The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, caused a bit of a stir yesterday after he was reported to say that hearing western Christians claim to be persecuted makes him “very uneasy” and suggested that these Christians “grow up.”
Williams' general point was that being made fun of for, say, believing in creation in the United States is not remotely comparable to being murdered for following Jesus. As The Telegraph “>War on Christmas. It “>likely have some flexibility to teach both evolution and creation if the primary purpose of teaching both is not to promote religion.
And violence against believers? There is some in the United States, but in recent history the well-documented incidents haven't been against Christians. Probably the most notable of these involve “>attacks on Jews and “>anti-religious hate crimes in 2011, roughly 9 percent were Catholic or Protestant. That's a lot fewer than for anti-Jewish crimes (63.2 percent) and anti-Muslim crimes (12.5 percent), but it's not negligible.
In other words, Rowan Williams is both right and wrong. Persecution of western Christians is nothing like it is in other parts of the world — neither in pervasiveness nor consequences. But it also is not nonexistent; it can be much worse than just being made to feel an idiot. Perish the thought.
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