The Demonization of America’s Christians
STPC panel of experts to discuss how growing rhetoric casting conservative Christians as potential domestic extremists is a pathway to persecution in webinar Thursday, August 18 at 4:30 pm ET
America’s Christians are combatting growing rhetoric from mainstream media and even U.S. agencies seeking to disparage their views and paint them as “domestic violent extremists.” This “othering” of America’s Christians is of grave concern to Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), which advocates for Christians at home and abroad experiencing discrimination, harassment, and violence because of their beliefs.
“In too many countries worldwide, we have seen how the marginalization, discrimination, and harassment of people of faith eventually leads to violent persecution,” said Dede Laugesen, executive director for STPC. “When Christians and other believers are pushed from the public square, they become vulnerable to persecution — and that is precisely what is happening in America.
“Indeed, even as we have seen the numbers of the persecuted faithful continue to rise globally, we have also seen a troubling increase in the marginalization and demonization of Christians in America. As one of our partners observed, persecution develops in stages: There is the ‘squeeze,’ the ‘silencing,’ and then the ‘smash.’”
Laugesen continued, “This pattern is very familiar elsewhere and we must be alive — and prepared — to counter its manifestations here. What begins with the marginalization, discrimination, and ‘othering’ of the targeted population, unless challenged, inexorably morphs into censorship and ‘cancelling.’ Unless such non-physical suppression is stopped, there can quickly follow violation, desecration, seizure, and destruction of properties like churches and other sanctuaries. From there, it is an all-too-short step to violence against communities of believers.”
The rhetoric in America pertaining to Christians — especially Christians who stand in solidarity with Israel, believe in traditional marriage or a biological basis for gender recognition, oppose abortion, or simply hold that America was founded as a nation based on Judeo-Christian values and teachings — is increasingly inflammatory and discriminatory. American Christians have been unfairly targeted by the IRS and the Departments of Justice, Defense and Health and Human Services. They have increasingly been censored and cancelled on social media platforms, excluded, and punished for their beliefs, and radically maligned by the progressive Left. Conservative Christians in America have been described by their own government as “Christian nationalists” and “likely” domestic terrorists.
“American Christians allow this rhetoric to continue and build at our own peril,” said Laugesen. “Will American Christians become the world’s next victim of persecution?”
Register to attend at SaveThePersecutedChristians.org
