The first non-self-referential definition of persecution on dictionary.com is this: "a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religion, race, or beliefs"
So...is Phil Robertson (Duck Dynasty's supposed homophobic gay-basher) being persecuted? Earlier this morning I wrote a quick post about whether or not he is persecuted, and I waffled. "On the one hand, he's not being killed for his beliefs and nobody is throwing him in jail. He's certainly made his money on this show and this won't send him to the poorhouse. But on the other hand, he basically loses his job because of his statement. To lose a livelihood because of belief, no matter how fake that livelihood may be, certainly does border on persecution."
Whether or not we can say he is persecuted depends on how you define the term. Some think persecution has to be this big, systematic death-machine in which people are killed or tortured or wiped out. The other extreme is that it is a lot milder, in that you might suffer even the slightest of consequences for an opinion or an action. In reality, there's a lot of both these definitions that apply here. Phil Robertson is dealing with consequences for his words, but is it more than that? It's not just that A&E network is suspending him; there really does seem to be almost a systematic witch hunt going on to root out anybody who thinks homosexuality is a sin and then chastise (bully?) them until they skulk away. The vitriol by some on this issue is so uniform so as to seem to be part of a plan.
The reality is that everybody suffers consequences for what they do and think. Just the other day a Methodist minister was defrocked for performing the wedding of his gay son. Was that fair? Many of the same people who are outraged might well be Christians who think it right that a pastor be fired for his beliefs and his actions. By this definition that some have set for what is happening to Phil Robertson, is this pastor being persecuted for his belief by Christians?
Or think about what would happen if some Fox Advocacy Channel talking head suddenly changed his or her views. Imagine if Megyn Kelly suddenly changed her worldview and started espousing the same worldviews as Rachel Maddow, or Bill O'Reilly started sounding a lot more like Chris Matthews? How much longer would they be employed by FAC? Could we call this persecution, if somebody loses their job for a accepting and espousing a political ideology different from the tribe?
Again, the reality is this: we only want to hear what we want to hear, and increasingly we find many in this country on both the left and the right who refuse to listen to anything different than what their worldview tells them must be true. We have become so isolated in our thinking that anything else we might hear seems to us to be so scary as to be intolerable and worthy not just of mocking but legal action, deprivation of livelihood, state sanction, or even violence. Isolated and narrow thinking means that when the Phil Robertsons or the Michael Moores of the world pop up and say something we don't like our only reaction cannot be reason or spirited debate but the demonization of such a person by any means possible.
I suppose we should be grateful that here in the United States people are usually only fired or suspended for their words. Some places in this world people still get imprisoned, beaten, and killed for their beliefs. Now that's persecution, and we might well be heading in that direction unless people are able to state their beliefs openly, no matter how unpopular they may be, and then be peacefully willing to listen to others who disagree.
