What Passes for Anti-Christian Persecution in the West

Cristina Odone, religion journalist, has magically transformed herself into a whinging victim. Why? Because somebody — “religion’s enemies” — hacked her website.

Like so many Britons, I have taken tolerance for granted. It ‘s everywhere, after all: in the legislation establishing gay rights and in the laws protecting faith schools.

Suddenly, though, a BA employee was banned from wearing a cross to work; Catholic adoption agencies forced to accept gay adopting couples; an elderly couple banned from fostering because of their views on homosexuality. Tolerance was suddenly no longer a given, but a battle: atheists wanted to impose their views on the rest, and persecute anyone who disagreed.

Naturally, Odone couldn’t stand for One Law for All to be successful, or for all people to be treated equally by government or in places of public accommodation; religion-based bigotry deserves exceptions! So, she started a site, freefaith.com.

I could write about the new intolerance in this blog, and in the paper; but I wanted to dedicate more time and energy to the defence of faith. I approached Tim Montgomerie, founder of ConservativeHome, last summer with the idea of setting up a website to defend tolerance of and between the faiths . . .

In the website I covered the obvious issues – anti-semitic attacks in Britain, anti-Christian court cases, the plight of Egyptian Copts, the martyrdom of Christians accused of apostasy in the Middle East. It generated some traffic. Most comments were viciously anti-religion, but I didn’t mind: at least someone was reading it.

And good for her. It’s fine and dandy if she wants to complain. And yes, there are serious cases of persecution in places like the Middle East, and it’s great to call attention to those.

But she also writes about the horrors of gay marriage and abortion — calling her inability to legislate her religious beliefs onto others “persecution”.

Let’s have a look-see at the About page, shall we?

Welcome to Free Faith — fighting to protect tolerance in public life.

Run by Cristina Odone, Daily Telegraph columnist and blogger and a former editor of the Catholic Herald, Free Faith takes on religious intolerance and intolerance against religion.

OK, nice enough. Tell me more, Cristina!

In the name of God, religious fanatics are waging war on dissenters . . .

Meanwhile, in the name of diversity, faith is being eradicated from public life. A Christian GP is facing punishment for discussing his faith with a patient. Secular voices in the media call for Britain to follow the French example and ban the burka. What the civil rights group Liberty calls “casual anti-Semitism” is on the rise.

This campaign against faith is not the work of thugs and skinheads on the fringes of society. It is mainstream: manned and fanned by our country’s soi-disant liberal elite in politics, the media, the arts and academia. They preach diversity, tolerance and equality, but practise the opposite. They want Soviet-style uniformity, which leaves no space for the public practice of faith.

Strident, self-righteous and influential, the atheist lobby easily cows legislators and officials – the failure of the so-called Equality Act to make any provision for the rights of religious people is the latest and most glaring example.

Ah, yes. The rights of religious people to discriminate based on religious bigotry. A popular feature in the US, it didn’t go over so well in the UK.

A networking website, Free Faith will:

· log “anti-faith” incidents (from the banning of religious symbols to threats to close faith schools);

· provide a digest of news and commentary on religious-freedom issues

· highlight items from international faith-related websites;

· carry specially commissioned commentaries and analysis from leading writers and religious leaders;

· campaign on behalf of the victims of anti-religious discrimination by lobbying decision-makers and opinion-leaders

Free Faith welcomes comment, which will be moderated to deter trolls and the like.

(For Americans who may not know what is meant by “faith schools”, the UK has what are called “free schools”. These are similar to charter schools in the US; they’re privately organized, but publicly funded. In the UK, there are “faith schools” among the free schools — that’s right, religious schools, which actively discriminate based on religion in not just hiring but in what students they will accept, and which indoctrinate children, on the public dime.)

So, “threats to close faith schools” means “actions intended to ensure that discriminatory cult brainwashing factories aren’t paid for with taxpayer funds”.

But for Odone, eliminating the “right” to take taxpayer funds and use them to indoctrinate children in a religion, and to shut out children of different religions, or with the wrong parents (as in the case of the girl with two mothers), from those publicly-funded schools, is persecution of religious people!

The screaming headline on the front page today? “The campaign to eradicate Christianity gains new impetus“!

NO! The government is trying to eradicate Christianity? That’s not right . . . Kinda rude, actually . . . How can this be?

The High Court has ruled that prayer should be banned from meetings of a local council. The decision paves the way for the phasing out of similar traditions in Britain’s public life: prayers before Parliament, hospital chaplains, and before we know it “God Save the Queen” (the G word being deemed too offensive). No sign of Christian faith will be tolerated in the brave new world run by the National Secular Society and their supporters.

Why the hatred of a rich tradition that for centuries has served this country well? Secularists argue that for too long the state, in drawing from the Christian legacy of justice, tolerance and charity, has raised Christianity to a special status. It didn’t matter that this was the majority religion; Christianity enjoyed a “special” relationship with the state (seen in the establishment of the Church of England), and “special” smacked of inequality.

It is in order to impose their particular notion of equality that the anti-Christian lobby is transforming Britain.

Oh, I see. The government is not actually trying to eradicate Christianity. No, the evil National Secular Society, and the growing secular majority in the UK (“secular” includes Christians who advocate church-state separation), don’t think it’s OK for government bodies to impose their particular religion’s prayers upon all the citizens they purport to represent, and this is an attack on Christianity.

Why, it’s almost like being beaten to death for refusing to worship Allah!

Almost.

What now? The Anti-Religion Conspiracy has teamed up to hack her website:

Last Friday, a sophisticated hacker embedded a malicious code in my FTP access, and disabled FreeFaith.com. I’m not pointing any fingers, but a review of the Tweets my appearance on Question Time prompted, reveals that my faith earns me some vicious enemies. The programme did not raise any religious questions; nor was I introduced as a Christian or even as the ex-editor of the Catholic Herald; yet the tweets are all about my being a “theocrat” and a “Christian apologist”. As such, I must be condemned – and silenced. So much for tolerance. So much for an easy life.

Of course. One pissy hacker goes after her site, and it’s the Anti-Christian Army arrayed in all its Satanic glory, seeking to tear out her tongue and light her on fire.

Well, actually, the site works just fine. In IE, anyway. In Firefox, the “welcome” pop-up on the site triggers a malware warning. She might want to have a look at that.