I didn't say anything against any religion I merely asked if there was a war on Christianity. Perhaps my post should have read. "Is there really a war on Christianity or are people merely fighting back"?
I'm not sure what the difference would be. You could read that as just two ways of saying the same thing. But I think you mean to ask whether we can determine who the aggressor is in the debate between religious and non-religious folk, especially over public policy.
I tend toward the "fighting back" interpretation, but casting Christianity as an aggressor is too simplistic a historical interpretation. Granted the first European arrivals to the Americas made no attempt to hide their desire to impose Christian faith on the inhabitants, or to practice their particular form of faith in relative peace. Despite the attempts to make the United States a secular nation, we have allowed holdover behavior that meant for many years most of our discussions of policy and morals were based on Christian faith. Sunday was a
de facto day off work, etc.
From the religious believer's point of view, what's happening in these later decades is an erosion of a
status quo that for several generations accepted a certain parallel between public policy and religious belief. Christians weren't fighting anything because, by and large, they didn't have to. I think we (meaning America) went from the Catholic and Protestant invasions of the colonial period to a long term of
laissez-faire acceptance of religious influence over policy. If there can be said to be a resurgence of asserting religion in public policy, I'd look to the transition of the U.S. Republican Party over the past few election cycles and the accession of the Tea Party.
From the nonbeliever's point of view, there is an increased recognition of how much public policy has been or is being influenced by Christian doctrine, and a shifting public perception for how much this should be allowed. These policies are sometimes very much at odds with populist sentiment, and are thus perceived as the result of an oligarchy of (usually unelected) leaders.
Case in point. Utah has a law requiring a so-called "Zion Curtain," a two-meter tall translucent barrier separating the area in a restaurant where alcoholic drinks are prepared. This is ostensibly intended to prevent children from seeing this activity. Not unexpected in a state where the vastly dominant religion forbids alcohol. But 70 percent of Utah residents oppose the policy -- including a majority of Mormons. The governor opposes it. Restauranteurs detest it, especially national franchises who typically build according to standardized architect plans. There is no evidence it has any effect on underage drinking or alcohol-related crime. Our office of economic development quantizes the loss to our state from this and other silly liquor laws at hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Every year, including this year, a resolution is presented in our legislature to do away with the Zion Curtain, and every year (probably also this one, but time will tell) the measure is defeated. Because every year the Mormon church issues a policy statement supporting keeping the Zion Curtain in place. This is an example of behavior that probably rightly stirs opposition to religion.
It's the classic church versus state argument, and at times religions and religious people overstep their boundaries to bear upon the state. That we have historically not opposed these oversteps does not mean they are justified in perpetuity. And, shifting back to the believers' perspective, this may be why some of them have concluded that a war has "suddenly" been declared on them. They have heretofore defined "religious freedom" as including the
status quo oversteps that are now being challenged, and thus see it as having to retreat from a previously held position.
I think there are affirmative acts on both sides of the debate. We have more and more challenges to public policies that seem to have an inappropriate religious basis. And we have legislatures attempting to restore a definition of religious freedom that include now-forbidden practices such as certain acts of discrimination. The "war" terminology is, I think, just hyperbole. The struggle to find a balance between religious and civil liberties is (and probably ever will be) ongoing, and the rhetoric of the debate just changes from time to time.
