Approaching the topic of Christian culture in US schools in the twenty-first century means entering a battleground of school boards, parents, administrators, and teachers — all of whom are adults — about what young people are to learn. Conflicts range (and rage) over evolution versus creationism and intelligent design, prayer in school, observed and ignored religious holidays, school attire, sex education, and the separation of church and state.

The ferocity of these conflicts is exacerbated by the perception that wider global conflicts are generated by “clashes of civilizations,” most notably Christian and Muslim, with the subtext that US life possesses (Christian) values that are “under attack.” The widespread belief that mainstream US culture and its educational institutions have become secular or even antireligious further shapes these debates. To even suggest that Christian institutions, beliefs, and practices dominate US culture can bring sharp denials.

How does this look in the classroom? Young people can be anywhere on the spectrum of religious involvement, in any religion, from fundamentalist conviction to occasional observance to indifference to active atheism. The kinds of Christian practice some students observe vary widely based on the differing roles of churches in communities of different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some evangelical denominations actively market to youth and train them to proselytize. For groups targeted for oppression by race, class, or other differences, Christian (and other) religious communities may function as bulwarks, or at least familiar community settings, against daily experiences of mistreatment. Finally, some forms of Christian practice, such as fundamentalist or evangelical forms, may be frowned upon or made fun of by student and adult culture at a given school, making individual Christian students feel persecuted.

Of course, Christianity is the dominant religion practiced in the United States — recent polls show that about 75 percent of the population believes in a Christian deity.26 The structural role of Christianity in the formation of the United States, from justifications for bloody conquest of the continent to laws governing citizen behavior, is a well-known part of the US narrative. Christian doctrines of hard work, individual responsibility, industry, and development, sometimes popularly called the “Protestant ethic,” have played a role in the creation and maintenance of a global capitalist economic system. Overtly Christian movements have been active, sometimes violently so, in formats from right-wing talk radio to governmental lobbying; speaking against reproductive rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights; and other issues that affect non-Christian minorities.

Christian institutions have also played a deep, founding, and shaping role in US school systems. The spiritual practices of students and their families and communities are not the issue here but rather how all students become oriented in a society in which Christianity plays a dominating role as Christian hegemony. Hegemony in this sense refers to whatever is part of the systematic, day-to-day, institutionalized, taken-for-granted routine in a given culture: the “default position.” Because we identify “oppression” as the systematic, daily, routine dominance and mistreatment of a target group by a nontarget group, we in effect identify such “isms” as racism and sexism as hegemonies. An easily understood, obvious example of Christian hegemony in the United States is the observance of Christmas, observed throughout the business and civic world as a holiday that saturates all aspects of US culture for believers, nonbelievers, and “secular” Christians alike for more than a month every year.

It may not be as openly acknowledged that education in US and European societies is, to a great extent, modeled on a conception of education as moral training, development, and maturation of what is designated as the human soul — the training of individuals in how to behave, how to strive, and whom or what to obey — found in Christian-based pedagogies begun in medieval Europe. The use of Christian parables and moral instructions in the early New England primers for learning the ABCs are easily cited examples. Even today, many of our taken-for-granted assumptions about how teachers are to educate young people and what young people should be taught reflect Christian concepts of good and bad, light and dark, chosen and condemned, and educational progress as the analogue of salvation. These assumptions are implicit in the pedagogical approaches taken in most US school systems, quite apart from more explicit expressions of Christian hegemony to be found in such practices as Christian prayers in classrooms, school assemblies and sports events, and dress codes in some schools that forbid the Islamic head-scarf while ignoring the crucifix.

What other taken-for-granted practices in US life are based on Christian values? We use the following exercise to promote students’ awareness of the influence of these values, regardless of the particular religious practices, if any, they have been raised to observe. As with previous exercises in this book, this is a stand-up exercise using categories you may preselect from the list. If any participants have limited mobility, they may participate by raising hands if they are able.

Living in a Christian-Dominant Culture

Please stand silently if…

1. you have been baptized or otherwise ceremonially introduced, as a child or adult, into “being a Christian”
2. you have ever attended church of a Christian denomination regularly
3. you have ever attended Sunday school as a child or attended church periodically (for example, during Christian holidays)
4. you have ever attended a Christian-based recreational organization as a young person, such as the YMCA or YWCA, or church-based summer camp or participated in a program of a nonreligious youth organization that was based in Christian beliefs, such as the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts
5. you have ever been told or instructed that things that you do with your body, sex with others, or sex by yourself was sinful or unclean
6. you have ever been told that sexual acts other than intercourse between a man and a woman or sexual orientations other than heterosexual are sinful or unclean
7. you have ever heard heaven and good described as light or white and hell and evil described as dark or black
8. you have ever been told something you did was sinful or evil or that you were sinful or evil
9. you have ever been approached by family members, friends, or strangers trying to convince you to become Christian or a Christian of a particular kind
10. you have ever been rejected in any way by family or community members, because you were not Christian or were not Christian enough
11. you have ever experienced the church in your community as a major center of social life that influences those around you and that would be difficult to avoid if you wanted to
12. you have ever taken Christian holidays, such as Christmas or Easter, off, whether you observe them as Christian holidays or not, or have taken Sunday off or think of it, in any way, as a day of rest
13. you have ever been given a school vacation or paid holiday related to Christmas or Easter when school vacations or paid holidays for non-Christian religious celebrations, such as Ramadan or the Jewish High Holidays, were not observed
14. public institutions you use, such as offices, buildings, banks, parking meters, the post office, libraries, and stores, are open on Fridays and Saturdays but closed on Sundays
15. the calendar year you observe is calculated from the year designated as the birth of Christ
16. you have ever seen a public institution in your community, such as a school, hospital, or city hall, decorated with Christian symbols (such as Christmas trees, wreaths, portraits or sculptures of Jesus, nativity scenes, “Commandment” displays, or crosses)
17. you can easily find and access Christian music, TV shows, movies, and places of worship in your community
18. you can easily access Christmas- or Easter-related music, stories, greeting cards, films, and TV shows at the appropriate times of the year
19. anyone in your family have ever received public services — medical care, family planning, food, clothing, shelter, or substance-abuse treatment — from a Christian- based organization or one marked by Christian beliefs and practices (for example, Alcoholics Anonymous or other twelve-step programs, “pro-life” family planning, hospital care, and so forth)
20. you daily use currency that includes Christian words or symbols, such as the phrase “in God we trust”
21. you have ever been told that a war or invasion, historical or current, was justified, because those who were attacked were heathens, infidels, unbelievers, pagans, terrorists, sinners, or fundamentalists of a non-Christian religion
22. your parents or ancestors were ever subject to invasion, forced conversion, or the use of missionaries as part of a colonization process either in the United States or in another part of the world
23. in your community or metropolitan area, hate crimes have been committed against Jews, Muslims, gays, transgender people, women, or others based on or justified by the perpetrator’s Christian beliefs
24. you have ever attended public nonreligious functions, such as civic or governmental meetings, that were convened with Christian blessings, references, or prayers
25. you have ever been asked or commanded to sing or to recite, in public, material that contains Christian references, such as the Pledge of Allegiance or “America, the Beautiful”

This exercise, like the other stand-ups, ends with students breaking into dyads to discuss how they felt during the exercise. A group discussion follows.

A good starting point for such a discussion, and for conducting the above exercise, is to assure students that their and their families’ individual religious commitments are not at issue. Christianity itself is not at issue. Professing Christians have been part of almost every social justice movement in the United States and elsewhere in the hemisphere, from the abolition of slavery to antipoverty work to civil disobedience against war to liberation theology across the Americas. As noted above, some churches have served as sources of family and community protection against and healing from oppression. To make being a Christian as such seem wrong or misguided only plays into popular stereotypes about Christian believers, alienating observant youth and giving credence to their potential self-righteous feelings of being persecuted while enabling everyone else to ignore the presence of hegemony in their lives.

What is at issue, rather, is the seventeen-hundred-year history of Christian institutional dominance in European and US internal governance and external, exploitive colonizing “missions,” as well as the oppressive effects of this history that persist in our society. The history is difficult to tell, partly because it is hidden by Christian hegemony itself, and partly because the history is ridden with horrible events committed in the name of or under the auspices of Christianity, including “witch” burnings; inquisitions; pogroms; justifications of slavery; Christian boarding-school kidnappings of Native American youth; clergy sexual abuse; the killing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; the bombing of mosques and temples; the murder of reproductive health physicians; and many other acts. Like the histories of the real effects of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and adultism, the depths and reaches of these brutalities extend far outside the classroom and what students can absorb and understand in the classroom space.

The persisting effects of that history, in turn, can be hard to define, because they are so deeply layered in the institutions that shape our lives now. To take other examples besides educational practices: In our mainstream Western medical/healthcare systems, the concepts of dirt and cleanliness, hygiene, germs, infection, illness, disease, quarantine, healing, cure, twelve-step programming, and sexual and reproductive health reflect Christian ideas and values. Our legal systems are built upon Christian concepts of sin and innocence, aberration, error, confession, guilt, judgment, punishment, penitence, obedience, rehabilitation, and redemption. Our workdays and civic lives are ordered by the Christian-based structure of the work week, the cultural meanings of T.G.I.F., Saturday night and Sunday morning, and the year-round schedule of holidays: Halloween, Christmas and “Christmas bonuses,” Good Friday, and Easter. From within such frameworks, it is hard to see what alternative ways to deal with such social systems as health and law would look like.

What we can do is build awareness of Christian hegemony among our students. To begin with, students should be enabled to recognize the contemporary effects of Christian hegemony on those who are not from Christian households. Elements of those effects can be seen in the stand-up, in the invisibility of non-Christian religious holidays, and general culture-wide unawareness about and often demonization of some religious practices (for example, Islamic) and the romanticization of others (for example, Native American).

On the surface, invisibility may mean that if you are from a household with a spiritual affiliation other than Christian, your holidays and practices, such as dietary concerns, will not be recognized, honored, or allowed for at school or in the workplace. Your normative cultural beliefs about such topics as physical contact, dress, and gender and family relationships may be ignored or ridiculed. Your peers can ostracize you. If you are Native American, your sacred sites, including cemeteries, can be desecrated or archaeologically plundered, your rituals legally prohibited, your ritual objects sold as tourist objects, and your entire culture appropriated or turned into degrading symbols and mascots. If you are Jewish, your religious background can be lumped together with, and thereby absorbed into, Christianity under the label “Judeo-Christian.” If you or your family is openly atheist, you can be targeted for condemnation, proselytization, or both. If your family or you are Muslim, you can be called a terrorist, be treated as dangerous, and have your loyalty to this country questioned.

But more deeply, invisibility can mean a profound assumption about the normality of Christianity and the abnormality of everything else: that your or your family’s faith or practice — or refusal to follow any faith or practice — can become caricatured or stereotyped, which can mushroom into discrimination and violence. These distortions can show up, for example, in persecution of Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, or other religious minorities, from epithets and name calling at school to violent attacks on religious centers and subjection to airport searches, profiling, and surveillance in a national setting — in other words, a full-scale climate of fear and hatred of people perceived to be not Christian. Many of your non- Christian students will have family members (or they themselves may be) experiencing such persecution, and most will know stories of such persecution occurring within the last several decades in their communities.

What are the effects of hegemony on students from households that are actively or tacitly Christian? At the top of the list are the presumptions of Christian-based value systems passed on to Christian children. Like those of other world religions, Christian practices have as one function the reproduction of such systems generation by generation. Children learn early on the do’s and don’ts of human behavior — what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad, as structured by Christian beliefs — well before developing capacities to understand, to judge, to challenge, or to freely subscribe to the deeper imports of these lessons. Even such a binary framework reflects a Christian worldview.

Our survival as human beings depends upon our healthy relationships with each other, and Christian practice is one form of such learning. But one major institutional form Christian practice has taken historically is a demarcation between those who are Christian and those who are not. This demarcation implies a separation between those who know what is good and bad and those who don’t; those who are “clean” and those who are “dirty”; and, by further implication, those who are good or capable of being good and those who are ignorant of good or actively evil. This inculcation can generate fear and hatred of others and the fostering of the stereotypes that appear throughout the Christian era from “ignorant savages” and “Godless sinners” to Jewish financiers and Islamic terrorists. A final aspect of hegemony Christians may internalize is the confusing feeling that one is good and bad, divided within oneself — subject to feelings of self-righteousness and innocence juxtaposed with self-doubt, self-hate, and guilt. Commonly, this split happens around the body, which is considered unruly and in need of discipline or punishment, while one’s thoughts and intentions are considered virtuous and “good.” A Christian’s feelings of innocence can make it possible to stay unaware of the benefits that accrue to them as an active or secularized Christian in the United States; treat any criticism of themselves as persecution; and justify remaining on guard against, uninformed about, afraid of, and hostile to those defined as other than Christian. Pervading all this, guilt can make one feel helpless about addressing any of the above.

What can be done to offset effects of Christian hegemony that might be affecting students? The following are some bottom lines:

1. Social justice work with young people is always about fostering community. This effort always means building alliances across lines of race, gender, ability, and other differences to bring everyone into the room. In such a community, people of all religions and those eschewing religion are recognized and welcomed. At least one intent of the First Amendment of the US Constitution was to separate matters of church from matters of state, freeing all churches from the state persecutions that many immigrants from Europe experienced. It is in the spirit of that intention that full recognition from the community and the separation from government-based and hegemony-based mistreatment be extended to institutions beside churches, including other religions, indigenous practices, and the rights of those outside religious practices — an inclusive community. In the classroom this means, minimally, that students are not to be joked about, faulted, or ignored for religious practice or nonpractice outside Christianity but rather acknowledged and respected. To the extent that religion is a topic of discussion, you (and your students) can research and call upon liberation practices within Christianity, within other religious traditions, within practices of agnosticism and atheism, and within democracy itself to build this inclusive community.

2. Much of the educational process, especially as encoded in the hidden curriculum, is about teaching students how to behave “properly”: decorum. The decorum invariably reflects mainstream conceptions of “appropriate” behavior or comportment; invariably, this task places school authorities, including you, in the position of enforcing this decorum. And students are judged according to this decorum — indeed, they may stake out positions in relation to it, from model student to rebel/outsider. The judgment amounts to an evaluation of student character. So to the extent that the decorum is modeled on Christian conceptions of right and wrong, students’ characters are being evaluated according to their conformity to Christian standards. And if a Christian worldview is hegemonic, deeply imbedded in our social structures, it can be very difficult to understand what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, outside the automatic reference to such standards. This difficulty can play out in how people judge other groups of people: to divide female students, for example, into good girls and sluts; or to label non- Christian students as different, exotic, or weird. By mid-adolescence, young people have certainly internalized such standards, using them to brand and to separate from each other.

To call such standards into question is not to forgo having standards. It is important to continually invite students to think about moral action. It is crucial to be clear with students (and with other teachers and school authorities) that personal integrity and moral action are not dependent upon quality of religious affiliation or practice, nor adherence to one particular moral code. It is always appropriate to bring into discussion how students treat each other and how adults treat them. It is always appropriate to act as allies against mistreatment. Examples of these forms of “decorum” can be found in social justice movements within and outside all religions and spiritual practices.

3. A more difficult matter to address in the educational process has to do with what actually counts as “knowledge” or “truth” in our curricula, particularly in the sciences. The practices of Western science are grounded in academic systems set up in the Christian abbeys and schools of medieval Europe and, as a result, focus on determining what is true. The notion is that a universal truth exists, and those in authority, whether priests or scientists, have found and possess it. Little room for complexity, nuance, and multiple perspectives exists within this framework. Most of our standards of evaluation, most prominently the vast multilayer system of testing of students to determine how much of this truth they know, rely on the assumption that knowledge is discrete, noncontradictory, and knowable. In this view, students must learn the right answers and put their different perspectives, understandings, and creativity aside to succeed in the educational system.

Generally, the story of how the “truth” has been decided at different times — who decides and in whose interest those decisions have been made (by historians, physical and social scientists, and political leaders) — is not taught. This omission thwarts students’ participation as active learners in the educational process, undermining their ability to understand movements for social justice. One way to undermine the impact of Christian hegemony within the classroom is to teach students how to analyze competing truth claims, how to assess the interests of the groups that decide what counts as truth, and how to increase or “complexify” their abilities to hold different perspectives.

4. With the participation of your students, inventory your school rules, protocols, ceremonies, newsletters, bulletin boards, sports games, theater productions, and, of course, holidays to determine how Christian hegemony might show up day to day at school. Enlist students’ help in identifying the issues and promoting forums in which to bring other traditions of belief — and nonbelief — into school life. In doing this, you are performing one of the basic functions of all spiritual practices — to acknowledge our dependence upon and need for each other and for meaningful connection to the natural and social world.

Islamophobia is a combination of religious, racial, and cultural oppression targeting the presence, dress, behavior, job and educational opportunities, and institutions of anyone perceived to be Muslim, Arab, or generally Middle-Eastern. As a result of long-standing patterns of Islamophobia, which have increased dramatically since the attack on the World Trade Center, Muslims and Islamic organizations are under attack on many fronts. Muslims are racially profiled in airports and in urban settings, routinely discriminated against in job and housing situations, and portrayed as dangerous fanatics in the popular media, particularly in movies and video games. Islamic organizations are under intense surveillance by the government, are denied access to some of the funding and other opportunities that Christian and Jewish groups have access to, have their charitable activities challenged, are routinely denied building permits, and have their mosques and cultural centers attacked.

What popular culture in the U.S. doesn’t reflect is that most Muslims are neither Arab nor Middle Eastern. Of the over 1.57 billion Muslims in the world (about 23 percent of the world’s population), the majority live in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sudan, China, Nigeria, Kenya, India, and the Philippines [2]. Despite the dramatic religious and cultural variety of the Muslim world, Islam is often portrayed in the U.S. as a monolithic, militaristic religion, unchanged since the seventh century, hostile to Christianity, and inimical to all things modern and Western. Muslims are often assumed to be mindless adherents, devoid of any individuality–fanatical followers of extremist clerics such as Osama Bin Laden.

Muslims have been treated as the prototypical enemy of western Christendom since the first crusade was announced by the Pope in 1095. The crusade was conceived as an expedition to unite the fighting rulers and people of Southern Europe under a new common identity as Christian. In his proclamation, the Pope denounced Islam as an abomination and enemy of God and declared that every Christian had a moral obligation to march to the Holy Land and claim it from the Moors. Over the following centuries [3] Christian secular and religious leaders forged a common European identity whose defining characteristic was the threat of Islam.

During the 15th century, in the first process of racial (as opposed to ethnic) cleansing, Spanish rulers began persecuting the Moors as well as Jews in their attempt to create a racially and religiously pure country, expelling the Moors entirely from Spain in 1609. The Spanish Inquisition was established to hunt down conversos (Moors and Jews who were suspected of falsely converting to Christianity) lest they pollute the blood of a new national and eventually European identity. During this period, the religious identity “Christian” began to take on a racial component, signifying white Christian, and the word “European” began to be equated with both white and Christian [4].

Emerging nation-states such as Spain claimed legitimacy from a unity of faith and a common pseudo-scientific racial heritage encapsulated in the Spanish phrases sangre puro and limpieza de sangre [5]. During this period of nation building and emerging national identities, the word “moor” was used as both a religious and a racial signifier and a general term to describe the Other—the perennial enemy of Christendom anywhere in the world who, by rejecting Christianity, “…remains outside the Western economic, cultural, and political consensus” [6].

In contrast, there have been periods in U.S. political history when Islam was not treated as an enemy of Christendom and relations between the U.S. and Muslim nations were friendly. Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson respected and had generally positive things to say about the religion. In 1777, Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize the new United States government, with Tunisia following suit the next year. Even in the period of the Barbary War against pirates off the coast of North Africa, Islam was referred to with respect and a political alternative to war was sought to the conflict. At the same time, however, stereotypes about Muslims as infidels were promulgated by Christian priests and ministers and expressed in popular culture, often through the negative portrayal of Native Americans as Moors [7].

During the post WW II period, immigration from Muslim countries to the United States increased. At the same time, the African-American Muslim community continued to grow, now about one-quarter of the Muslim population in the U.S. The rest of the Muslim population is primarily first or second generation immigrants from South Asia (India and Pakistan) various West Asian countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran, and Indonesia, Bosnia, Kenya, Somalia, and Malaysia. Estimates of the total population in the U.S. range widely but there are at least 4-5 million Muslim Americans. As a Pew Research Survey title suggests, most Muslims in the U.S. are well-educated and middle class. The report concludes that Muslim Americans are “…largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world” [8].

The reality of Muslim life and belief in this country, however, has had little impact on popular opinion compared to the continued effect of centuries-old stereotypes of Islam and Islamic countries that continue to be put forward by political, religious, and cultural leaders to justify interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries and surveillance and curtailment of the rights of Muslim Americans.

The target of present day Islamophobia is Muslims, not as they are, but as they have been demonized for centuries in the western imagination. They are the dark, menacing, non-Christian Other, intent on destroying western civilization. And this danger becomes the justification for public policy that targets individual Muslims and Islamic organizations for marginalization, discrimination, harassment, hate crimes, and continual vilification.

Recent controversies over the siting of Mosques and Islamic cultural centers and the continued widespread belief that President Obama is Muslim are indicative of this deep-seated Islamophobia and racism.

While anti-mosque proponents claim that their concern is the location of an Islamic cultural center so close to ground zero, in fact, there are protests against the building of mosques in such diverse places as Murfreesboro, TN, Sheboygan, MI, and Temecula, CA, as well as in Brooklyn and Staten Island, NY. In Columbia, TN, a mosque has been burned down and in Cedar Rapids, Jacksonville, Detroit, and Seattle mosques have been smeared with animal feces, defaced with graffiti, vandalized, attacked with pipe bombs, and set afire by arsonists [9]. Just the day before the attack on Ahmed Sharif, a mosque in Madera, CA was attacked for the third time within a week [10]. In Columbia, TN, in a powerful act of solidarity with the Muslim community, the local pastor of the Presbyterian Church gave the Muslim community the keys to the church and said that they could use it as their house of worship.

The protest against the Park51 Islamic cultural center proposed for a site 2 blocks from the location of the 9/11 bombings is indicative of Islamophobia. Protesters assume that because Al Qaeda is a Muslim organization all Muslims are terrorists, there were no Muslims who died in the 9/11 attacks or who played roles in the rescue of people caught in the buildings, and an old Burlington Coat Store is suddenly “hallowed ground.” They also assume that Muslims should not enjoy the same religious freedom as Christians or Jews, even while many U.S. Muslims are risking their lives fighting as U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world.

The continuing controversy over whether President Obama is a Muslim is another example of racism and Islamophobia. Underlying the disbelief that Obama is a Christian is an assumption that African Americans cannot be true Christians and will always be outsiders. This disbelief is based on an assumption that Muslims and people of color are dangerous, and neither can be the equal of law-abiding, white, Christian Americans.

These issues are obviously stirred up by conservative political leaders and mainstream, corporate media. But they tap into widespread underlying beliefs that must be taken seriously. In a recent CNN poll, 68 percent of those polled said that they opposed the building of a proposed Islamic cultural center two blocks from where the World Trade Center had stood [11]. At the same time, a Pew poll showed that 18 percent of the population believes Obama is a Muslim, only 34 percent believe he is a Christian, 43 percent claim not to know his religion (even after all the furor over the statements of his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright two years earlier) [12]. A more general USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted in July 2006 found that thirty-nine percent of respondents said they felt at least some prejudice against Muslims. The same percentage favored requiring Muslims, including U.S. citizens, to carry a special ID “as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in the United States.” About one-third said U.S. Muslims were sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and over one-fifth said they wouldn’t want Muslims as neighbors [13]. Those numbers would likely be much higher today as conservative leaders tap into latent anti-Muslim sentiment.

Islamophobia justifies systemic and institutionalized discrimination and violence against Muslims in the United States and by the U.S. throughout the world. Just as with racial profiling and discrimination directed against other groups, Islamophobia threatens our collective safety when resources are selectively and inappropriately directed at specific communities. It threatens our civil and religious liberties when one group is singled out as not entitled to constitutionally guaranteed rights. It also curtails our freedom when surveillance and harassment are legally sanctioned under the justification that the danger of some group is so great that we must limit our civil rights in order to prevent attack. When we speak out and stand strong as allies to the Muslim community we challenge violence and injustice, increase our safety and freedom, and challenge age-old Christian stereotypes and myths. We also uphold our legal rights to freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom from discrimination and attack.

The attack on Ahmed Sharif, the Park51 protests and the physical destruction of mosques, and the questioning of President Obama’s religious faith are just indicators of the larger pattern of anti-Muslim oppression that plagues our society and undermines our values. Now is the time to work with Muslims to challenge Islamophobia.

[1] “Slashed Muslim taxi driver to visit NYC mayor” by Tom Hays. Associated Press, August 25, 2010. Available at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5OdR6FH4zsmEVanHGR0y-jbOzngD9HR7RJO0.

[2] “Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population.” Pew Research Center, October 7, 2009. Available at http://pewforum.org/Mapping-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx.

[3] There were crusades waged by Christians against Moors, Slavs, dissident Christian groups such as the Cathars, and even against individual secular Christian leaders over a period of 600 years.

[4] As part of this whitening process western Christianity transformed God and Jesus into light-skinned Europeans.

[5] The limpieza de sangre statute was passed in 1449.

[6] Majid, Anouar. We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press p. 62.

[7] Majid, p. 71.

[8] “American Muslims: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.” Pew Research Center May 22, 2007. Available at http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf. Viewed on 8-10-10.

[9] For details and pictures see “Coast-to-coast Anti-Islam Movement results in Protests, Attacks on Mosques” Responsible for Equality and Liberty (R.E.A.L.) organization, July 22, 2010. Available at http://www.realcourage.org/2010/07/coast-to-coast/.

[10] “Mosque Attack in California refers to Ground Zero” by Joseph Picard, International Business Times August 26, 2010. Available at http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/46449/20100826/mosque-islam-hate.htm.

[11] CNN Opinion Research Poll, August 6-10, 2010. Available at http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/08/11/rel11a1a.pdf.

[12] “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim: Religion, Politics, and the President,” The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, August 19, 2010. Available at http://people-press.org/report/645/

[13] “U.S. Muslims Under a Cloud” by Marilyn Elias, USA Today August 10, 2006. Available at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-09-muslim-american-cover_x.htm.

There are many forces that influence U.S. foreign policy regarding Israel/Palestine such as the U.S. military, the U.S. arms industry, multinational oil companies and the U.S. strategy to try to control access to oil, the U.S. government’s desire for a proxy military force to carry out U.S. foreign policy goals in the area, and the often-noted Jewish pro-Israel lobby. Although generally acknowledged to be influential, the Jewish lobby’s power is likely to be seriously overestimated, especially when compared to the powerful pro-Israel Christian Zionist movement.

Christian Zionism is the broad, organized movement of Christians for the return of Jews to their “promised land,” and Jewish sovereignty over the historical area encompassing present-day Israel and, depending on the version, all of Jerusalem, Palestine, Syria, and parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.

Some Christian Zionists believe that Jews must return to Israel before the End Times can begin (the End Times consist of all the apocalyptic events that will precede the coming of the Millennium as described in Revelation). Christian Zionist organizations and leadership both represent and influence the approximately 70 million evangelicals in the U.S., most of whom are passionately committed to supporting the state of Israel no matter what its policies and have great antipathy towards Muslims and Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular. In the rhetoric of Christian Zionists, Palestinians have no claim to the land, have no legitimate grievances, and should simply be driven from the area and dispersed to other Arab countries. With God on Our Side does a very effective job of pointing out how this would destroy the substantial Palestinian Christian communities that remain in the area.

Millions of other Christians don’t necessarily believe in an End Times scenario but do believe that God gave the Jewish people a deed to the land and He doesn’t change his mind. They also believe that God said “I will bless those who bless you and him who curses you I will curse.” (Genesis 12:3) They fear what might happen to our country if we don’t bless Israel. (According to biblical scholars the word “Israel” referred to the Jewish people, not to the land that is currently the political state of Israel.) There is also a more liberal or humanitarian branch of Christian Zionism that believes that Jews have been oppressed by Christians for a long time and that Christians have a god-given mandate—a debt and obligation–to protect Jews from further attack and to atone for Christian maltreatment by uncritically supporting the state of Israel.

Historically, the belief by Christians that Jews must be gathered to the “Holy Land” dates back to 1585 when Rev. Thomas Brightman advocated Jewish restoration in Palestine. One of his students wrote a treatise in 1621 that popularized this idea [2]. By the 17th century, the conversion of the Jews was a major Christian concern, with many theologians predicting that this conversion and subsequent restoration was imminent [3]. In addition to William Blake, restoration was promoted by Napoleon Bonaparte, John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Byron, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Herman Melville, Samuel Coleridge, John Milton, George Elliot, Robert Browning, and many others.

The Christian Zionist movement was well established in England and the United States by the mid-nineteenth century. When the small Jewish Zionist movement emerged in Europe at the end of the century, it did not have the clout and connections to swing significant support for a Jewish homeland. However, with Christian Zionist help in gaining access to the corridors of British imperial power and Christian Zionists in top government positions, the idea of a Jewish homeland gained serious credibility. It also aligned with key British political goals in the Middle East at a time when the Ottoman Empire was collapsing. In 1917, Christian Zionist Lord Balfour was able to achieve a British Declaration to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine [4].

The influence of Christian Zionism is evident today in widespread uncritical Christian support for Israel. U.S. foreign policy specialist Walter Russell Mead has written that this support “…is one of the most potent political forces in U.S. foreign policy…The American public has few foreign policy preferences that are this marked, this deep, this enduring—and this much at odds with public opinion in other countries.”[5] A July 2006 poll by the Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life found that 42 percent of all people in the U.S. believe “Israel was given to the Jewish people by God” and that 35 percent believe that Israel is “part of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy about the Second Coming of Jesus.” A slightly later poll by Zogby International found that 31 percent of people in the U.S. believe or strongly believe that Israel must have all the “promised land,” including Jerusalem, to prepare for the Second Coming [6]. Most of these people support Jewish settlement in the West Bank, oppose an independent Palestinian state, and many are active with their donations [7] and their votes [8] to promote their views.

Many of the powerful Christian conservatives in the U.S. have been Zionist, including Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell [9], Benny Hinn, Ralph Reed, Billy Graham, and Gary Bauer. Their over two hundred advocacy groups include the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem [10], Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, Christian Coalition, Southern Baptist Convention, Bridges for Peace, Jerusalem Friendship Fund, Jerusalem Prayer Team, Stand with Israel [11], Christian Broadcasting Network [12], International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Family Research Council, Council for National Policy, and Christians for Israel/USA [13]. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews alone, with a donor base of 500,000, raised around $250 million for Israel between 1995 and 2005 [14]. This money goes to a wide variety of projects including bringing 250,000 Russian and Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Christian Friends of Israeli Communities works with U.S. churches to “adopt” Jewish settlements in the West Bank [15]. They now fund programs in over a third of the Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories [16]. Many of these groups run “Holy Land” tours bringing hundreds of thousands of Christian tourists to Israel.

In other words, Christian Zionists have had a major impact on British and U.S. foreign policy in Israel/Palestine and the surrounding area. They originated the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and promoted the idea with the English and U.S. government. They supported and encouraged Jewish Zionists, introduced them to key political leaders and built up broad public support for a Jewish homeland in both countries. Key British Zionists crafted and lobbied for the Balfour Declaration and U.S. Zionists lobbied for U.S. recognition of Israel in 1948 [17]. They also have worked hard to increase U.S. military and economic support for the state of Israel while simultaneously creating a broad-based culture of uncritical support of Israeli policies and expansionism.

More recently Christian Zionists in the U.S. have undermined peace talks by supporting Israel’s “right” to all of the West Bank and Gaza. Christian Zionists have also been very successful at maintaining on-going, large-scale public support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine through sermons, tours, exhibits, amusement parks, books, and radio and TV broadcasts.

Perhaps most disturbing, Christian Zionists have popularized Islamophobia and anti-Arab oppression through the media (such as the “Left Behind” books) and through their lobbying efforts. They have also supported belligerent U.S. foreign policy options directed towards Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria because of these countries’ “threats” to Israel.

Focusing mainly on the Jewish lobby, the mainstream media has provided little coverage of the role of Christian Zionists in undermining peace efforts in Israel/Palestine. This film, With God on Our Side, is a useful resource for breaking that silence by highlighting the voices of Palestinian Christians. Although it does not challenge Christian dominance and claims that Christians can provide solutions to the conflict, it can help Christians reexamine their uncritical support for aggression, expansion, and inflexibility by the Israeli government based on virtually unlimited political and military support from the United States. Appealing to ideals of Christian brotherhood and speaking from their unique position in the politics of the area, the film clearly demonstrates that Palestinian Christians have much of importance to add to the discussion within the Christian community about how Christians can best support efforts for peace in Israel/Palestine.

[1] With God on Our Side, dir. Porter Speakman Jr., Rooftop Productions, 2010. http://www.withgodonourside.com/index.html

[2] The World’s Great Restauration [sic] or Calling of the Jews and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ. Pieterse, Jan P. Nederveen. “The History of a Metaphor: Christian Zionism and the Politics of Apocalypse.” Christianity and Hegemony: Religion and Politics on the Frontiers of Social Change. Ed. Jan Dederveen Pieterse. New York: Berg Publishers, 1992. 199.

[3] Popkin, R.H. “Some Aspects of Jewish-Christian Theological Interchanges in Holland and England, 1640-1700.” Pieterse 202.

[4] All this despite the fact that at the eve of World War I only about one in a hundred Jews in the world had signaled their active support for Zionism. Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. London: Phoenix Press, 2000. 294.

[5] Mead, Walter Russell, “The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State.” Foreign Affairs July/August 2008. Available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64446/walter-russell-mead/the-new-israel-and-the-old.

[6] Both polls are cited in Allies in Armageddon (Victoria Clark, Yale University Press, 2007, p.5).

[7] Evangelical contributions to Israel are estimated to be more than $1 billion a year. Victor, Barbara. The Last Crusade: Religion and the Politics of Misdirection. London: Constable, 2005. 187.

[8] The Christian Israel Political Action Committee (CIPAC) has 7 million people who are either members of this lobbying group or who contribute financially. Victor, Barbara. The Last Crusade: Religion and the Politics of Misdirection. London: Constable, 2005. 210.

[9] Falwell said in 1981: “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.”

[10] The ICEJ was founded in 1980 as an international, non-denominational symbol of Christian Zionist support for Israel’s incorporation of all of Jerusalem when it declared the city its capital but received no international recognition of its land grab.

[11] Stand for Israel, a collaborative creation of Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian coalition, conducts an annual U.S. wide day of prayer for Israel which connects with 100,000 churches. Clark, 233.

[12] The Christian Broadcasting Network controls nearly 90% of religious radio and television in the U.S. and is dominated by Christian Zionists. Byler, J. Daryl, “Disturbing the Peace: Christian Zionism Shapes U.S. Policy.” Peace Office Newsletter, Mennonite Central Committee, Vol. 35 #3 (July-Sept. 2005): 12. The CBN broadcasts in 180 countries in 71 languages. (Clark, 158.)

[13] Salaita, Steven. Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where it Comes from and What it Means for Politics Today. London: Pluto Press, 2006. 170.

[14] Broadway, Bill, “The Evangelical-Israeli Connection,” Washington Post 27 March 2004, Sec. B. (Quoted in Salaita, 181). See also Zev Chafets, “The Rabbi Who Loved Evangelicals (and Vice Versa)”, New York Times 24 July 2005.

[15] Kirsch, Jonathan. A History of the End of the World, HarperOne, 237.

[16] Broadway, Bill, “The Evangelical-Israeli Connection,” Washington Post, 27 March 2004, Sec. B. (Quoted in Salaita, 181).

[17] A Gallup poll in June 1948, a month after Truman recognized Israel, showed that almost three times as many Americans “sympathized with the Jews” as “sympathized with the Arabs.” Cited in Walter Russell Mead, “The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentiles Americans Back the Jewish State,” Foreign Affairs Vol 87 #4, July-Aug. 2008.

The European conquest of Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Islands and much of Asia led to the renaming of many landmarks, natural features, and population sites in the European languages of the conquerors.

Often Christian colonizers would build cities on top of indigenous villages and, in particular, they would build churches on indigenous spiritual sites, including cemeteries. This practice continues today. There are recently completed or currently under construction shopping malls, convention centers, sports stadiums and other projects built on recognized Native American grave sites across the United States.

The secularization and normalization of Christian influence may lead us to not even notice the religious roots of the geographic names we use. We may visit St. Petersburg, Russia[1]; Sao Paulo, Brazil; San Jose or San Isidro, Costa Rica; Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Christchurch, New Zealand; Christmas Island in the South Pacific, St. Louis, Senegal; Port St. John’s, South Africa, Holy Island in England, Santo Domingo, San Salvador, Argentina, Devil’s Island in the Caribbean, Santiago, Chile[2], San Fernando, Philippines, the St. Lawrence river, St. John’s Newfoundland, San Juan, Puerto Rico, or the country of El Salvador without recognizing these names as signs of Christian colonization.

There are many cities and other geographic sites in the United States which bear Christian place names such as

Bethlehem

Cincinnati

Dolores, CO[3]

Christian County, MO

Corpus Christi

Holy Cross Mountain

Ignacio Valley

Las Cruces

Lebanon

Los Angeles[4]

Mission Viejo

New Haven

Philadelphia—city of brotherly love

Providence, RI

Sacramento[5]

San Antonio

San Bernardino[6]

San Diego[7]

San Francisco[8]

San Jose

Sangre de Christo mountains

Santa Ana

Santa Barbara

Santa Clara

Santa Cruz

Santa Fe

Santa Maria

Santa Monica[9]

Santa Ynez

Sault Sainte Marie[10]

St. Augustine

St. Cloud[11]

St. Paul

St. Petersburg

Over one thousand cities in the U.S. have Christian biblically derived names including such cities as Salem (OR, VA, MO, NH), Bethlehem, PA, Shiloh, St. Olaf, MN, Mount Olive, NC, Zion, IL, Pella, IA, Palestine, TX. Antioch, CA, Carmel, CA, Progress, (IN, OR, PN, FL), and New Hope (TX, PA, HA, MN). And, of course, there are many other places named after the Devil such as Mt. Diablo and Devils Postpile National Monument, or with the words “Angel” or “Paradise” in them such as the city of Angel’s Camp, (CA) or Paradise Valley.[12]

Christian names show up in many other areas of our lives. To give just one example, recently I was in Costa Rica taking a hiking tour of a jungle river. We spotted a lizard which was running quickly across the water from rock to rock. Our tour guide promptly told us that we had just seen a Jesus Lizard—so named because it appeared to walk on the water.

Human built parts of the environment such as bridges, canals, and tunnels can also reflect Christian language:

Bridges

Golden Gate Bridge, CA[13]

St. Georges Bridge, DE,

Dolores River Bridge, CO

St. George Island Bridge,  FL

St. Johns River Veterans Memorial Bridge, FL

St. Claude Ave. Bridge, LA

St. Johns Bridge, OR

Huguenot Memorial Bridge, VA[14]

Canals and Tunnels

St. Clair Flats Canal, MI

Devil’s Slide Tunnel, CA

San Fernando Tunnel, CA

Devil’s courthouse Tunnel, NC

Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel, UT

For more on the impact of Christian language and vocabulary see the booklet “The Language of Dominant Christianity” by Paul Kivel available at www.christianhegemony.org.

[2] Just in Central and South America alone there are more than 150 towns named Santiago after the apostle James. Salisbury, Blood. P. 73. St. James is the patron saint of Spain and is often call Santiago Matamoros (James the Moor killer) because his spirit was believed to have aided the Christians in defeating the Moors in battle.

[3] Original name was Rio de Nuestra Senora de las Dolores” or the River of Our Lady of Sorrows

[4] Originally named El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula

[5] Named after the Eucharist sacrament-Spanish for “the Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ”

[6] Bernardino was a virulently anti-Jewish and anti-gay Italian priest in the late 14^th and early 15^th centuries.

[7] St. James, equivalent to Santiago

[8] Named for Francis of Assisi

[9] Named for Saint Monica of Hippo

[10] Old French for “falls of St. Mary’s” (Sault de Sainte Marie)

[11] named after the city of Saint-Cloud, France, which was named for the 6th-century French monk Clodoald

[12] In a sad irony, Angel Island was the name of the detention camp in the San Francisco Bay Area where immigrants from Asia were held, sometimes for years, before decisions were made to either admit them to return them to their countries of origin.

[13] For both Jews and Christians the Golden Gate is a reference to the oldest of the current gates in Jerusalem’s old city walls

[14] In honor of the French Christian Huguenot settlers who came to the area in the 18th century

There is nothing inherently wrong with religiously affiliated institutions providing medical services (although a comprehensive national health care plan would eliminate most of the need for those services). Problems arise, however, when those institutions dictate the terms and conditions of medical service based on religious beliefs.

According to a recent report there are 624 Catholic hospitals, 373 other Catholic health-care institutions including 11 of the 40 largest in the country, and hundreds of nursing homes. Two million people are enrolled in the 48 Catholic managed-care plans. In many states, 30 to 40 percent of people who need emergency care visit a Catholic hospital. In 2008, more than 90 million patients were treated at Catholic health-care facilities in the U.S. Many of these hospitals do not offer birth control, sterilizations, abortions, infertility services, comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention information (such as “safer sex” counseling about use of condoms) and some limit patients’ end-of-life choices.

The impact of the Catholic Church is not limited to its control of health care institutions. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been very active in the current debates over health care in Congress. Representing the religious leaders of the 195-plus Catholic dioceses in the U.S., with an annual budget of close to $150 million dollars and a staff of more than 300, the Conference is not a small player in the national arena. Its staff had direct talks with key political leaders such as President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and put intense pressure on many congressional members to support the anti-abortion Stupak/Pitts* amendment to the health care bill. They threatened to sabotage the entire bill if the amendment was not passed, and asked priests across the country to urge Catholics to lobby their representatives. Some even distributed flyers in church to that effect. Their efforts had an impact: they were able to hold the bill hostage so that restrictive anti-choice language was incorporated into the final Senate health care bill. We will soon know how effective their efforts have been in determining the final outcome in Congress.

Christian hegemony operates through powerful Christian organizations, influential leaders, and popular support. In the case of the Stupak/Pitts amendment, polls showed that most Catholics did not think the church should use the issue of abortion to undermine the possibility of a national health care bill. Large numbers disagree with the Bishops and support health-insurance coverage for abortions. Even without popular support the power of organized Christian leadership is clear.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not the only Christian organization lobbying for anti-abortion clauses in the health care debate, only the most visible. Abortion is not the only health care issue influenced by powerful Christian organizations and their leaders. But this issue and this organization are good examples of how Christian dominance influences our basic choices about a range of health care issues from the availability of contraception and abortions to end of life choices—from birth to death.

*Representative Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) and Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pennsylvania) are both members of another powerful Christian organization called The Family.

The Phoenix Affirmations, listed below, were put together by Eric Elnes and other devout Christians in Phoenix, AZ (the phoenix was also an early Christian symbol).[1] Recommending frequent prayer and a thoughtful understanding of the scriptures, they focus on Jesus’ naming of the two greatest commandments –To love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The “Phoenix Affirmations:”

1. Being sincerely Christian without denying the legitimacy of other religions.
2. Listening for God’s Word, which comes through praying, studying the Bible, and attending to God’s activity in the world.
3. Celebrating the sanctity of God’s Creation, including Nature, the sacred and the secular, the Christian and non-Christian, etc.
4. Worshipping in a way that is sincere, artful, and biblical.
5. Treating all people as creations made in God’s image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, nationality, religion, physical or mental ability, etc., just as Jesus did.
6. Standing up for the poor, for the marginalized, for the oppressed, seeking justice and peace for all.
7. Preserving religious freedom and maintaining the separation of church and state.
8. Humbly acknowledging our own shortcomings while sincerely trying to see and bring out the best in others, even if they consider us their enemy.
9. Basing our lives on the faith that Christ restores all things and that all of us are loved beyond our wildest dreams.
10. Recognizing the sanctity of both our minds and our hearts and that both science and faith, doubt and belief, serve the pursuit for truth.
11. Realizing the benefits of prayer, worship, recreation, and healthiness in addition to work.
12. Acting on the faith that we born with a purpose, a vocation that serves to strengthen God’s Kingdom and extend God’s love.

There are many networks of progressive Christians of all denominations coming together through books, websites, discussion groups, and social justice action projects to challenge Christian dominance and foundational beliefs in a the cosmic battle between good and evil, manifest destiny, individualism, the apocalypse, and the One Truth. These Christians are allies in the struggle to build loving, healthy, and just communities.

For More Information

The Center for Progressive Christianity

ProgressiveChristianity.net – International network of progressive Christian networks

Institute for Progressive Christianity

Progressive Christian Alliance

Progressive Christian Witness – Articles, websites, blogs with a social justice focus.

Progressive Spirituality Network

Network of Spiritual Progressives http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/.

One of the longest-standing systems of institutionalized power in the United States is the dominant western form of Christianity that came to power when the Romans made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Christian hegemony—the everyday, pervasive, deep-seated, and institutionalized dominance of Christian institutions, Christian leaders, and Christians as a group—has profoundly shaped our lives. Some of that influence is very visible in our laws, customs, beliefs, and practices. Other parts of that influence have become nearly invisible, secularized, “common-sense” forms of knowing and being in the world. One way to identify both levels is to examine our language and the ways it represents, reflects, and reproduces Christian dominance.

When presented with Antonio de Nebrija’s Spanish Gramatica, the first-ever grammar of any modern European language in 1492, Queen Isabella reportedly asked the scholar, “What is it for?” Nebrija reportedly answered, “Language is the perfect instrument of empire.”[1]

The ruling elites of Christendom well knew the truth of Nebrija’s statement. From the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, literacy was unavailable to the general population and only some Christian clergy could read and write. Mass was said in Latin which non-formally educated people could not understand. Modern European languages developed in a Christian dominated culture deeply influenced by Christian values. Many words which had Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Egyptian, or indigenous European roots were altered by Christian meanings.

Dominant western Christianity is based on a moral binary understanding of the cosmos. There is perceived to be a battle between that which is connected to God and good, and that which is connected to the Devil and therefore evil—everything lines up on one side or another. The original phrase in the New Testament is in Matthew 12:30, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” This phrase was restated several times by former president George W. Bush and is a prevalent belief in our society. In this view there is no in-between, ambiguity, or compromise because the danger is too great. This moral “clarity” has become part of our everyday language.

The dominant influence of Christian hegemony and its moral binary worldview is perhaps most strikingly evident in the nearly constant ways that we judge things good or bad in our everyday conversations. Our constant referral to whether something is good or bad reflects the deeply binary way many of us see the world as well as the constant judgment we use to distinguish which is which. “That’s good,” “he’s a bad boy,” “She’s a good person,” we’re having bad weather,” “They are going through a bad period,” “We live in relatively good times,” “I’m sorry to hear about your bad news”—these are examples of phrases which are used to render an instant either/or judgment which we believe can be indiscriminately applied to all kinds of different phenomena.

The weather is not good or bad, it just is. Rain might be inconvenient, disappointing, or uncomfortable weather for some and might be welcome, needed, or comforting weather for others. Our simple judgment gives the weather a moral status and our binary shorthand lets us avoid actually describing the weather and acknowledging the personal and relative nature of the statements we make.

Similarly people are not good or bad. We are each complex and not easily summarized or dismissed by a judgment. We may do things that are illegal, immoral, unhealthy, or thoughtless, but that doesn’t make us “bad” people. And we know that “good” people are sometimes not what they seem. We often internalize both the judgment and the language to describe ourselves or feel as if we are good or bad people. This is reinforced by the media and the general culture that is quick to tell us which things count as good and which as bad.

We often also divide behavior into good and bad categories. There is good and bad sex (good sex = heterosexual sex for reproductive purposes, everything else is bad), good and bad violence (good violence is our violence against enemies, or the violence of the military or police—everybody else’s violence is bad), and good and bad torture (good torture is what we do to those who are evil, to terrorists and agents of the devil; bad torture is what others do to our troops and citizens). And, of course, many people speak of good girls and bad girls, usually referring to women who engage in behavior we either approve or disapprove of.

I’m not suggesting we abandon the use of the words “good” and “bad.” But it would help us communicate with each more effectively and caringly if we less often resorted to a simple moral judgment and instead described the world around us without the moral overtones. We would be more present and connected to the world and more able to acknowledge and respond to the complexity of ideas, people, situations, and even the weather.

The seal of the Spanish Inquisition depicts the cross, the branch and the sword. From Enciclopedia Española 1571.

I define Christian hegemony as the everyday, pervasive, and systematic set of Christian values and beliefs, individuals and institutions that dominate all aspects of our society through the social, political, economic, and cultural power they wield. Nothing is unaffected by Christian hegemony (whether we are Christian or not) including our personal beliefs and values, our relationships to other people and to the natural environment, and our economic, political, education, health care, criminal/legal, housing, and other social systems.

Christian hegemony as a system of domination is complex, shifting, and operates through the agency of individuals, families, church communities, denominations, parachurch organizations, civil institutions, and through decisions made by members of the ruling class and power elite.

Christian hegemony benefits all Christians, all those raised Christian, and those passing as Christian. However the concentration of power, wealth, and privilege under Christian hegemony accumulates to the ruling class and the predominantly white male Christian power elite that serve its interests. All people who are not Christian, as well as most people who are, experience social, political, and economic exploitation, violence, cultural appropriation, marginalization, alienation and constant vulnerability from the dominance of Christian power and values in our society.

Christian hegemony operates on several levels. At one level is the internalization of dominant western Christian beliefs and values by individuals in our society. Another level is the power that individual preachers, ministers and priests have on people’s lives. Particular churches and some Christian denominations wield very significant political and economic power in our country. There is a vast network of parachurch organizations, general tax-supported non-profits such as hospitals, broadcasting networks, publishing houses, lobbying groups, and organizations like Focus on the Family, Prison Fellowship, The Family, World Mission, and thousands of others which wield influence in particular spheres of U.S. society and throughout the world. Another level of Christian dominance is within the power elite, the network of 7-10,000 predominantly white Christian men who control the largest and most powerful social, political, economic, and cultural institutions in the country. And finally there is the level which provides the foundation for all the others–the long and deep legacy of Christian ideas, values, practices, policies, icons, and texts that have been produced within dominant western Christianity over the centuries. That legacy continues to shape our language, culture, beliefs, and values and to frame public and foreign policy decisions.

Christian dominance has become so invisible that its manifestations appear to be secular, i.e. not religious. In this context, the phrase “secular Christian dominance” might be most appropriate, Christian hegemony under the guise of secularism. Of course, there are many forms of Christian fundamentalism which are anything but secular. Often fundamentalists want to create some kind of theocratic state. But the more mainstream, everyday way that dominant Christian values and institutions influence our lives and communities is less evident, although no less significant and certainly not limited to fundamentalists.