Those who uphold traditional Christian truth claims and values are increasingly seen as dangerous if not downright evil by the secular mainstream culture.
The threat: Christians are impeding the imposition of a secular theocracy.
A recent New Yorker article on Michele Bachmann is an interesting example. In it, the author asserts that Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey ("Total Truth") promote Dominionism (the belief that only Christians should control civil government and should conduct it in accordance with Biblical law).
This is a version of the common charge that anyone who expresses a religious belief into the public square is imposing a theocracy. The comparison is secular ("good") vs. religious ("bad"). Conflating Christianity (which invented the separation of church and state) with, say Islam (which dictates the unity of church and state), is trivially absurd, but that's the charge. Nancy Pearcey has two thoughtful replies (here and here) that are well worth reading.
It reminds me of the way early Christians were accused of being cannibals because they celebrated Christ's death & resurrection by taking the Lord's Supper.
Our reputation isn't quite that bad yet, but there's a growing aggressiveness in secular progressives: fundamentalist atheists like Dawkins attack anyone who doesn't toe the Darwinist line, militants among the gender-confused call those who refuse to celebrate their confusion "hateful" and "homophobic", and anyone who defends private property rights is selfish, uncaring, a plutocrat, and certainly no follower of Jesus.
Is 20th century progressivism shifting from derision to violence in its pursuit of those they think are impeding the project? As it continues to crack up after 40+ years of concentrated effort by the best and brightest and an incomprehensible expenditure of federal dollars and power, the growing desperation of these attacks reminds me of the prophets of Baal cutting themselves on Mount Carmel to wake up their god.
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