CHRISTIAN POST – Christians Need to Fight for Religious Freedom for All, Not Just Themselves…

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• WASHINGTON – Christians in the United States have too often been only concerned about religious freedom for themselves, rather than fighting for religious freedom for all, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, argued at a Thursday symposium, “Faith, Culture & Religious Freedom in the 21st Century.””One of the mistakes people made in the past is this kind of majoritarian understanding, maintaining our own rights without diligently fighting for religious liberty for all persons,” he said.

  Moore, a Southern Baptist theologian, added that evangelical Christians in particular have done a poor job of paying attention to the religious freedom of others.

  “Evangelical Christians need to be the first people in any given community,” he continued, “to stand up and say, ‘we don’t want the mayor to have the power to keep a mosque out of here simply because its a mosque.'”

• Douthat argued that it is not sufficient for Christians to argue for religious freedom. They must, at the same time, make arguments in favor of the religious views they are trying to protect, because a majority may come to the conclusion that those views are so awful they do not deserve protection.”America’s First Amendment tradition of religious tolerance will not suffice to protect Christians if the completely dominant cultural view is that the traditional Christian view of sex is horrifically bigoted, awful and life destroying,” he said.

  Powers added that Christians should expect to be hated for their views, and warned against self-pity and conflating hatred with religious persecution.

  “Sometimes I hear Christians talking in a very self-pitying way, ‘woe is us because this is the way society is going.’ … That’s not religious persecution by the state. … We need to understand, people not liking you is not religious persecution.”

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