“It’s not a question of ‘Can you?’ It’s a question of ‘Should you?’” said Dan Fisher, pastor of the Trinity Baptist Church in Yukon. “It’s kind of like they’re poking a finger in your eye.”…. “People here, the vast majority, still hold a regard for scripture and traditional biblical values,” said Paul Blair, pastor of the Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond. “If liberalism, if the Devil himself, can make inroads in Oklahoma, that would be a great victory (for them) to be trumpeted across the land.”
It’s always struck me as interesting that Christians can broadcast their faith however and wherever they may choose, and it’s simply accepted as the natural order of things. Should a non-Christian faith or- even worse- atheists choose to advertise their faith…and suddenly it’s “Houston, we have a problem…why do you hate Jesus so??” Well, in this case it’s Oklahoma, but you get the point. Yes, I understand that 8 out of 10 Oklahomans profess to be Christians. Does than mean the other two are expected to keep their mouths shut and not rock the boat? Does the minority have no right to self-expression simply because they happen not to believe in the majority’s Christian God?
Could it be that the billboard is merely a way for atheists to communicate the reality that they’re not alone? And why do Christians persist in seeing anything not blindly, obediently supportive of their flavor of Christianity to be a threat to themselves and their beliefs? Do these folks REALLY think that an unorganized 20% of the population is really bent on rising up and persecuting them? Are they really so convinced of their own moral and ideological superiority that they take ANY expression of a dissenting viewpoint as dissent against their rightful and self-evident place at the top of the ecclesiastical food chain?
Christianity may be the majority religion in Oklahoma. That reality does not connote upon Oklahoma Christians the right to protest when a dissenting point of view is expressed. When last I checked, the freedom of religion is not a concept applicable on to Christians. If atheists…or anyone else…decide they want to spend the money to put up a billboard advertising their beliefs (or their mere existence), that’s their constitutionally-guaranteed right. If Christians choose to see this as a threat to their existence, that’s their right. Even if they’re wrong.
Jeebus, y’all; can’t we all just get along? Must everything that doesn’t march in unflinching lockstep with your beliefs be viewed as a threat to your continued existence?
