It's a painful separation. It's hard for most Christians in society, including myself, to grow up in a world of Christian culture and then be told that the country you live in is throwing it away based on secular whims. Within our government's framework, that's certainly possible. It's just irritating.
Yep. I get it. I'm in the USA too. It's strange. As other people of other persuasions have pointed out, now Christians know the feeling that non-Christians have felt for a long time, and get to be just one group of many, rather than 'dominating' the society or whatever. It does feel odd that it is happening while Christians are still a clear majority in many Western countries (at least by self-identification, if not by action), but at the same time it's pretty naive to expect otherwise when so many have bought off hook, line, and sinker on the '"rights overdose" that characterizes the overall Balkanization of society, such that
Christians as well make themselves just another one of many competing tribes.
So, in a way, I think we have nobody but ourselves to blame for this. If 70% or whatever of the USA is still Christian, then you'd be right to wonder why that's not reflected in 70% of the law code. And yes, people will say, correctly, that it is because we are a secular state, and I think that's a good thing (coming from a Church where "we" are 10% or less of the society, and live much more directly under the thumb of the openly persecuting dominant religion in places like Egypt, Sudan, Libya, etc.), but it s the
manner of secularization that I don't like. Lebanon is officially secular, too, in the sense that "religion is for God; the country is for everyone" (as the banners carried by Christian and Muslim leaders in recent demonstrations there read). It seems like much of the West (save outliers like Hungary, Poland, and Malta) is taking a much more anti-public manifestation of religion kind of stance, at least when that religion is
any kind of Christianity, which to me exposes the lie of their idea of secularism. We all know that much of the public intellectual and entertainment/celebrity class can't get enough of Islam..
shocking, isn't it?
I know for a fact that's the exact opposite of what my Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Arab Greek, etc. brothers and sisters came here for, so what I foresee more than a painful or irritating separation for western Christians is a kind of situation that one Pastor Niemöller wrote about in his famous poem about "first they came for the trade unionists, and I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak up [...] then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up for me." (I'm sure you know or know of the poem.)
When -- not if, but when -- the West falls to this distinctly anti-Christian form of faux-secularism (because they always fight hardest against the thing that is most proximal to them, whether it is in reality the 'most oppressive, worst thing ever' or not; most have no real sense of anything else, and hence cannot appreciate the freedoms they have, or in some cases even see them as freedoms), where will the people who came here specifically to live in peace in secular societies that were supposed to respect their rights go? It's all fine and well to say "now it's Christians' turn to be dis-empowered", but it's nothing but lying to yourself if you're saying that while distinctly favoring other religions instead (not very secular, that), while ignoring the fact that, in reality, for millions of Christians around the world, they're not empowered and they've never been empowered and in some cases (e.g., the Indian Syrians, the various Christians within the Persian Empire, etc.) never even
sought to be empowered, and really just came here to practice their religion in peace. And the West, in its rush to be the welcome mat for every insane thing that isn't identifiably Western in some way, will stab them in the back, all the while claiming that it's all about "rights" and righting historical injustices and all this nonsense. Kyrie Eleison.
It's strange to me to say this, but I think the West could learn a thing or two about secularism within pluralistic societies with religiously-identifying majorities by looking at the few places in the East that still have that, e.g., Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, or even (time machine permitting) pre-war Iraq. They were/are never perfect, but they didn't/don't confuse themselves into thinking that being secular meant being anti-religious.
Less Dawkins-type rubbish, more King Abdullah II and Queen Rania.
