War on Religion?

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Ricky Perry recently claimed that Obama is attacking religion. Fox News is already revving up its yearly war on Christmas fantasy. However, there do seem to be actual attacks on religion. One obvious example is the attempt to convince voters that Mormonism is a cult. Another example is FFA’s movement to get advertisers to pull advertisements from All American Muslim.

America is based on a principle of religious tolerance and, as such, these sorts of things should be condemned as going against one of our core principles. Naturally, the right to free speech allows people to say such things and for companies to remove their advertisements. But there is much to be said for being civil with faiths that differ from one’s own and also in not yielding to religious bigotry when making business decisions.

While these matters are well worth considering, the United States is still a very tolerant country in regards to religion. While there have been attempts to equate Islam with terrorism and thus infringe on religious freedoms in the name of security, we have largely resisted this urge. Other countries have not been so restrained in their treatment of non-dominant faiths and this, of course, includes the very real mistreatment of Christians in certain parts of the world. This should not, of course, be taken to justify abandoning our hard earned tolerance. Rather, it should show us exactly why the Christian majority in America should treat the religious minorities as they would wish to be treated if they were the minority.