Christianity's hidden privilege

[mikkel_the_dane]

This isn't Christian privilege, this is just the reality of living in Christian cultures. Religion is a strong determining factor in culture. If you move to a Dharmic country you should expect to find Dharmic holidays on the calendar and dividing the work schedule. I hear no-one complaining about that. Nor do I hear anyone complaining that majority Muslims countries have Muslim holidays in their calendars. Every culture has its religious foundation and in Europe and Anglophone countries this is Christianity. I see no issue.

Well, you could decide that people have X days a year they can individually have as Holidays. I mean in democracy you could have vote on it.

 

[Rival]

Over here though, it's in many aspects of government,
eg, courtroom oaths pledging to God to tell the truth,
"God" in the Pledge Of Allegiance, tax subsidies for
real estate & employment, exceptions to military
conscription.
At least they eliminated prayer in public schools...that
was a thing when I was in elementary school.

Afaik one can choose on what one swears.

I don't mind those other things.

But again, I expect to find these things in a Christian culture. Even as a Pagan I'm not bothered by them; I live here and it's good enough.

Well, you could decide that people have X days a year they can individually have as Holidays. I mean in democracy you could have vote on it.

Yes, folks already can choose their own paid leave days/weeks. I'm not sure I see an issue.

 

[Nakosis]

Well, that is where the fun begin. Where does freedom of expression and religion in regards to the separation of religion and state? I really don't know, since there are several to settle it.
Forbid all.
Allow all.
Let people vote on it.
Bring in UN peacekeepers.
And the list goes on.

We all have personal ideas of where to draw a line.
The legal system tries to set a base guideline.
We are not all going to agree so a compromise most will accept to enforce.

IDK, we fear religious influence in government. Should we not fear it also in the workplace?

I'm not influenced by religion so hard for me to worry too much about.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

We all have personal ideas of where to draw a line.
The legal system tries to set a base guideline.
We are not all going to agree so a compromise most will accept to enforce.

IDK, we fear religious influence in government. Should we not fear it also in the workplace?

I'm not influenced by religion so hard for me to worry too much about.

Well, that depends on what you mean in more specific cases as far as I can tell.

 

[Revoltingest]

Afaik one can choose on what one swears.

And I have.
But here's the problem...
One must request it, typically in an open courtroom.
This puts the judge & jury (if there is one) on notice
that one is not a Christian.
These are people who will judge my veracity.
So there's the possibility that it'll work against me.

Christians, of course, have no worries about this
because it's of no concern to them.

I don't mind those other things.

But again, I expect to find these things in a Christian culture. Even as a Pagan I'm not bothered by them; I live here and it's good enough.

I don't mind Christianity being part of culture.
But when it's enshrined in government, that
creates discrimination against people who
aren't of the tribe.

 

[viole]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

Where I live, we found a way that makes most people happy, especially the seculars:

1 and 2 january, (secular): days off
Good Friday; day off
Easter Monday: day off
Jesus taking off to heaven, coming Thursday: day off
Holy Spirit coming down, Monday in one week: day off
Corpus Domini, whatever that means, 16 june: day off
Confederation birthday (secular), 1 august, day off
Mary taking off to heaven, 15 august: day off
All saints: 1 November, day off
Mary Receival, 7 december, day off
Christmas, and 26 december: days off

To compensate that, atheists are allowed to pay less taxes than Christians. A couple thousands bucks less a year, or so I reckon.

i think I can live with that. Despite all those annoying paid vacations, to be added to the 30 days we usually get

ciao

- viole

 

[Father Heathen]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

Build neither and instead something actually useful like a library, public park, or community center.

 

[Vee]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

Fair point.
I have no idea what to do about that, sorry.

 

[74x12]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

Speaking for America and it's true in Canada really. These have been majority Christians nations for hundreds of years. You can talk about separation of church and state but that doesn't mean the people themselves aren't majority Christian. Would you go to Saudi Arabia and demand they accommodate Christian holy days? This is nonsense. Really it's bigoted towards Christians and yet accusing Christians of being somehow "privileged".

 

[Left Coast]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

Isn't this just...a typical byproduct of the majority of people in society being Christians? If fewer people were Christians, we'd likely have different days off because people would prefer different days off. I assume in India or other non-Christian countries they have different holidays that reflect the predominant culture in those places, no? I'm not sure that there's anything to be "done" about it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Excellent question!

Can you explain how the religious congregation ends up bearing the extra cost of the traffic upgrades and not the community as a whole? Is the local government levying a fee on Mosque builders that it doesn't levy on on Church builders?

Generally, traffic upgrades that are needed just to accommodate one property are paid for by that property as a condition of development approval.

The road projects paid for out of taxpayer funds are the projects that are for the benefit of the community as a whole.

 

[Father Heathen]

Speaking for America and it's true in Canada really. These have been majority Christians nations for hundreds of years. You can talk about separation of church and state but that doesn't mean the people themselves aren't majority Christian. Would you go to Saudi Arabia and demand they accommodate Christian holy days? This is nonsense. Really it's bigoted towards Christians and yet accusing Christians of being somehow "privileged".

Unlike Saudi Arabia, The U.S. is supposed to be secular and pluralist. Of course trying to accommodate everyone presents a lot of challenges, however, hence why it's best to move past all the arbitrary nonsense altogether.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Speaking for America and it's true in Canada really. These have been majority Christians nations for hundreds of years.

They had indigenous religions for much longer, but we aren't accomodating those ones either.

You can talk about separation of church and state but that doesn't mean the people themselves aren't majority Christian.

Just barely:

Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019

Here, 63% of the population is Christian (and even that's with the benefit of misleading census wording that inflates religion's numbers), but that includes a LOT of people who answer "no" to the question of whether religion is important in their lives, as well as members of Christian denominations that don't necessarily align with the days of worship and holy days we have (e.g. the SDAs and the JWs).

Christianity's share of the population has been steadily shrinking here for the last several decades. It won't be that long before Christians are clearly not the majority.

Would you go to Saudi Arabia and demand they accommodate Christian holy days?

It wouldn't be on the top of my priority list, but yes: Saudi Arabia should do more to accommodate Christians.

This is nonsense. Really it's bigoted towards Christians and yet accusing Christians of being somehow "privileged".

How is it bigoted toward Christians?

All I've said is that our laws and society were set up by Christians with Christians in mind. You've said almost the same thing, so it seems like you agree with me.

 

[Polymath257]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

There is a church near here that has its own police detail every Sunday so those attending can get in and out to the large street that goes by. I often wonder who pays for that and whether a mosque would be granted the same type of escort. But the police are outside directing traffic both before and after the services at that church every weekend.

 

[Bathos Logos]

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

I don't know if I agree entirely with this, for there can be any number of reasons for increased traffic in an area, and I wouldn't want all reasons there may be increased traffic to suddenly constitute "discrimination" if there were some precedent set. And that's just an example of how something abstractly connected to an event like this could snowball when everyone picks up and runs with it. I would guess that the majority of "hidden" privilege types of things would be like this. Slippery slopes, that is, if a party wanting to claim it as "discrimination" got their way, and precedent was set for anyone else to follow suit.

With the traffic bit, I am reminded specifically of Chik-Fil-A restaurants in my area. Those things are always bogged down, every time I pass them. Which would mean that if a Chik-Fil-A restaurant opened up next to you, and a lack of minimal traffic were considered something like "discrimination" (or, tangentially, as some sort of affront or grievance), then another business owner (or church?) could sue Chik-Fil-A for something that is much out of their control (or is without their beginning to purposefully offer inferior products and services) and that they aren't directly responsible for. Or, if the traffic were a good thing (a boon to another nearby business, for example), then when Chik-Fil-A is closed on Sunday (due specifically to ritual religious observance), then they could be targeted as being discriminatory to the nearby business owners who remain open on Sunday, but see lower volume of traffic because of Chik-Fil-A's religious-related closure.

Seems too "can-of-worms" to me.

 

[Debater Slayer]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. There will be no traffic from the high school and background traffic will be light. Odds are that the road network can accommodate the church without expensive upgrades.

This difference in direct cost - which will end up as a major difference in out-of-pocket cost to the members of a religious congregation - can be traced back entirely to privileged treatment of Christianity: we shut a lot of our society down on Christian holy days, but Islam isn't afforded the same luxury.

So... what should be done about this? Do you agree that the mosque is being treated in a discriminatory way (maybe not deliberately, but discriminatory in effect)? If so, how should we as a society respond?

I think this is an inevitable outcome of living in a society where a majority follow a specific religion, even if just culturally. I generally see no issue with it as long as there is separation of religion and state.

When I lived in Saudi Arabia, I thought there were many ways in which Saudi society and government could easily do more to accommodate religious minorities, such as by not imposing Islamic dress codes on women from said groups or banning the public practice of any religion besides Islam.

But holidays are a lot trickier: it makes sense to give the majority a day off on Eid or Christmas, but then if you want to achieve equality, you also have to give days off on holidays to all religious groups. I don't see this as feasible or practical. The alternative, of course, would be to give no one at all days off on their religious holidays, but that seems to me a way of fixing a problem by creating a bigger one.

One compromise I have seen some companies employ in Saudi Arabia is to let Christians choose to work during Islamic holidays and compensate them by letting them have their own holidays off. That seems reasonable to me, although I imagine it won't always be practical because sometimes employees need to be uniform in their work schedules or present on site at similar times in order to do group work.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Isn't this just...a typical byproduct of the majority of people in society being Christians?

Some of it, but not all.

Just because one group is in the majority doesn't mean other groups can't or shouldn't be accommodated. We have scattered examples of where this has happened... such as the Canadian university that - until 2008 - would close on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

If fewer people were Christians, we'd likely have different days off because people would prefer different days off. I assume in India or other non-Christian countries they have different holidays that reflect the predominant culture in those places, no?

Yes and no.

Some workplaces and the like need to coordinate schedules, so everyone needs to have the same days off (e.g. a manufacturing plant), but these days, it's mostly the jobs that ought to be flexible that are Monday-to-Friday jobs. A Christian nurse, line cook or commercial pilot is still probably working Sundays.

A lot of office workers already have flex time: they have "core hours" in the middle of the day when meetings are scheduled that everyone needs to be there for, but apart from that, any start time is okay as long as they put in their required hours for the day.

It wouldn't be that big a deal to tweak that sort of program slightly to say that "core hours" are only on Tuesday to Thursday, and employees can work any time throughout the week they want as long as they work all the weekly hours they're supposed to.

I'm not sure that there's anything to be "done" about it.

And that's one response.

I see a few key questions here:

- is an inequity occurring? (And if the answer is "no," I'm curious about the thought process behind that)

- if an inequity *is* occurring, should it be addressed? (And again, an explanation for a "no" answer would be helpful)

- if the inequity should be addressed, how should it be addressed and why?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There is a church near here that has its own police detail every Sunday so those attending can get in and out to the large street that goes by. I often wonder who pays for that and whether a mosque would be granted the same type of escort. But the police are outside directing traffic both before and after the services at that church every weekend.

Around here, that sort of thing would be paid for by the church: they'd be paying the overtime for the cops, a rental fee for the patrol car, and an admin fee to cover the office overhead.

In one of those US towns that has "in God we trust" on their police cars... I'm not sure I would count on the church paying for that sort of service.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't know if I agree entirely with this, for there can be any number of reasons for increased traffic in an area, and I wouldn't want all reasons there may be increased traffic to suddenly constitute "discrimination" if there were some precedent set. And that's just an example of how something abstractly connected to an event like this could snowball when everyone picks up and runs with it. I would guess that the majority of "hidden" privilege types of things would be like this. Slippery slopes, that is, if a party wanting to claim it as "discrimination" got their way, and precedent was set for anyone else to follow suit.

I guess I was taken as given a bunch of stuff that not everyone necessarily knows, but it's pretty standard for anything larger than a small development to have to get a traffic study done, and people like me are generally pretty good at predicting not only the site traffic coming in and out of a new development but also its impact on the surrounding road network, taking into account the traffic that's already there.

With the traffic bit, I am reminded specifically of Chik-Fil-A restaurants in my area. Those things are always bogged down, every time I pass them. Which would mean that if a Chik-Fil-A restaurant opened up next to you, and a lack of minimal traffic were considered something like "discrimination" (or, tangentially, as some sort of affront or grievance), then another business owner (or church?) could sue Chik-Fil-A for something that is much out of their control (or is without their beginning to purposefully offer inferior products and services) and that they aren't directly responsible for.

Municipal liability is a whole other kettle of fish I wasn't planning to get into.

Or, if the traffic were a good thing (a boon to another nearby business, for example), then when Chik-Fil-A is closed on Sunday (due specifically to ritual religious observance), then they could be targeted as being discriminatory to the nearby business owners who remain open on Sunday, but see lower volume of traffic because of Chik-Fil-A's religious-related closure.

I'm not sure what you're trying to suggest: that Chick-fil-A should be legally required to open on Sunday, or that nearby business owners should try to pressure the Chick-fil-A's landlord to evict them and replace them with another tenant who's open 7 days a week?

 

[1213]

As a society, we've arranged our schedule around Christianity: Christian days of worship and holidays are "standard" days off work. Other religions don't get this privilege. This has lots of effects that disadvantage non-Christians.

As an example (I'm a transportation engineer, so my brain goes to traffic impacts), say you have a plot of land next to a high school that you're looking to develop. You have in mind a place of worship for 1000 people... but what do you build?

If you build a mosque there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Friday afternoon, just when the high school - and background traffic - is at its busiest. This can often mean that to build a mosque, you'd need expensive traffic upgrades: maybe building a left turn lane, or lengthening turn lanes at a nearby intersection. Expensive stuff.

OTOH, if you build a church there, the peak of site traffic is going to be on Sunday morning. ...... what should be done about this? ...

Easy and cheap solution would be to make also Friday a day off. If that is not good enough, maybe there are better places.