Monday, May 15, 2017

Franklin Graham accidentally shows he knows nothing about persecution

From my friends at Think Progress comes a sad obliviousness regarding actual anti-Christian persecution versus a wrecked sense of entitlement courtesy of Franklin Graham. For the record, the lgbtq community is not targeting so-called Christian businesses.




Think Progress added:

 Christians do, in fact, face persecution in many parts of the world, and militant groups such as ISIS have oppressed and murdered followers of Christ during terrorist attacks and in territories they occupy. But as the Religion News Service pointed out, it is unclear where Graham gets his staggering claim that 100,000 a year are killed because of their faith in Christ. By contrast, the Christian organization Open Doors — which tracks violence against Christians — reports a much smaller number: around 4,000. Regardless, this kind of persecution does not appear to be comparable to the American context, where the majority of citizens still identify as Christian according to Pew Research. To be sure, white evangelical Christians such as Graham have often claimed in polls that they face “discrimination,” sometimes by citing the debate over whether conservative Christians should be allowed to deny service to LGBTQ people. Yet most religious Americans don’t support “religious refusals”: according to a 2016 survey from PRRI, majorities of almost every major faith group in the country — including Mormons, Catholics, and white mainline Protestants — oppose allowing a small business to refuse LGBTQ people service by citing their faith. Only one group — white evangelical Protestants — expressed 50 percent support for the idea.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

FG's numbers reflect the tendency toward exaggeration, aka fake news, that is endemic among the Right-Wing Realm, that derives from an appeal to hysteria, fear and rage. Our system is in the grip of this syndrome now, sadly.

Unknown said...

I do, at times, wish that, like spoiled children that don't like the rules of a game (knowing as we do, of course, that this is not a game) that the Christian Right would simply pick up their toys and go home.

I wonder if their version of Heaven includes a Suggestion Box?