Christian Privilege in the United States: An Overview

Christian privilege and experiences of oppression among people with a non-Christian background in Northern Ireland.

“…For participants in this study, attempts to convert them to Christianity were often experienced as an attack on their non-Christian background; proselytizing was frequently imbued with the assumption of Christian superiority. The results, therefore, concur with Blumenfeld's (2009) assertation that evangelism can be "an imposition, manipulation and a form of oppression" (p. 18). Regardless of the intent of the perpetrator, it can contribute to the marginalization and outsider status of non-Christian people.…”

“…Unbelief does not eliminate the advantages arising from a religion of origin's foundational role in shaping value systems and understanding of religious norms (Edwards, 2018;Joshi, 2006). The benefits of Christian privilege will vary significantly according to a person's multiple other social group memberships, denominational affiliation, and relationship with Christianity (Blumenfeld, 2009;Collins, 2000;Edwards, 2018). The unearned advantages of privilege are often invisible to those who benefit from them; many people may be entirely unaware of how their lives are shaped by Christian privilege (McIntosh, 2010).…”

Religion, secularity, culture? Investigating Christian privilege in Western Europe

“…My focus is on the Western European context, where the dynamics between Christianity, secularity, and racial and religious exclusion take on a particular form. 2 Thus my argument expands the existing research into Christian privilege, which almost exclusively focuses on the United States (Blumenfeld et al, 2009; Joshi, 2020; Schlosser, 2003). It also adds to the literature in political theory on Christianity in the public sphere, by taking a different approach from studies that draw upon a framework of liberal secularism, republicanism, or multiculturalism (Bardon, 2021; Laborde and Lægaard, 2019; Modood, 2019; Seglow and Shorten, 2019).…”

“…In the last two decades, the term ‘Christian privilege’ has slowly entered the debate on privilege, focusing on the ‘seemingly invisible, unearned, and largely unacknowledged array of benefits accorded to Christians’ (Blumenfeld, 2006: 195–196). The concept of Christian privilege has been used by a limited group of scholars, writing almost exclusively in the context of the United States (Blumenfeld et al, 2009; Joshi, 2020; Kivel, 2013; Schlosser, 2003). This article argues that Christian privilege is also an important tool in analysing religious inequality in Western Europe.…”

Critical Qualitative Inquiry: An Optimistic Counter in/to a Conservative Backslide

“…We write in a bleak present of conservative driven democratic, social, and academic backsliding into illiberalism (Spooner, 2023), which we shorthand as “conservative backslide” in this manuscript to explicitly connect rising radical and populist conservatism (at least in the United States) with the retreat of democracy. Left floundering in the conservative backslide’s wake are failed environmental and climate change initiatives (Malin et al, 2023) and stifled collective action against the oppressions of BIPOC (Human Rights Watch, 2022), women (Coen-Sanchez et al, 2022), LGBTQ+ (American Civil Liberties Union, 2023), and other minoritized social groups (see e.g., Blumenfeld et al, 2019; Kanter, 2019).…”