War against Christianity?

In partial response to the hysteria that was whipped up at the end of last year about an alleged 'War on Christmas' in America, the Washington Post asked its online readers if they saw any evidence of a War against Christianity. The Post tends to have a monthly religion-related question in which readers are encouraged to give their thoughts. This particular question was their April question. I wrote my response, which was published by the Post on May 5, along with many other responses. My response to this question:

The answer to this question probably has a lot to do with the circles a person chooses to run in. We all have blind spots, and they are often made bigger when we choose to associate almost exclusively with those who basically see the world as we do. Too many Christians think the world in its totality is completely against Christianity, while too many non-Christians wrongly insist that society does not harbor an anti-Christian bias. The truth is in the middle.

Much of society is ambivalent about Christianity and the legitimate role it plays in society.
Some portions of society welcome Christianity's contributions. Other portions actively fight against Christianity (particularly the "conservative" kind), all the while insisting that they're not playing favorites. The Post's Editorial page is a particularly egregious example of this. So yes, there is a war against Christianity, but it is a war that is being prosecuted by a minority section of society against a particular type of Christianity, the "conservative" kind.

--Jason Foster, Arlington, Va.

One of the results of conservative Christians becoming vocally engaged in the political process is that they have become juicy targets of those who genuinely believe that religion has no place in public life. Many of the responses to this question viscerally reflect this sentiment, along with a great disdain toward Christians generally, and politically active Christians particularly. The proper role of religion in public life, using the same logic I employ in my response above, tends to be based on who's doing the evaluating and what their own presuppositions are that they are bringing to the question. Nobody approaches this question neutrally; nobody is objective about this. True, there are degrees of partisanship in the predispositions that we hold on any topic. But nobody is completely non-partisan. The responses to this question that the Post published, including mine, reflect the biases everyone brought to the question. A failure to see this results in the kind of fictional objectivity that is still all too common among the punditry and the citizenry alike, where we pretend to analyze something objectively, only to arrive at a conclusion that, lo and behold, resembles what we were already predisposed to believe. This doesn't mean that we are incapable of changing our minds about something, since this, too, happens all the time. Not every predisposition we harbor has to be inviolable. The problem is that too many of us are willing to die on every hill, rather than subjecting our predispositions to the kind of honest examination that holds out the possibility that they may be in need of adjustment. Particularly when it comes to religion, folks on both sides of the spectrum tend to be unwilling to listen to the other side well enough for their predispositions to be affected. This is why public discourse on matters such as this is becoming increasingly frivolous, and just another part of the pointless rhetorical game that Congress in particular has unfortunately perfected; all show, no substance.