When a nation officially ascribes to multi-culturalism, oppression and repression follow. Multi-culturalism is an ideology. The official adoption of multi-culturalism results in the imposition of that ideology upon the citizens. This is the situation to which we have been consigned in New Zealand. But we are not alone. Multi-culturalism is both dominant and regnant throughout the Western world, notwithstanding a slight crack in the edifice showing up in Angela Merkel's Germany. (Merkel, of course, recently pronounced multi-culturalism to have "utterly failed" in Germany.)
The causal link between multi-culturalism and civil repression is neither hard to establish nor understand. The ideology of multi-culturalism asserts that all cultures (and their cultural practices and manifestation) must be tolerated. To be part of a specific culture is a human right, and no culture can, therefore, be regarded as superior or better than another, any more than women are to be regarded as superior or inferior to men. Both sexes are human; both sexes have human rights. Multi-culturalism puts all cultures in the same frame.
When multi-culturalism becomes official to the point it is enforced by law, it necessarily becomes illegal to discriminate against any particular culture, its practices and beliefs. This sanctioned non-discrimination requires that no culture within a society is officially criticised; more, it requires that no culture is subjected to criticism of any sort by any other culture or belief. To speak and act in such a way as to be critical of another culture causes offence to those of that culture. Such criticism, therefore, violates the human rights of other citizens.
Here is where repression necessarily follows. When multi-culturalism becomes the official ideology of a nation-state, only a certain kind of culture in the public square becomes tolerable and acceptable and approved. (By the "public square" we mean that which can be seen and observed by the public. This includes acts, views, opinions, and beliefs which occur within the four walls of one's home, if those become known in public--as when a child for example may describe some family activity in its home to a teacher or class at school. At that point, what is done in that particular home has become part of the public square.) Multi-culturalism, therefore, can only proceed and be sustained if it endorses and establishes one particular culture only as not only superior to all other cultures, but alone enjoying the sanctions and protections of the law. That culture is the culture of multi-culturalism itself, which in turn, is built and predicated upon a particular ideology and religion (the ideology and religion of secular humanism.)
Thus multi-culturalism extends its tolerance and indulgence to other cultures and beliefs on its terms, and its terms alone. If other cultures do not accept its terms, the law will be used to oppress the adherents of alternative cultures, and repress the culture itself. The terms of multi-culturalism as the established church are as follows: everyone is welcome to follow and believe whatever culture they wish, provided that culture is itself approved by the uber-culture of multi-culturalism itself. (This is the civic and ideological equivalent of Henry Ford's remark: "you can choose whatever colour you wish for your car, as long as its black.") Multi-culturalism approves any and every cultural manifestation in the public square which tolerates all other cultures and does not in any way criticise them or disagree with them or offend them. That is the only kind of culture which multi-culturalism accepts.
Now this repression is eerily parallel to the religious and cultural "freedom" practised by the Roman Emperors. In the Empire you could believe whatever you chose and all cultures were welcome--provided they all acknowledged the overlordship of the Emperor himself. Caesar was Lord of all. This meant that no religion which proclaimed a god above Caesar would be tolerated. It meant that inevitably believers of the Christian religion would be persecuted and their religion repressed.
Thus, when multi-culturalism became the established religion and culture of the West, it was inevitable that some cultures, particularly the Christian culture would begin to be repressed. Firstly, manifestations of Christian belief and culture would be removed from the public square. Secondly, Christians would be forbidden to apply Christian teachings and beliefs in their public relationships with others: they would be told whom they could hire and fire; whom they were to do business with--regardless of the teachings of the faith. Thirdly, they would be repressed if they made their faith manifest to others. Such actions would be deemed offensive and not in accordance with multi-culturalism. Fourthly, they would be forbidden from spreading the good news of the coming of the Messiah of God to others. Such acts would imply the superiority of the Christian faith over others--a violation of the fundamental tenets of the multi-culturalism establishment.
We are not saying that the established religion of multi-culturalism intends aforetime to single out Christians and the Christian church in distinction from all other beliefs and religions, but it inevitably ends up doing so because, as in time of the Roman Empire, the total claims and prerogatives of the God we Christians worship and proclaim--that He is the Father of all, Almighty, and the Maker of heaven and earth--requires oppression and repression by the multi-cultural establishment. "All-roads-lead-to-Rome" cultures and religions are not equally oppressed or repressed precisely because such cultures and religions do indeed believe that all roads inevitably lead to Rome--something that pleases the uber-culture of multi-culturalism. In this case, however, the tolerable and acceptable dogma is that all roads lead to secular humanism and its overlordship of everything. Acknowledge that, and you're sweet, as they say.
A recent article in the Daily Telegraph described the current state of oppression and repression of Christians and the Christian faith in the United Kingdom. The UK has rabidly extended the claims, prerogatives, and establishment of multi-culturalism over the past twenty years. It is, therefore, no surprise that oppression and repression of Christians and the faith is growing. As Pope Benedict has repeatedly warned the real enemy we face in the West is secular humanism and the establishment of multi-culturalism.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury is essentially talking sense, but unfortunately what happens with this debate, like those about political correctness and illegal immigration, is that the serious issue gets lost below the silly. Christmas lights are the light froth at the top that covers the real story, which is that practising Christians really are being harassed by Britain’s “equality and diversity” laws in a way that is quite new, illiberal and authoritarian.
Earlier this year Lord Carey criticised the judiciary for making “disturbing and dangerous” rulings that could lead to Christians being banned from the workplace. He was speaking before relationship counsellor Gary McFarlane lost his case against dismissal, after he refused to give sex therapy to gay couples.
Other cases include a paediatrician thrown off an adoption board because she would not recommend giving children to gay couples, and a man suspended from a Christian homeless charity after a colleague asked him in a private conversation about his views on homosexuality. . . .
It’s not just about sexuality and it’s not just Christians; earlier this year a court ruled that the JFS, an Orthodox Jewish school in north London, had broken discrimination laws by refusing to accept a boy they did not regard as Jewish. The state, in other words, was overruling the Orthodox Jewish authorities in stating who they considered Jewish.
How is it the state’s right to decide this? Because under Britain’s equality laws, where public authorities are now required to “promote equality in everything that they do, also making sure that other organisations meet their legal duties to promote equality while also doing so themselves”, any belief that clashes with the state’s creed of “equality and diversity” is illegal. That’s not liberalism as I understand it. . . .
It’s almost as if Britain’s social and sexual revolutionaries have gone all Animal Farm and started to mimic the most intolerant aspects of the old regime, so that we’re back to the days of Elizabethan England, where only those who believed in the state church could be full members of society.
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