Why progressives can’t tolerate Christians

For decades, Christians have talked about feeling persecuted in advanced secular and liberal democracies. They’ve often sounded a bit hysterical. It’s true that governments and societies have moved towards a kind of post-Christianity. The world in which we live has adopted some of the gentler stuff about love and ignored the challenging stuff about sex. Devout Catholics, Anglicans and Evangelicals can therefore be made to feel a bit weird and out of place. But persecuted? Not really. Christians are on the whole free to live according to their faith without harassment, which is very unlike the situation in some Muslim counties — or China.

Look at the vicious reaction to the big Supreme Court news about Roe v. Wade in America, however, and you see something changing. Enraged by what they perceive as a dastardly plot by the religious right to take back control of women’s bodies, American progressives have turned aggressively on Christian groups.