Christians under genocide and American victimhood

Just last July, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt - the equivalent of our secretary of state - pointed out that Christians around the world were the most persecuted group of all.

When the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago, the European nations that Brother Andrew had visited undercover won their liberty and achieved one of the greatest advances of human freedom in modern history.

Yet when I became Foreign Secretary, I learned that almost a quarter of a billion Christians were still enduring persecution around the world.

The evidence shows sadly that the situation is becoming worse. The number of countries where Christians suffer because of their faith rose from 128 in 2015 to 144 a year later. In the Middle East, the very survival of Christianity as a living religion is in doubt.

A century ago, 20% of the region’s people were Christians; today the figure is below 5%.

(On Gov.UK, "Persecution of Christians review: Foreign Secretary’s speech following the final report") Secretary Hunt went on to say that 80 percent of the world's victims of religious persecution are Christians.

And that persecution is very often, if not usually, of the murderous kind:

Mass grave of murdered Christians in Syria.
Photos like this have been taken in many other places in the world.

Now,

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) shared the report compiled by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen. It states that violence and oppression against Christians are worsening as time goes by.

"Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity," the report states. "In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN."

The evidence shows that Christianity is "by far the most widely persecuted religion." 

Original ACLJ report is here.

Meanwhile, in the United States the hip and "woke" compete with one another on who belongs to the most oppressed victim group. Because victimhood brings status in the US today; the US is rapidly becoming ever-more dominated by a victimhood culture.

What we call victimhood culture combines some aspects of honor and dignity. People in a victimhood culture are like the honorable in having a high sensitivity to slight. They’re quite touchy, and always vigilant for offenses. Insults are serious business, and even unintentional slights might provoke a severe conflict. But, as in a dignity culture, people generally eschew violent vengeance in favor of relying on some authority figure or other third party. They complain to the law, to the human resources department at their corporation, to the administration at their university, or — possibly as a strategy of getting attention from one of the former — to the public at large.

The combination of high sensitivity with dependence on others encourages people to emphasize or exaggerate the severity of offenses. There’s a corresponding tendency to emphasize one’s degree of victimization, one’s vulnerability to harm, and one’s need for assistance and protection. People who air grievances are likely to appeal to such concepts as disadvantage, marginality, or trauma, while casting the conflict as a matter of oppression.

The result is that this culture also emphasizes a particular source of moral worth: victimhood. Victim identities are deserving of special care and deference. Contrariwise, the privileged are morally suspect if not deserving of outright contempt. Privilege is to victimhood as cowardice is to honor.

When I posted the ACLJ report elsewhere, adding that "Americans would not know actual victimhood if it punched them in the face," a liberal friend of 20-plus years responded,

Suggest that to the family of the black man shot dead by police in a Walmart for holding a toy gun. Or the family of the black child shot dead by police in a Chicago park a few years ago for the same thing. The cop just rolled up, jumped out of the car and opened fire.

Then there are the thousands driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. The mentally ill walking the streets because we won't pay for treatment.

Or the veterans who can't receive decent care or who rely on food stamps that may be cut again so corporations can have tax cuts.

Or...

Don, I don't deny that Christians are being killed in other lands and that it is indeed genocide. But I think you are being pretty selective in defining victims. There are indeed many victims to be found in the US.

Of course there are true victims in America today. The murder rate in Chicago, Baltimore and some other Democrat-controlled cities is shocking. Those killed are certainly victims and often innocent victims.

But what we do not have is a real victim class, despite the devoted efforts of the Left to paint all black people, all homosexuals, all women, etc. as members of a specially-victimized class of persons, all of whom are dragged into victimhood just because of that identity.

No. Not even close to that. In the US today we do not have anything that even approaches the loosest definition of genocide as is happening to our brothers and sisters in Christ in much of the world. We do not have anything that approaches deliberate, planned, lethal persecution of a victim-class of people who are being killed, harmed, injured, deprived of rights or punished simply because of their religion.

And anyone who says, "Oh, America has lots of victims, too!" simply proves my point, that in America today, status-victimhood is a sought-after possession, and those who say that are incredibly equating, "I was triggered and offended by that joke about gays," with, "My husband and my children were beheaded because they were Christians."

I will backtrack, though, on one class of people who are definitely being killed genocidally in America purely because of their identity. That is the unborn, especially unborn black Americans.

But that is not merely acceptable to the Left, it is positively desirable. So perhaps you will understand when I find such protests against this post entirely unpersuasive and in fact unserious.

End note: American Christians are by no means under persecution (though sometimes discrimination), but that is not to say that the rhetorical groundwork is not being laid: Former Antifa College Professor: Kill Christians, Clock Trump With a Bat

Jeff Klinzman is a former adjunct Antifa College Professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Former” because he turned in his resignation after his online comments garnered a considerable backlash. ...

Klinzman also acknowledged that he was Antifa, and made incendiary statements on his facebook page…such as wanting to “stop evangelical Christians” and then included a poem that said, “Kill them all and bury them deep in the ground.”
 
“It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud, but seeing what evangelical Christians are doing to this county and its people fills me with rage, and a desire to exact revenge.” 

He knows he need not worry, though. Another college will quickly hire him, and at a large increase in compensation.