Once upon a time, Christians were fed to the lions. Even though that appears to have been political, Christians called it religious persecution. But it shows just how hollowed out Christianity has become that today, persecution is thought to be any instance when the entire society doesn’t accept Christian dogma as The Truth™. The best example of this is the constant complaint about, Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas. The problem Christians have with “Happy holidays!” is that it doesn’t single out Christianity as being true and special.

Well, on Thursday, the conservative world went crazy about a teenager who was being oppressed because a mean old teacher gave her Fs on essays that she was supposed to write that the teen thought required her to argue against Christianity. For example, Breitbart published, Professor Fails Student for Refusing to Conform to His Anti-Christian Bias. Fox News ran with, Student: Professor Gave Me Zeros for Refusing to Condemn Christianity. WorldNetDaily went with, Christian Girl Given Zeroes for Her Beliefs, with the subtitle, “No student should be subjected to such outrageous bias and outright hostility.” As it will likely not surprise you, this is not what is going on.

College students are used to telling teachers what they want to hear. They don’t go running to television stations to complain that they are expected to make an argument that goes against what they believe. In fact, it is part of the learning experience to be able to make arguments that go against what you believe. It is part of learning to think. Only a coward would be so fragile in her beliefs as to think that considering an opposing view would be an assault on her opinions. But as we know, modern American Christians are mostly extremely cowardly when it comes to their faiths.

What actually happened in this case was that the student, young Grace Lewis, decided that she didn’t have to write essays that dealt with events in the history of Christianity. She preferred to talk about the way Christianity is today. But the instructor, Lance Russum, was teaching an introduction to humanities course, not Sunday school. So when Lewis did not write her essays on the subjects assigned, he gave her zero credit. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her homespun Christian apologetics; it was that her homespun Christian apologetics had nothing to do with the assignment.

Here is one of the essay assignments:

Apparently, by the time of this assignment, Russum had experienced Lewis’ approach to such questions. So he added this note:

In an unintentionally funny response, Lewis wrote, “In conclusion, the questions assigned are not open-minded questions.” Yes, that’s right: reading about a 14th century Christian thinker is designed to make people abandon their Christianity. This can only be true if one’s faith is childish and based upon Christians of all times being perfect. Ms Lewis is a silly young woman and should be treated as such. She certainly shouldn’t be paraded around on television like a star.

To me, the situation is very clear if we change the subject from Christianity to Islam or Hinduism. No Christian would see a problem with that because no Christian sees those religions as being reflective of the true will of God. This highlights the biggest problem with dogmatic religion: it claims to be a destination. Followers of all the Abrahamic religions aren’t searching for the truth. They think they’ve found it. And if that’s the case, then why is Grace Lewis even in school? There is nothing she needs to learn. The Bible told her so.

I spend a lot of time around here complaining about the state of American Christianity. I am not a Christian, but I still admire it as one of the the great religions of the world. And what I see in America makes me sad. Generally speaking, Christianity here hardly qualifies as a religion. To give you some idea of what I think, all you need to do is read the title of one of my articles, American Christianity as Cultural Signifier. American Christianity is just what all right thinking people believe. This is why it seems more like a prosperity cult than anything Jesus might have intended.

The fact that American Christians seem to be more focused on abortion and homosexuality almost to the exclusion of caring for the poor should be clear enough. As I’ve discussed before, abortion was never an issue for protestants all the way through Roe v Wade. That was something that concerned the Catholics. What changed this was that white protestant churches — primarily in the south — did not want their tax exempt status blocked as a result of them running segregated schools. So they needed to get their congregations politically involved. But they weren’t going to do it based upon the actual issue: segregation; that wasn’t a winning strategy. So the church leaders picked abortion, and the rest is history.

The result of that history is what is found in, What’s the Matter with Kansas? We now have white evangelicals all over the country who vote for the interests of the economic power elite — all in the name of abortion. And what’s especially interesting is that the economic power elite have no interest in abortion at all. In fact, if they could make money off it, they would. Hell, let’s be clear, there are few American corporations that wouldn’t have been putting in bids for the gas chambers and incinerators for the Nazi concentration camps. That’s the thing about the legal definition of a corporation: it is amoral. So it is a supreme irony that American Christianity should be so critical in supporting the power of these amoral institutions.

Over at New Republic a while back, Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig wrote a review of two recent books that look into this connection, Gods and Profits. It is subtitled, “How capitalism and Christianity aligned in modern America.” Of particular interest is the book, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin Kruse. It looks at the history of American Christianity from the Great Depression onward. And it is sickening.

As you probably know, Christianity hasn’t generally been all that keen on capitalism. And you don’t have to go that far back: just look at William Jennings Bryan. I think that if Christianity hadn’t gone off the rails, today, Mike Huckabee would be a liberal. But instead, he believes in the title of Bruenig’s article: God and Profits. But in the opposite order. According to Kruse’s book, the wealthy were very concerned about economic populism, so they were looking for ways to fight back. And they bought themselves a preacher: James W Fifield Jr:

I will have to get the book. But it is fascinating because those in the Religious Right are the ones most inclined to talk about how America has been co-opted. But what has really been co-opted is American Christianity itself. And they are the ones who allow it, even while they focus on what the founding fathers did or did not really believe. It’s sad for them, but it has been devastating for America.

Well, it seems that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is determined to protect “religious liberty.” Steve Benen reported that the great culture warrior has declared to school superintendents that he will not stand for them interfering with students’ “religious liberty.” And by “students” he means outsiders coming in and by “religious liberty” he means the ability of those outsiders to distribute Bibles. I’m sure he would be horrified if outsiders came in distributing the Quran or The Tibetan Book of the Dead or The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities (pdf). As Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Andrew Seidel noted, “Open forums are meant to privilege the religious majority.” Pruitt — in addition to pandering to his socially conservative base so he can help the fossil fuel industry — is only interested in pushing Christianity.

But just think about what a truly open discussion of religions would do in a country that is three-quarters Christian. You see, I know a little bit about different religions. And one of the conclusions that I’ve drawn is that they really aren’t all that different. That’s certainly true of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The recent Pew Research report on religion found that 78.4% of Americans were Christian, 1.7% were Jewish, and 0.6% were Muslim. So all else being equal — without rigging the contest with early childhood indoctrination — Christianity would lose a lot of followers and Judaism and Islam would gain a lot. This says nothing of Buddhism, which is objectively a less horrible religion. And let’s not forget America’s fasting growing faith, “Nothing in Particular”! (Really: currently at 12.1% and growing.)

As Benen noted, we have seen this all before. Pruitt may think that the US Constitution gives people the right to pass out Bibles at public schools, but that’s only true if other faiths are able to do it too. And you can bet that the Satanic Temple is going to be there passing out its literature. And the truth is that people like Pruitt are terrified of a fair fight. So if it is a question of allowing all faiths or no faiths to compete for the market of young minds, they will choose no faiths. Christianity is a musty old faith that even Pastor Carl Lentz can’t make cool. I don’t care how many Jehovah’s Witness artists render the Bible in pleasant colors, it’s still guys living in big fish, guys building big boats, and guys getting seduced by their their horny daughters. Oh, and the bearded one wandering around Palestine, supposedly able to do magic tricks, but never once doing a really cool one like making an elephant disappear.

I explained what’s going to happen just two months ago, School Board Not Open to Real Religious Debate. But what Scott Pruitt is doing has a long history — and not just in terms of these ridiculous stunts of trying to turn Christianity into an official state religion by arguing for “religious liberty.” What’s he is doing is making a symbolic point that in the end will only fail and cost his constituents money. I discussed this yesterday with regard to a totally different issue, Obamacare Hatred Is Destroying Red States. Yes, I’m sure that Oklahoma generally and the Oklahoma public schools specifically need all the money they’ve got, but what is that compared to Pruitt getting to beat his chest and pretend to be defender of religious liberty? Anyway, we all know who elected this corrupt and evil man.

Meanwhile, Benen reported that Tennessee narrowly stopped a new law that would have made the Bible the official state book. But of course, that isn’t about religion. They just think it’s a hell of a read! Of course, doing that would be the same kind of unconstitutional symbolic act that would only result in the state spending millions of dollars defending the law in court. This seems to be all that Republicans are cable of doing anymore. Is it possible we could just make a deal? We liberals will all agree that those Republicans really, really hate Obama and everything he stands for. And we will also agree that those Republicans think that Christianity is the One True Faith™. And in return, those Republicans would never again make totally stupid symbolic gestures that hurt their own constituents. But I know that will never happen. Costing yourself $37 billion each year is the only way that people will really, really know that you really, really hate Obama. And losing really, really costly really, really stupid lawsuits is the only way that people will know that you really, really love Jesus. And if it hurts the poor, so much the better! We all know Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. And that news is: no more food stamps or public education!”

Remember the good old days when Bill Maher would caution his audience, “It’s not a political rally”? To some extent, it was always disingenuous. But when it comes to the issue of Islam and what it is and is not, Maher has really lost his way. What I see in him is something I’ve seen in many people. He has a cocky self-assuredness that screams, “I know that you all think I’m a bigot, but I know the truth.” And I’m well aware that I’m tilting at windmills with Maher, but I have to try. He’s a bigot, but a smart one. And one day I hope he will see the light.

On his show this last week, he started out lambasting Christian conservatives for failing to see that they have lost the marriage equality war. But he spends surprisingly little time on that issue. He quickly moves to his real issue, which is that Muslims are so much worse than Christians. And how does he know? Well, he refers to a recent article in The Washington Post, Here Are the 10 Countries Where Homosexuality May Be Punished by Death. You see: all our Christians want to do is refuse wedding cake to homosexuals whereas their Muslims want to kill them.

If Maher had read the article, he might have noticed that it starts by discussing Uganda — a Christian country where homosexuality can get you life in prison and many have been pushing for the death penalty. And Uganda’s hard-line stance on homosexuality has been a cause célèbre among American conservative Christians for years. The only country in the Americas where homosexual acts are illegal is a Christian country, Guyana. The biggest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, has no laws about homosexuality at all. In fact, if you look at the handy map in the article, what you will see is that the criminalization of homosexuality seems to be a regional disease, not a religious one.

According to Maher, conservative Christians in the United States are “moderate” because Christianity is somehow less vile a religion than Islam. If given the opportunity, these Christians would be pushing for laws making homosexuality illegal. How do we know? Well, there are still sodomy laws on the books all over the nation — residuals of what these people really think. And there are still horrific crimes committed against LGBT people. Consider Matthew Shepard as just one of countless terrifying examples.

Bill Maher certainly understands that correlation does not imply causation — at least when it comes to things like the economy. But when it comes to Islam, he is shockingly clueless. There are all kinds of Muslim countries that don’t allow their extremists to rule. But the fact that America supposedly doesn’t do something proves something that proves, “Islam baaad!” In Ireland, a woman died because of their medieval abortion laws, which are based on the country being Catholic. Why doesn’t that make Christianity just as bad as Islam?

Here in the United States, the fundamentalist Christians do not have the power to enact laws to “kill the gays.” But they do have the power to enact laws limiting the right to vote. They do have the power to limit access to healthcare. They do have the power to limit aid to the poor while giving the rich tax cuts. All of these have the ultimate effect that those in the top half of the income distribution in the United States live five years longer than those in the bottom half of the income distribution. That includes a whole lot of LGBT people.

I’m not a fan of the Muslim religion. I generally lump it in with the other Abrahamic religions, which are mostly pretty vile. But this fixation on tragedies that happening “over there” while patting ourselves on the back is just the modern form of nationalism. And attributing those problems to a particular religion is not just bigoted; it is ignorant. There are liberal approaches to deal with illiberal behavior. Blaming it all on religion is itself illiberal and, more important, ineffective.

Arizona state senator Sylvia Allen thinks that people need to carry guns everywhere until America has a “moral rebirth.” She thinks this moral rebirth might come about if everyone were required to go to church. But don’t worry: you’d get to choose the church you went to. Freedom of religion, am I right?! Of course, she specifically said they would be forced to go “on Sunday,” so that kind of limits things. You’d get to attend any church that was close enough to what Sylvia Allen thinks is the one true way.

Allen mentioned that such a law would never be allowed. Curses! Foiled again by that meddling Constitution! But Allen is yet another crazy Christer who hasn’t a clue. I was struct by one thing she said that is incredibly common, “Allen later told the Arizona Capitol Times that she wished things were more like they were in the 1950s.” I know that everyone thinks that people were so much more religious in the 1950s, but is that even true? Well, barely. There was a bit of a peak in church attendance in the late 1950s. This is mostly due to the Cold War and not to any outbreak of religiosity.

What’s interesting is that other than that burst of church going — which lasted less than a decade — attendance has been shockingly consistent. But even more important, we are talking about an increase of about 5 percentage points. Even in those glory days of the late 1950s, still less than half of the country was going to church regularly. So how is it that this 5 percentage points created a moral world where everything was just perfect? I think that it doesn’t. Allen is just another delusional conservative who pines for a world that never existed.

I think the reason that people hearken back to the 1950s is because that was before all the liberation movements. Blacks and women and gays knew their place — at the back of the bus and generally out of sight. I doubt that Allen thinks about it in these terms. But if you consider Corey Robin’s work on what makes a conservative, this fits perfectly. Conservatism is a reaction against liberation movements. This is why Allen would say, “Of course African Americans should be able to vote!” That’s the new status quo. But her mind naturally goes back to those days before this was the status quo to the good times when she didn’t have to deal with such scary disruption.

The interesting thing is that if you look at the crime rate, it did go up somewhat during the 1960s. And then it really went up in the 1970s and 1980s — peaking during the first Bush administration. This was during a period of constant church attendence. But over the last couple of decades it has gone down — again, even while church attendance has stayed at a very constant 40%. In fact, the murder rate is now notably lower than it was in 1960, even though the country has twice as many people and that generally leads to more crime. The data just don’t support the narrative that conservative Christians like Allen are pushing.

I am so tired of hearing people glorify the 1950s as some grand time in the history of the United States. It wasn’t. There were lots of good things at that time — just like any time. But it was not a great moral period. It was not even a great period for church going. I don’t mind conservatives disagreeing with me. But I wish they would put away their childish delusions. All they are actually saying is that if we eliminate our diversity and walked in lockstep, all would be well. I have two problems with that. First, I’m not interested in living under fascism. Second, doing that wouldn’t cure our problems, and it would create far more.