Yesterday, I went to church, something less and less of us do nowadays. This was not out of a deeply held conviction in anything, it was rather tradition that drove me through the old dusty doors.
Now, the particular church I went to was Llanelli Presbyterian Church, a god-awful place that has fixated recently upon this terrible man, John Roberts as their preacher. Without disclosing too much information, he introduced the service by saying how Christians are being marginalized and that the 3% of our country that are muslims are getting the government to bow to their every whim. You must know it, the same old rhetoric, tired arguments, that our great Christian nation is being torn apart and so on and so forth. Pure BNP. Later on in the same sermon he criticized the Human Rights Act of 1998 (which is incidentally a tremendous piece of legislation that guaranteed his right to freedom of speech) and favored the Pax Romana, or Roman Law!
Why, therefore, are Christians feeling so marginalized?
Simply, because they are a margin. There are in Wales, probably, less actual believing Christians than there are Muslims. All that has happened is that the major religion, the one that used to have all of its needs pandered to has become the laughing stock of a generation. If we look at the general demographic of those in these Churches, they are older people, who still remember the good old days when you could burn a homosexual in the street and openly frown upon interracial marriage. They are just disgruntled people who like to complain about the lack of moral fabric in society, that political correctness has gone mad, just the topics you'd hear down any local being drunkenly discussed. However, tragically, they also had come to the conclusion that their right to say all of these things is divine, that it comes from God!
We can go into all kind of arguments in which we see street preachers being arrested for the denouncement of homosexuality and air-hostesses being told not to wear a cross on a plane. (The later is extra-ironic when you consider that a plane is actually the same shape as a cross!) And are these things right? NO! But is it persecution? Well, maybe!
It is a warning that freedom of speech does not exist and that everyone should be quite afraid when you are not allowed to state (or in some cases shout at passer-by's) your deeply held beliefs in public. If as agnostics or atheists we are allowed to criticize the sex scandals within the church, why, therefore are major religions not allowed to criticize whatever subject they want to. Free speech comes at this cost: Having to hear views that you find repugnant allowed to be aired, just so that your moderate(or extreme) views can be as well.
One last point, The Bible encourages Christians to feel this way, this constant clash between the world and them. It talks of battles and hardships that they will endure. in John 15, Jesus says ": If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you... because they do not know Him who sent Me."
Therefore if Christians don't feel persecuted the Bible states that they are probably doing something wrong! So let them continue to moan, they seem to enjoy it enough!
