The Whatcom Excavator
  • Home
    • About Us
    • Who's Planning Our Lives?
    • Diminishing Property Rights
    • NGO's & Public-Private Partners
    • Agenda 21
    • Buzzwords
    • Deep Thought
    • Best Available Science
    • Best Available Humor >
      • Humor Archive
  • The DREDGE
    • Gotta See This
    • How To Dredge
  • Bulldozed
    • Eco-Activism and County Policy
    • CELDF - "Democracy"
    • ALERT: Community Energy Challenge
  • Pig Trough
    • ReSources
    • Sustainable Connections
    • BALLE
    • ICLEI
    • Whatcom County Community Network
    • Big Wheels Award
  • Contact Us

Safe Space for Christians?  Progressive Bigotry Backfires

11/17/2016

0 Comments

 
For all the bitter angst at WWU and protests through the streets of Bellingham  about the outcome of the presidential election, WE think the left-wing needs to do some serious reflecting and soul-searching about their own ability to respect and be inclusive, to walk their talk about diversity and liberty where it comes to "people of faith" (the Christian faith).   Good article, this:
​
Picture
Progressives’ Anti-Christian Bigotry
Helped Make Trump President


David French, Attorney
National Review - November 17, 2016
(Dreamstime Image:  Theodor38)

They have only themselves to blame for driving away millions of Evangelicals.
 
Last week, my friends and former colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. The facts of the case aren’t terribly exciting: The university, like many universities, has a mandatory “service learning” program that requires students to perform 30 hours of community service, and it uses the program as a thinly disguised means of astroturfing student activism. The program specifically encourages students to work with “public interest” organizations, political campaigns, “environmental action” groups, and other nonprofits — but it doesn’t grant credit to students for promoting “religious doctrine” or “proselytizing.” In other words, students can and do promote ideological, cultural, or political causes, but they cannot promote their religious faith.

Two students who’d performed dozens of hours of service at Catholic parishes, teaching children about the basics of the Catholic faith, church history, and morality filed suit, noting that they would have received credit for the same services if performed in a non-religious context. The case is now pending in federal court.
 
It’s easy to identify the few lawsuits that get media attention, but there are dozens — even hundreds — of others across the country that go unnoticed. There is a pervasive feeling among American Christians that secular progressives will actively seek out new and creative ways to persecute and marginalize them.
 
Millions of American Christians understand that if you work for a state or local governments — or even for private companies — publicly vocalizing traditional Christian views of sexual morality can cost you your job, even as outspoken support for radically new sexual morality is lauded. If you start a Christian group on campus, administrators by the hundreds will deem you “discriminatory” and “bigoted” for daring to assert that it should be run by Christians. Meanwhile, liberal activist groups operate with impunity, often coordinating their well-funded efforts with university administrators and faculty. If you attend a Christian college, secular-progressive academic regulators may well pressure your university to break with Christian orthodoxy as a condition of receiving state funds or even of maintaining accreditation.
 
If you’re a Christian who runs a business, you’re exactly one decision or one statement away not just from vicious social-media shame campaigns and boycotts but also from vengeful state action that could close your store and bankrupt your family. If you’re a Christian applying for a job in higher education, you can expect doors to be slammed in your face, less-qualified candidates to enjoy greater opportunities, and hostile faculties and administrations to sometimes ask probing or even illegal questions about your “bigotry.”

If you’re a church pastor, you must wonder which of your ministries could be attacked by local activists, and whether the very act of serving the poorest and most vulnerable citizens is perversely opening your church to legal attack.

In short, orthodox Christians feel as if they’re under cultural and legal siege because they are. Sixteen years ago, when I first starting defending religious liberty and free speech on college campuses, I would speak at churches and describe a mindset in which campus administrators and activists actively compared faithful-Christian student groups to the Ku Klux Klan. Audiences shook their heads in disbelief. They couldn’t imagine such a hysterical onslaught, and it felt distant, removed from their daily lives. No one shakes their head now. And with all the social pressures on the left driving Democratic politicians to ever-more-vicious acts of religious persecution, the election of 2016 presented conservative Christians with nothing but terrible options: Vote for an immoral man who might help, vote for an immoral woman who will try to hurt, or vote for someone decent who can’t win.
 
Make no mistake, Donald Trump is president-elect in part because Evangelicals gave him their votes by a record margin. In an election this close, you can’t pin victory or defeat on any one group, but there is little doubt that had wavering Evangelicals not gone for Trump, his path to victory would have grown much narrower. The lesson here is clear: When the Left comprehensively and enthusiastically attacks millions of Americans, it forfeits any and all ability to reach those Americans for any purpose, much less to earn their votes.
 
Ironically enough, however, the short-term result of the election is likely to be an increase in religious persecution. While the Obama administration was hostile to religious liberty, the overwhelming majority of lawless acts occur in the deep-blue urban and cultural centers that are most enraged by the Trump win and are responding with sheer panic and fury. While some thoughtful leftists are opening their hearts to the need for greater tolerance and understanding, others are busy comparing Trump voters to lynch mobs, doing their best to poison a new generation of Americans against the church.

There is no easy way out of this escalating culture war. To the secular left, Trump’s election proves that Evangelicals don’t mean what they say about character, sexual morality, and love for their neighbors. The distraught Evangelical voter responds that liberal bigotry forced him to vote for Trump, despite his many manifest failings. I may believe that Christians had better options, but I know that my own friends and neighbors disagreed. They in good faith believed that a vote for Trump was the only rational way to protect life and liberty. So, yes, leftist radicals are right when they say that “hate” helped turn the 2016 election. But it was their own malice and intolerance that proved decisive. They chant that “love trumps hate,” but in reality their hate sunk Hillary.

They say a bigot is in the White House, but their own bigotry helped put him there.
 
— David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    WE Dredge!
    Picture
    Posting Rules:
    This forum is moderated.  Please make an effort to substantiate claims that support opinion.  Gratuitous profanity and ad-hominem attacks will not be accepted.  You can create a "nickname" if you'd like, and you don't have to reveal your e-mail address.   Feel free to share information and your honest thoughts.

    Categories

    All
    Agenda 21
    Best Available Science
    Big Government
    Eco Activism
    Ethics
    Freedom
    Planning
    Property Rights
    Science
    Small Business
    Social Engineering
    Taxes
    Welcome

    Archives

    January 2022
    September 2020
    August 2020
    April 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011


    Automatic Updates

    Do you want to be notified when new content is added to this newsfeed? Most browsers allow you to subscribe to our Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. Click on the RSS link below, and follow the instructions.

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.