MEDIA CRITICISM:

Media Ignore Religious Freedom Day, 2007, But Why?

Inocuous enough, right? Coming the day after the federal holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one might think there'd be a tie-in of some kind. Yet this special day has passed unnoticed in the mainstream media. Today's harvest of media stories covering it, per Google News at 4:00 p.m., include only four: Gospelherald.com in China (which credits the proclamation to the efforts of The Institute on Religion & Democracy, described in the story as a "conservative Washington-based Christian group" and informs us that "some 250 million Christians worldwide will be persecuted in 2007, according to Release International. The persecution watchdog group noted that Christian persecution is growing fastest in the Muslim world."); the Dakota Voice in South Dakota (which gives the verbatim text of the proclamation, courtesy of Christian Newswire), Catholic Online in California (which gives a straightforward and balanced report) and Catholic World News (proclamation text only).

The proclamation was touted, for example, by the Institute on Religion & Democracy, whose spokesperson said, “Millions are discriminated against, beaten and tortured, imprisoned, and killed because they follow Jesus Christ or are members of other minority religions."

Why is Jesus getting top billing in this context? And why is Christianity being lumped with "other minority religions"? For Christianity is not an underdog: it has more adherents than any other religious group—2.1 billion. Islam is next, with 1.3 billion. (The third largest sector, according to adherents.com, is "secular/nonreligious/agnostic/atheist," with 1.1 billion, and then the fourth largest sector is Hinduism, with 900 million.) Could it be that the "freedom" the Bush administration seeks to spread to the rest of the world is religious freedom—especially for a particular kind of Christians?

Gateways to a Better Education claims to be "keeping the faith in public education." On the welcome page, they state, "In a time when Christians are losing faith in the public school system, fearing that their children will be exposed to a secular influence contrary to Biblical standards, we exist to promote and support a Godly influence in the classroom." The organization offers a pamphlet explaining the Pledge to the Flag: "Help students learn to more fully appreciate concepts expressed in the Pledge such as liberty, justice, national unity, and recognizing that our freedoms come from God, not the State."

Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson, if he knew what's being done in his name under cover of this proclamation, would be flipping over in his grave.

• "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." Letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802
  
  
• "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." To Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813
  
  
• "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
  
  
• "I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another." Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1799