Christianophobia

A new effort in Europe is in existence to combat "Christianophobia", or the irrational fear of Christians and Christianity. They will be putting together a website and documenting cases of fear of Christians by different groups across Europe.

Why are we doing this? This seems to be misguided for a number of reasons. Very few people fear Christianity, maybe only the Devil fears Christians, though not enough to not prey on them. Many people don't like Christianity, or even hate it irrationally, but this is not a "phobia". This is hatred (of one sort or another).

The same can be said of homophobia, which is likely the reason that people are called homophobes whenever they oppose in any way the homosexual lifestyle. I'm not saying that there are not people who genuinely fear homosexuality or the pervasiveness of its culture, because I'm sure there truly are those who could be described as "homophobic". That said, I also believe that a very thin minority of those described as homophobic are truly fearful of homosexuals.

This is the reason why I don't favor the use of "Christianophobia". This is their lie, we don't need to adopt it. Few people actively and actually fear Christianity, many more oppose it in what has always been termed "anti-Christianity". It is not bad to document it, and to confront it. We should indeed complain about it. As much as I don't like Bill Donahue as a blowhard and a windbag, his mission as the lone warrior of defending Catholicism in the media sector is quite important. Without him there is basically nobody keeping track of what people say and do that is overtly anti-Catholic and anti-Christian.

I laud the idea of trying to get organized in a place like Europe where cynical anti-Christianity is so mainstream, but I don't think that following the agenda of these other groups of defining new phobias makes much sense. We should be above that, and show that indeed Christians can preach the truth of the situation and don't have to resort to calling any opposition an "irrational fear". That said, we won't get the same media coverage, but we wouldn't anyways, so we may as well do what we can to respect ourselves.