Should Christians be hated?

[plaingirly]

Random question! I opened my Bible on Matthew 10 and verse 22 says :

And all nations will hate you because you are my followers. But everyone who endures to the end will be saved.

I think there is another verse similar but can't remember it.

So if someone is really a follower of Jesus will people hate them and if people don't hate them are they not strong enough in their faith?

I don't really want to be hated! Also at work we have to get along with people so having them hate us wouldn't be ideal. Unless the verses are more specific or maybe aimed at the disciples.

Pedro that is true that there are only really two Christian holidays (the eastern Orthadox church celebrate Easter at a different time because they use a different calendar).

I am not C of E (at the moment), I go to a free church, so I am not part of the 'state' religion but I don't have a problem with having the holidays we do.

Good Friday is a holiday (but not a bank holiday) and Christmas Day (Christmas day was just picked as a date to celebrate Christmas, it doesn't have a great deal of significance to some Christians, I mean if Christians celebrated Christ's birthday on another day I expect some would be fine with it).

As pedro says many of the holidays we have are not religious. Easter Sunday is a Sunday anyway (not a bank holiday) and Easter Monday has no religious significance. Christmas Eve is not a bank holiday and I have no idea what Boxing Day is about.

I am actually quite impressed by those Christians who say that we should not have a state religion, because although it is Anglican it is reasonably close to the other Christian deonominations (in my humble opinion).

Good Friday is a holiday (but not a bank holiday)

I work for bank and can confirm that Good Friday most certainly is a bank holiday and a sterling currency holiday (no payments can be made where sterling is used as a reference rate and no payments in any currency where London is a required open business centre).

Christmas day was just picked as a date to celebrate Christmas, it doesn't have a great deal of significance to some Christians

It shouldn't really have significance for any Christians given it's actually a pagan observance of the 'birth of the sun' based on proximity to the Winter Solstice. As far as I know there's no reference to it being the birthday of Jesus.

Pedro don't destroy my faith in .... Wikipedia!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_holiday

"The first official bank holidays were the four days named in the Bank Holidays Act 1871, but today the term is colloquially (albeit incorrectly) used for public holidays which are not officially bank holidays, for example Good Friday and Christmas Day"

Christmas day, well yes, Pedro it may have been chosen for all kinds of reasons but it has a certain significance now for me because it is the day we see family, and celebrate. I think for others too it may be the day people celebrated 'baby's first Christmas etc. So it kind of collected meaning!

Christmas day, well yes, Pedro it may have been chosen for all kinds of reasons but it has a certain significance now for me because it is the day we see family, and celebrate. I think for others too it may be the day people celebrated 'baby's first Christmas etc. So it kind of collected meaning!

Absolutely! And it means something to me too for the same reason

I think perhaps we digress little from the point which was the perception that CofE get special treatment with respect to the public holidays. Clearly this is not the case after all!!

Yes, Pedro I thought you would also have special thoughts about the day - as a dad. My image of it is my daughter in a red Santa suit (asleep). Faith for me is not about that particular day.

I agree I don't think Anglicans get a lot of special treatment these days. They did in the past, and I agree it was wrong. My goodness Pedro so much agreement at the moment. I am off to bed before I say something and spoil it!

The majority of the UK public holidays are not actually Christian holidays. May Day is a political holiday, August bank holiday is, Actually I don't know, New Year's Day is a secular holiday, and I don't know what the late May one is though I think it may have some religious origins (ascension day or Whit Sunday or something) - but very, very few people keep ascension day as a holiday.

Another common factor in the type of Christians who whine about being 'persecuted' is that they are usually racists, and the substance of their whine is usually that they percieve those 'foreigners' as getting some sort of special treatment which should only be reserved for white Christians eg prayer breaks for muslims or special dispensation to wear a turban.

SGB bit of a huge generalisation there! IMHO. Another common factor in the type of Christians who whine about being 'persecuted' is that they are usually racists...

If Wikipedia is to be belived, Pedro made me doubt it, then May day is related to a pagan festival.

I wouldn't want you to start doubting Wikipedia! Perhaps there's some truth in the original definition of bank holiday, but to all intents and purposes, the public holidays are all bank holidays.

Of course we still trade in other currencies on those days, so technically the bank still operates (and it's an American Bank anyway)..... Oh, why did I start this sentence!

Ellie the fact you don't hate vicars is not really evidence that vicars or indeed anyone anywhere is not hated by some. Yes, I get your point, about who belives things based on thing you did not think happened, I just ran out of stream to discuss it. I may well rally my steam but when things get a bit cross on hear it makes me so sad. I think we might find we all had a lot more in common if we were not trying to rattle each other's cages so much!

Everyone is hated by someone. But the idea that there's an undercurrent of hatred directed towards Christians in this country is a load of nonsense. The Daily Mail loves nothing more than a "poor, persecuted Christians" story, in case you hadn't noticed....and the best that they can come up with is BA stewardesses being expected to follow the rules about uniform at work and B&B owners prevented from being allowed to break the law and discriminate against gay couples.

This is hatred? Go and live in Iran and get a clue about how religious hatred works .

I am about the start talking about Paul and whether he indicates that Jesus lived as a man on Earth on the Jesus thread, Italian. I'd rather leave that for there. Feel free to join. Just waiting for my fellow debatee Mad to start feeling up to it.

I'm an atheist but my sister is ordained. A few years back someone set fire to their house (the vicarage). So I would have to agree that there are people who do hate vicars (it was suspected to be a local offender who would almost certainly have known that s/he was setting fire to the vicar's house). The motivation might have been the same as any act of violence toward an authority figure (vandalizing schools being particularly popular), an anti Christianity or anti CoE act or something more specifically related to her. Who knows really, but I understand that it's not particularly uncommon.

Ok pick a high street at random in the UK. let's say there are 100 people in sight. How many would you expect to have such hatred for a vicar that it was obvious from 50 feet away.

Not how many would be atheist or Muslim or Hindu and not how many are opposed to religion, but how many hate the sight of the collar so much that the hatred is visible and they can't hide it.

I mean seriously?

I wonder how much evidence it would take for people to take seriously the fact that clergy are the targets of aggression and violence?

Story from BBC News.

I grew up in a vicarage, and am married to a vicar now

My dad/all of us:

Were threatened repeatedly, with knives, broken bottles and fists. Once a man with a knife got in to our house and held it to dad as if to stab him.

We had our caravan set on fire, on our driveway.

Bricks thrown through the window.

Doorbell ringing at 3am, with pizza, taxi, you name it. Campaign went on for months.

Garden fence set on fire.

Fireworks through door.

Threatened with rape (me), strangling (dad/all of us)

Vicar before my dad was burgled 4 times and someone left excrement all over the walls of the vicarage. Before we moved in someone put a hosepipe through the window, the kitchen ceiling collapsed and much worse.

And much more.

I'm being real here, because I wanted to support green - I am actually in agreement with SGB, Ellie et al that there is not 'persecution' as compared to places like China, Syria, Iran and NK - but there is hatred, and sometimes hatred centring on clergy. The area dad ministered in was a 'rough' area, but you could still not see that this was normal, and happened to everyone there - there was a hate campaign, that went on for around 2 years, and made our lives miseries. I was a young teenager and it was terrifying at times.

I am so glad we stayed there, because things changed incredibly and we saw huge transformations in lives and in the community - but there was hate, and there is hate now. dh doesn't get much directed at him - in fact in his curacy we were in a muslim area and got mainly respect and good conversations - but there is the odd comment and not the odd 'look'. Mostly he is rebellious and won't wear his collar

I think you are right Solid Brass - Isn't the late May one associated with Whitsun which is ascension. I think christians have become marginalised in the 21st century in the UK but I agree that we are very fortunate in the UK compared to Iran or Pakistan if you want to uphold your faith.

In China it can be difficult as well unless you belong to the state church.

madhairday - that sounds awful

I wonder whether it's more to do with just generally being in the firing line (as in, associating with and therefore 'known to' people who are likely to be dangerous) than it being anything actually to do with religion itself?

I don't know, but I imagine that anyone who deals with dangerous / ill / antisocial people as part of their job will be more vulnerable to attack - eg social workers, health care workers / people who work in halfway houses etc?

I think there's something in that, Lizzy. Can't have helped that the vicarage was 'separate' from the estate, being on the church complex which was used as a gang hangout at first then we prayed and it stopped - there was definitely an element of being seen as in the firing line.

However, in at least some of these cases it was made clear that it was because he was a vicar.

Madhairday I am so sorry for all you have experienced, and your family.

Nooka I am so sorry about your sister.

Ellie I would agree that ... the idea that there's an undercurrent of hatred directed towards Christians in this country is a load of nonsense...

I don't think most Christians in Britain are at all persecuted. I think there might be a small number who are, and it could be for all kinds of reasons, such as the background they come from, if they have changed faith etc. As far as I was thinking this thread was not really about Christians in this country but more about a general thought about how Christians should be received.

Thank you Ellie for the invitation to the other thread. I am fearful that you are all much wiser than me but I may look in!

Also Ellie persecution can come in many forms, as Mad has shown. In lots of counteries Christians are pretty much utterly powerless, the marginalised and lower class in some places. They may live in poor areas and not be able to move. IN other places like the UK, Christians might be stuck in poorer places or they may choose to move into those places. They may be treated badly but choose to stay.

I am not in any way arguing that Christians in the UK are generally persecuted but I think it is clear that some are hated.

Mad, that sounds horrific and I am sorry you had to experience it. But I do think it was less to do with a hatred of Christians and Christianity in general and more to do with a hatred of 'authority' and perhaps some class hatred (the vicar seen as part of the boss class or the posh class...). People who are leaders or officials of any kind of group or movement are often targeted if they are visible and identifiable, eg a party political candidate might get some abuse but mostly the people who voted for that candidate or intend to vote for that candidate don't get so much.

That's exactly what I was going to say SGB. If teachers were required to walk around wearing gowns and mortars and live in houses clearly marked "The School House" or something, I expect they'd be targeted in a similar way by the same sorts of people.

I don't doubt the horrible experiences related here, and I'm sympathetic, but there simply isn't any persecution of Christians BECAUSE they are Christians going on. The kinds of people behaving in that fashion simply don't care enough about Christianity.

If wearing a dog collar in a rough area is going to bring you to the attention of the kinds of people who resent authority, or who show off to their equally ignorant mates with mouthfuls of abuse, then maybe don't wear it. There's nowhere in the Bible that requires it.

mad, so sorry to hear about your horrible - indeed horrific - experiences, and I don't think it's sensible to be too quick to decide what it was all about. The persecution of people of faith is often ascribed to something else, because that's a less unpleasant idea. But it can also be a coverup. Under Elizabeth I, Catholics WERE persecuted, but the govt brilliant,y said it was because they were traitors, not because they were Catholics. However, since all Catholics were deemed traitors if they heard mass, it merely added insult to injury.

To ellie - if you are saying that wearing a dog-collar lays you open to persecution, however little the persecution has to do with any real knowledge of or interest in religion, erm, isn't that precisely the point?

RCs under Elizabeth (or in modern China) could/can also survive best by never ever practising their faith in case it triggers someone's hate...

I'm starting to think that some people will go to any lengths to deny the truth of other people's experience. Let's try some analogies to what the two previous posts have said:

You weren't beaten up because you are gay, it is because you have so much more disposable income than heterosexuals.

The reason you can't live here is not because you're black, it's because you wear such bright clothes and play loud music.

I do think there is a class thing going on, but the question I would ask is, why are clergy the particular focus of class hatred? After all, this kind of routine harassment and aggression is still, thankfully, relatively rare even for middle class people living in the middle of 'rough areas' (as I do myself).

I suggest that it has something to do with widespread anti-clerical feeling which both the previous posters have displayed at various times on these boards stoked up by wildly innaccurate ideas of the wealth of the church (despite the fact that the clergy are the poorest paid professionals, earning a mere £22,500 a year, that is, unless they are working for a half stipend or even for nothing) in a situation of obscene inequalities of wealth and power. Clergy are often the only middle class professionals both working and, crucially, living in these 'rough areas'. Social workers go home at night, but for clergy their homes are not only where they work, and are known, but their homes are often open. This is a situation of great vulnerability that clergy voluntarily put themselves into.

When you have people frothing all over the Internet, and to a certain extent in real life, that the church is rolling in unearned wealth, that the clergy are all child abusers, that taking children to church is tantamount to child abuse (and, for some, worse than neglect), and where many people's direct experience of the church is nil, then the way is open for those who are visible as Christians and clergy are often the only 'known' Christians in a particular area to be the target of some of the huge amount of aggression and resentment washing around our society.