Christians make up 78% of the American population, 90% of Congress, and 100% of presidents thus far. But to hear some conservative Christians tell it, they are a persecuted minority. Newt Gingrich recently claimed that LGBT rights have caused Catholic adoption services to be "outlawed" in Washington DC and Massachusetts. In a loaded speech on the House floor last week, Representative Steve King accused President Obama of racial favoritism and "[eroding] western Judeo-Christendom", unfavorably comparing his congratulatory call to Jason Collins, the newly out NBA player, with strangely unspecified slights against Tim Tebow, "who will kneel and pray to God on the football field."
Fears of marginalization because of Christian faith, even persecution, have deep roots in white American evangelical culture, dating back to the Scopes Trial and before. As with Representative King's comments, they're often steeped in white racial anxiety and resentment. This persecution complex is also taught – actively promoted and reinforced through fearmongering aimed at youth.
One example: "The Thaw", a modest viral hit produced by Reach America, a "Christian youth leadership program" based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. In the video, about 20 local teens – all white except but one – list ways in which Christians are systematically "frozen out of the public sphere" and public schools. Christian students are expected to "check [their] religion at the door," forbidden to pray, or to "write about God" in school. They hazard bullying and "rude and disrespectful" treatment, "dirty jokes" from fellow students, and "pornography" disguised as "sex education". The curious notion that Tim Tebow has been punished for his public faith comes up here, as well.
The teenagers wax nostalgic for an America where "school prayer and pledge to the flag was welcomed [sic]," before God was taken "out of … history books" and the country was "stolen" by "people who do not love our God". They call on students to join an "army … with Christ [as] commander", to reverse this political and religious decline.
In stark contrast to this dour picture, Idaho reporter Maureen Dolan writes that two high schools near where The Thaw was made have active prayer groups that meet on school grounds. At Lake City High, principal Deanne Clifford prays with students. At Coeur d'Alene High, local churches "regularly" send "representatives … as 'approved visitors' [who join] the students for lunch in the cafeteria".
It's this cognitive dissonance that's most striking, and disturbing, about "The Thaw". The language of bullying and social isolation of students who don't fit in, increasingly a concern for many parents and schools, is harnessed for a defense of the imagined good old (viz segregated) days when conservative Christian tenets were even more privileged in school curricula: abstinence-only education, creation science, mandatory school prayers, etc. The absence of such privileges – infringements on the equal rights of students and families who believe differently – is presented as bullying and persecution. As Reach America director Gary Brown says:
"Bullying is in the eyes of the beholder, I guess."
This is precisely the sort of counterfactual reasoning and co-opted rhetoric of social justice that influential groups on the religious right use to promote their policies, rather than actually help students who are truly vulnerable to bullying and discrimination. Focus on the Family, for example, has developed a "True Tolerance" program to defend "parental rights" and help students stand up to "homosexual indoctrination" and "bullying" of Christians in public schools – by opposing anti-bullying programs that work to make schools safer for LGBT and gender non-conforming students.
Fueling such reactionary activism is a powerful sense of grievance, stoked by a thriving cottage industry that churns out misinformation like "The Thaw". In such a climate, dubious accounts of anti-Christian discrimination or coercion are believed readily. In recent weeks, for example, tales of students forced to engage in "lesbian kissing", or disqualified from athletic events for religious gestures have circulated widely in conservative media, only to be debunked shortly thereafter.
Factual rebuttals, however, have little impact in a culture where people are trained to overlook the considerable influence of conservative Christianity in society, and to instead believe their communities need more political capital. Paradoxically, children like those in "The Thaw" are encouraged to seek influence, even run for office, in a system they're taught to deeply distrust. This disconnect is embodied in Reach America, which "[encourages] Christian parents to remove their children from traditional public school systems", but counts among its supporters a member of the Coeur d'Alene School District Board of Trustees and a candidate for election to another local school board.
This mindset obscures serious problems of discrimination and bullying that many students face in schools – not usually for being white conservative Christians. And indeed, these problems are often perpetuated by the direct influence or complicity of the religious right. In Florida, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old African American girl, was arrested and transferred to an "alternative school" after an experiment resulted in a small explosion with no injuries or damage. Her case has brought attention to the criminalization of black students and other students of color in public schools – far more likely than white students to be suspended, expelled, and funneled into the "school-to-prison pipeline" by zero-tolerance policies.
The same conservatives likely to complain that the Bible has been "taken out of schools" have spearheaded efforts to censor the history of white supremacist violence and colonialism from public education, overhauling history textbooks in Texas and shuttering a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson, Arizona on the grounds that it "encouraged students to resent white people". In my own town of Medford, Massachussetts, representatives from state "family values" organizations have shown up at city council meetings to oppose guidelines to protect transgender students in public schools, claiming, among other things, a violation of parental rights.
Ultimately, this is what is most troubling about "The Thaw": it represents a generation raised to believe their divine mission is to entrench a racialized and politicized Christian supremacy – not Christian inclusion – in the public sphere. Children on the religious right are being taught that they've been robbed of their voice, and that they have a calling to to reclaim it through political and cultural activism. In a lot of ways, they're succeeding.
