As I’ve explained so many times, Christians love to view themselves as persecuted for their Jesus. In most of the occidental world, there is no suppression of Christianity, of course, since theirs is the dominant faith, but that hasn’t stopped them from deluding themselves into viewing themselves as repressed. The so-called “war on Christmas,” about which I just blogged, is a sterling example of that. They can’t help themselves; this desire to be martyred is baked into the psychopathology of their religion, based as it is on the career of a martyr.
The irony of all this, of course, is that quite often it’s Christians who’ve persecuted others. The history of their religion, once it became a tolerated faith in the Roman Empire, has included many instances of Christians brutally targeting those of other faiths as well those of fellow Christians whose beliefs are a little different (i.e. “heretics”). The Crusades and the war against the Cathars are well-known examples of this, but there’ve been many of them over the centuries.
Many Christians these days continue to view their religion as under attack (the deaths of some Coptic Christians in 2015 at the hands of ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh/whatever-the-fuck is often cited by them). They view things efforts like the Crusades as artifacts of long-ago “history” which have no bearing on their religion.
Yes, there are places where Christians certainly are threatened. But modern American Christians conveniently forget that, even now in the 21st century, there are Christians who carry on a latter-day crusade of their own, in the name of their faith, using violence to destroy other religions and impose their own on other people. The Washington Post reports on this phenomenon happening in Brazil, which has undergone something of a religious revolution over the past decade or two (Archive.Is cached article):
There was a pounding at the door. Strange, the priest thought: He wasn’t expecting anyone. Marcos Figueiredo hurried to the entrance of his home temple and opened it.
Guns. Three of them. All pointing at him.
The “Soldiers of Jesus” had arrived — three members of a gang of extremist evangelical Christians who’d seized control of the impoverished Parque Paulista neighborhood in Duque de Caxias. First, they erected roadblocks to keep away cops and create a narcotics haven an hour’s drive from Rio de Janeiro. Now they were targeting anyone whose faith didn’t align with their own. That meant demanding the closure of temples that practiced African-influenced religions such as Figueiredo’s Candomblé.
“Nobody wants macumba here,” one of them told Figueiredo, using an ethnic slur, according to testimony he provided to authorities. “You have one week to stop all of this.”
They fired into the air and left, leaving Figueiredo with an impossible choice: his faith — or his life.
It’s a decision more Brazilians are being forced to make. As evangelicalism reconfigures the spiritual map in Latin America’s largest country, attracting tens of millions of adherents, winning political power and threatening Catholicism’s long-held dominance, its most extreme adherents — often affiliated with gangs — are increasingly targeting Brazil’s non-Christian religious minorities.
Priests have been killed. Children have been stoned. An elderly woman was seriously injured. Death threats and taunts are common. Gangs are unfurling the flag of Israel, a nation seen by some evangelicals as necessary to bringing about the return of Christ.
Candomblé — like Santería and Voodoo, rooted in the belief systems brought to Latin America by enslaved people from West Africa — is vanishing from entire communities.
I urge you to read the WaPo article in its entirety in order to have an idea of what’s going on in Brazil. I’m certain many American Christians will dismiss this, disavowing these militant evangelicals as “not ‘real’ Christians” whose actions don’t represent their religion. But this is a fallacy, specifically known as the “No True Scotsman.” They use the term “‘Real’ Christians” to mean “another Christian who agrees with me and doesn’t make me look bad,” but that’s an entirely subjective definition and carries no weight. The truth about “Christians” is that every single Christian who’s ever lived, is every bit as much a “Christian” as any other. That’s just how it is.
Photo credit: Vivian Lessa, via Washington Post.
Hat tip: Rational Wiki.
