Sociologists from the University of North Texas recently sent out a cautionary warning to Christians, saying even though Christianophobia is not widespread in the United States, the small group of people who feel strong aversion towards conservative believers belong to the American elite.

David Williamson and George Yancey shared their opinion, which corroborates the idea of their recently released book titled “So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?” The book claims to offer readers a provocative look at anti-Christian sentiments in the country. The two sociologists, who define Christianophobia as the unreasonable fear or hatred of Christians, said it is important to explore possible bias against Christians, because that can help people understand the social dynamics that exist within the United States.

With regards to how prevalent the problem really is, Yancey said it is only a small group of people that feel such strong hostility towards Christians, but that small group is comprised of elite individuals who have a lot more societal power than the average American. Yancey said he was inspired to explore possible Christianophobia after Williamson and he started gathering qualitative data from interviews with liberal activists and observed a disturbing trend among a specific subset of the respondents. With that in mind, the duo shared a sampling of some of the unreasonable comments they said they heard during their interviews with cultural progressive activists for the purpose of their study.

Here are only three of the comments that they shared:

“I want them all to die in a fire.” (Male, aged 26-35 with Doctorate)

“They should be eradicated without hesitation or remorse. Their only purpose is to damage and inflict their fundamentalist virus onto everyone they come in contact with.” (Female, aged 66-75 with Masters degree)

“They make me a believer in eugenics…. They pollute good air. … I would be in favor of establishing a state for them. … If not, then sterilize them so they can’t breed more.” (Male, aged 46-55 with Masters degree)

These sentiments made Yancey delve deeper into his pool of respondents – people who were chosen from unidentified groups that are actively opposed to views held by several conservative Christians.

“We quickly saw some of the unnecessary vitriol and fears within many of our respondents. We also saw the social status of those who exhibited this hatred and many of them would be in positions that allowed them to at least subtly act on their anger and fears,” Yancey said. “That motivated us to take a more systematic look at Christianophobia and speculate on how this phenomenon influences certain social aspects in the United States.”

He said important distinctions had to be made while analyzing the demographics of those who have Christianophobia and thus see believers as being child-like, backward and a hindrance to progress. According to Yancey, even though more people are hostile towards atheists than Christians, those who oppose the latter come from highly influential, educated and elite backgrounds.

“I have established that those with animosity towards conservative Christians tend to have more per-capita social power than those with animosity towards other religiously based groups,” Yancey wrote in a blog post last year. “They are more likely to be white, educated and wealthy. The education advantage creates a unique dimension in this group as one may contend that highly educated individuals are unlikely to engage in unreasonable level of hatred or anger.”

In conclusion, he said those who oppose atheism do not have the level of per capita power as those who oppose Christians. Considering atheist activists often argue that they are discriminated against because of their secular views and many polls have pointed towards the same and revealed how citizens are much less likely to vote for atheists during elections, a significant question emerges.

“So is a group worse off if more people do not like them or if those who do not like them have a lot of social power, but there are fewer of them? Context matters to answer such a question,” Yancey said. “If you want to get elected to political office, then atheists are at a disadvantage since more people do not like them. But if you want to get a higher education, then you will run into a lot more people with power who hate Christians than who hate atheists.”

As evidence, he cited certain non-discrimination policies implemented in Christian colleges across California that force specific student groups out of official recognition if they do not allow atheists and non-Christians the chance to lead them.

“We documented that some level of Christianophobia is present among certain powerful subcultures in our society,” he continued. “This helps us understand some actions in our society.”

Here is the entire interview that Christian Post conducted with the two sociologists.

Photo Credits: Freedom Outpost