If someone offered you the chance to live in a world designed to look and feel like the real one, but is actually a tidier, more ordered Stepford-ish facsimile, would you take it? For many Christians today, the answer appears to be yes.
Call it Newton’s Third Law of modern Christianity, but for every event, there appears to be an equal and opposite corresponding Christian event. There are Christian music festivals and book festivals; Christian versions of TED Talks; the upcoming International Christian Film Festival in Orlando, Fla.; and earlier this month, even a Christian Fashion Week.
While it might seem tempting for Christians to lock themselves away in anti-secular bubbles, where they could wear nothing but Christian clothing and eat nothing but Christian food (Chick-fil-A, I’m guessing?), the ramifications of doing so are polarizing at best, and deeply destructive at worst.
Just look at the recent spate of religious freedom laws being passed around the country. Regardless of whether you view the RFRAs as discriminatory or necessary, the nut of their existence essentially boils down to separateness. At their core, they are laws designed to keep one group of people from being forced to interact with another.
It doesn’t matter whether they are being sold as religious freedom, LGBT discrimination or Rick Santorum’s hypothetical of protecting gay T-shirt makers from Westboro Baptist Church, the fact of the matter is that RFRAs construct a legal wall between two potentially opposing camps. And while on the surface this may appear to have nothing to do with Christians’ creating their own versions of things, the truth is, they are much closer than you think.
Christian film festivals, fashion weeks, rock festivals, etc., may seem harmless enough, but in reality they are a way to create distance between Christians and the secular world. Much the same as RFRAs do, Christian-specific events foster the idea that separation is a necessity. The problem with this is that separateness, no matter how you slice it, is always going to end badly.
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SOURCE: Religion News Service
Scott Christian
