The Five Stages of Religious Persecution
Persecution of a targeted faction of society begins slowly and incrementally increases stage by stage.
Persecution of a targeted faction of society begins slowly and incrementally increases stage by stage.
American Christians should be very cognizant that they are well into the first stages of extreme religious persecution.
Stage one commences with attempts to stereotype the targeted group.
Stage one commences with attempts to stereotype the targeted group.
Stereotyping the targeted group – To stereotype means to repeat without variation, to take a quality or observation of a limited number and generalize it to describe the whole group. It involves a simplified and standardized conception or view of a group based on the observation of a limited sample.
The second stage of persecution involves justifying hatred of a particular group.
Vilifying the targeted group for alleged crimes or misconduct – As the stereotyping grows in intensity, Christians who will not toe the line in the cultural revolution are described as close-minded, harmful to human dignity and freedom, intolerant, hateful, bigoted, unfair, homophobic, reactionary, and just plain mean and basically bad people.
Stage three involves the marginalizing of Christians’ role in society.
Having established the (false) premise that the Church and faith are very bad and even harmful to human dignity and freedom, the critics proceed in the next stage to relegate the role of the Church to the margins of society.
This is what Hitler did to the Jews as he first denied them employment in key areas of banking and education. It is at this time that every wrong act committed by a Christian will be highly vilified and publicized. It will be at this point that astute and aware Christians will be forced to go underground to practice their faith.
The fourth stage of Christian persecution involves criminalizing Christians and their churches, businesses, and educational institutions. But even prior to this egregious attempt to violate our religious liberty there have been many other times we have had to go to court to fight for our right to practice our faith openly. An increasing amount of litigation is being directed against the Church and other Christians for daring to live out our faith. Christians will be held up as the model for what is wrong with America with its intolerance for the free expression of every deviant lifestyle and social expression of sinful behavior.
Stage five ushers in the direct persecution of Christians. The time for marginalizing Christians stops and the outright, undeniable persecution begins. Churches will be forced to marry gays and will be forced to formally accept the validity of the teaching of every other religion (e.g. Islam), or be found guilty of a hate crime. Even jail time for Christians is quite possible: “Already in Canada and in parts of Europe, Catholic clergy have been arrested and charged with ‘hate crimes’ for preaching Catholic doctrine on homosexual activity.”
If current trends continue, Christians, especially religious leaders, may not be far from facing heavy fines and/or incarceration.
Stage five will mark the beginning of the elimination of Christianity as a mainstream, viable religion.
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