{"id":10786,"date":"2007-12-08T16:34:04","date_gmt":"2007-12-08T21:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2007\/12\/08\/10786.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:57:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:57:44","slug":"persecution-not-as-complex-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2007\/12\/08\/persecution-not-as-complex-as\/","title":{"rendered":"Persecution, not as complex as it might be"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger reads with dismay the story of some maniac in Cornwall who is threatening and attacking his curate because she is a woman. Riazut Butt (and here I refrain from joking about the name of the writer), in an article called Woman curate on temporary leave after hate campaign<\/a> puts the series of attacks in the context (as I think it should be) of the Church of England’s path to sexual equality for priests. I was disappointed in this quote from a spokesman for the Church: “The church's attitude to women priests is that priests are priests, whichever sex they are. However, the church also respects the integrity of those who find it difficult, or even impossible, to accept the priestly ministry of women.” I don’t have any problem with the Church sympathizing<\/i> with those who find it difficult or even impossible to accept the priestly ministry of women. But respecting them? Respecting their integrity? Why? And in the context of unhinged attacks on a woman, on a priest, on anyone, why would you go out of your way to make that point? I only hope that the statement was made in some other context.
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Now, Your Humble Blogger connected that, in his mind (where there is lots of room to make such connections) with Mitt Romney’s speech on Faith in America<\/a> the other day.
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There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs. Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it.<\/blockquote>
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Governor Romney is presenting himself as the victim of intolerance. People are demanding (or at least preferring) that he give up his religion. Those people are unnamed, largely because they don’t exist. Oh, some of them do, I suppose, but naming them would just expose their lack of power or authority. So he doesn’t. He places himself in a line of Americans persecuted for their faith: Ann Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Brigham Young. And then he talks about the twin dangers of atheism and Jihad (the latter “infinitely worse”, it’s true). “In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day.”
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The evils and dangers of the day.
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We on the Left have often pointed out that there is a dangerous strain in the conservative movement, a tendency to see themselves under attack, persecuted, endangered. It seems preposterous to us that the institutions, rituals, symbols and values of white, Protestant Christian, suburban capitalist America are in some sort of jeopardy. They are not. Like Christmas, they are doing fine, and need no defending. Or so it seems to us. Mitt Romney, I think, is tapping into (or trying to tap into) that feeling of persecution, that feeling that the old ways are under attack.
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I feel fairly certain that the crazy Cornishman thinks that it is him<\/i> (or her) that is under attack, fighting only a rearguard action, defending himself against the onslaught. And, I must say, I have some sympathy with that. His way of life is disappearing. He does not have a male priest in his hometown parish, and if he can’t accept the Bread from a female, he loses communion (or community, by leaving for a parish with a male priest). I don’t share that point of view at all, but I can, dimly at least, sense that something valued is lost. But let’s be clear. It was the vicar’s car that was set on fire.
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We have killed far more “violent Jihadists” than they have killed Americans. We have most of the money, most of the guns, most of the movies. We’ve caused most of the climate change, and will very likely escape the brunt of the damage. Yes, they are threatening us, but mostly they are ineffectually<\/i> threatening us, while we are actually<\/i> destroying them, their way of life, and their world. You cannot set the vicar’s car on fire from anonymous safety and claim to be a victim of persecution. You cannot make a gazillion dollars, spout vicious, racist, ignorant, nasty rhetoric and lead in the polls for President of the United States and claim to be a victim of persecution.
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Or, at least, when you do make such a claim, I will deny it. And I’ll try to make sure that everybody else denies it, too. Because it’s a lie.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger expresses outrage, rather than respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rhetoric"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18189,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions\/18189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}