The Ten Commandments monument that once graced the lawn of the Oklahoma capitol building is gone. It was removed Monday night as News 9 broadcasted the event live.
What does this event mean for Christians? Absolutely nothing.
The monument had no affect on how we practiced our faith, and the removal of the monument continues to have no affect on Christianity.
Christians are not under persecution in the United States, nor will they be anytime soon. According to the Pew Research Center, about 71 percent of Americans identify as Christians, and nearly six percent are of non-Christian faiths. About 23 percent identify as atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular.
Both practicing and cultural Christians are a majority in this country, and have been since the country was founded. How can a majority be persecuted? Who is doing the persecuting? Who is waging war against Christians?
I sure don’t know.
There is not a battle waging. Christianity is not under attack. There is not some grand conspiracy against Christians in the United States. Christians and Christian nations both physically and metaphorically surround our country.
The countries that border the U.S. have Christian majorities. The nearest county with a non-Christian majority is thousands of miles away with a large body of water separating us.
Many Christians in middle America hold a persecution complex, an illusion that the world is always and fully against them. This just isn’t true. It is a political ploy used to get the religious right to think a certain way on a certain issue. Politicians play on fears in order to drum-up support on controversial issues.
There are Christians who are undergoing great persecution, people who are brutally executed because of their beliefs. But they’re thousands of miles away in places where most Americans can’t find on a map or pronounce. To say we are in a similar situation is belittling what they’re going through, and what first century Christians went through. We should rejoice that we are not in that situation.
In the United States it is easier than ever to be a Christian, and to be a Christian holding whatever views one would want. It wasn’t that long ago when Christians were doing the persecuting in this country.
Maybe the problems in this country are not because of some religious war, but perhaps the structure of society and the way we treat certain people.
As a society we push those who are different — the stranger, the foreigner, the disabled, the downcast, the freak — to the margins of society, a place of isolation and misunderstanding that we normal folk pretend doesn’t exist.
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