CREEDE HINSHAW: When it’s not really persecution

I admit to losing my patience with those who employ the word “persecution” to describe the smallest indignity, cheapening a very serious word by over-using it.

A few months ago the charge of “religious persecution” surfaced because – can you believe this? – a website reported a couple who host a show on cable channel HGTV attended a church opposed to homosexuality.

Let me try again to explain the situation another way: Chip and Joanna Gaines host an HGTV show. The Gaineses attend a church whose pastor believes homosexuals are created by abusive parents. A website reports this as a news item.

That’s the whole story.

Should the website have publicized where the Gaines attend church? I’ll leave that to you. Everybody … everybody … is grinding an axe these days. When you’re in the public eye, your life is often not your own.

But are the Gaineses being persecuted? Please!

Let me be clear. Christians are being persecuted: They are falsely imprisoned in Turkey, tortured and beheaded by ISIS, targeted for economic destruction in Egypt, summarily executed in Pakistan for converting to Christianity from Islam, slain by the Mafia in Italy for standing up for the community, imprisoned in Cuba for marching for equality, imprisoned in China for forming house churches, murdered in North Korea for not bowing to the dictator. I could fill this column with examples of persecution.

And it’s not only Christians who are being persecuted. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a respected non-profit organization that tracks and exposes more than 1,600 hate and extremist groups in the U.S., notes that there have been over 1,300 reports of violence/threats to Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and other religious minorities in a recent three-month period, six times higher than what is typically experienced.

Since January, more than 100 threats have been made against Jewish communities, synagogues and community centers (Wall Street Journal, March 14). Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated. People who look different are being murdered in cold blood because they are not Caucasian. Four mosques have been burned already in 2017.

Spending on security has skyrocketed for religious minorities.

If we must decry persecution, let’s reserve it for those situations where the word might still continue to mean something. The Amish in Kentucky are claiming they are being discriminated against because their horses are required to wear horse-diapers. This is persecution? Really? Not every uncomfortable or even ugly situation rises to the level of persecution.

Some people need to dial their outrage down a few notches rather than equating every discomfort as persecution. God once asked the whining prophet Jeremiah, “If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?” (Jeremiah 12:5).

A proper identification on the very real dangers suffered by persons of all religious faiths would help us protect and care for each other and save us from outrage over incidents that, though important, do not rise to the level of persecution.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].