culture wars conjured up by some is nothing more than bureaucratic silliness. I personally would have preferred had he said that in some cases religion has to take a back seat to common sense, but for an Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s at least slapping his own right flank.

Despite this argument against scriptural origin, there still may be a link between the sentiments voiced by senior Anglican and Catholic priests, who have the ear of authority, and the eschatological beliefs and persecution complexes of disfranchised millions across impoverished heartlands, and their ring leaders and political sentiments.

It’s important to note that a persecution complex is far from new, but it varies in nuance and strength according to situation. If we take 1920′s Britain as an example, the rise of women’s rights gave birth to a masculinist fear that women were undermining the nation and the Empire, a view which often utilised religious sanction for gender archetypes.

Later on, following the ‘revolution’ of the 1960s, there was the counter-revolution of Mary Whitehouse and Christian values. Every progression has helped to create the terms of its opposition – and it’s no different with minority ‘rights’, which have opened the door to the portrayal of Christians as just one more religious group struggling for survival.

This can help explain one element of how the persecution complex narrative is phrased, if not its actual existence. Phrasing doesn’t explain the relative strength of this narrative or the relative weakness of it in others. For example, our homegrown variety of cleric is not so ardently homophobic or racist as some American counterparts.

Even the Catholic hysteria of the past several years – over adoption agencies, or ‘secularism’ or the injunction of the Equality Bill that they can’t discriminate against gay people has been either muted and easily overcome or more about defending what the heirarchy sees as the integrity of their religious community, rather than attacking homosexuality.

Amongst all of this exists the mentality of persecution. It’s the State being intolerant of religious minorities. It’s ‘secularists’ or ‘atheists’ conspiring to undermine social cohesion (that chestnut from Vincent Nichols). It’s the refusal of immigrants to acclimatise to our ‘Christian heritage’ that weakens ‘the glue that binds our society together’.

Over and over again, the same story. Because minorities are given some freedom, which may or may not be explicitly enshrined in law, Christians feel persecuted. Yet it’s still quite a timid reaction, by and large, and though it finds echo with the Daily Telegraph- or Catholic Herald-reading classes, it has not yet gained widespread support, as is the case in the USA.

My suggestion is that this is because we do not have the same extremes of poverty and wealth in this country, as exist in the USA. By now, everyone is familiar with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the huge commercial edifice that exists to exploit the isolation and hopelessness of communities across America, which is what Obama was driving at in his famous remark during the Presidential primaries.*

I’d also suggest that what David Harvey might call the ‘geography of neoliberalism’ has not been unleashed to the same extent in the UK as in the USA, eradicating amenities and community centres from huge swathes of housing built to the lowest possible standards – a phenomenon known in the US as ‘exurbs’.

As Sunny points out in a recent article, there have been small moves here towards a US style link-up between fundamentalist Christianity and rogue elements of the political class, like Nadine Dorries. Most interesting is that this combines, in the person of Ms Dorries, all manner of pseudo-science, just as it does in the US. But it is fringe still, and despite increasing alienation from the political class, will remain so if we offer a political alternative.

There’s also the existence of non-Christian groups which protest against things like political correctness (another word for minority rights, as often as not) and who pick up on the same themes as some of the Anglican heirarchy have done. Populist right-wing politicians all do a good line in this sort of thing, even to the point of coming into contradiction with what liberalism exists within the Anglican church as recently happened with the BNP.

I believe this can explain relative differences in the movement, and provides the basis for understanding their common ground and the common themes of persecution, which we’ve seen translated into a rights-based narrative.

*I’d recommend an excellent book called “American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America“, which pursues these groups through their links with corporate America and their insidious exploitation of the drive to community and solidarity, as a means to rectify poverty and social concerns, as a means to tie people in to their cults. As Obama touched on, and as Chris Hedges’ book provides compelling evidence to support, this phenomenon has a mainspring in the de-industrialisation and impoverishment of areas in the USA. This is complemented by gaudy and ‘uplifting’ Christian broadcasting, a multi-million dollar industry that can provide sports cars and mansions for its hosts.

Behind this, their worldview espoused by textbooks like “America’s Providential History“, which advocates the abolition of inheritance tax and other methods of redistribution, lie the corporations. Whether through the funding of conferences, or through the politicians who take cheques and curtain calls from both groups, the links are clear. When it comes to the Christian broadcast networks and the people at the top of the money-making evangelist organisations, the ideologies of both fuse easily. Persecution and the idea of undermined Christian values are endlessly repeated from these sources.