Evangelical Christians in America tend to consider themselves to be a persecuted minority - according to a recent survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 77% of white evangelicals, 59% of black evangelicals and 50% of Hispanic evangelicals say that they must fight "to be heard by the American mainstream." At the same time, though, evangelical Christians are 90 million strong - 32% of the population. Some minority!

Julia Duin writes in The Washington Times:

"They have a different relationship to pop culture than do other Americans and they are more offended by it." Thus, despite counting President Bush, several Cabinet members, the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader among their numbers, America's evangelicals believe they are a minority under siege, according to the poll, a joint effort of the PBS program "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" and U.S. News & World Report magazine. White evangelicals especially see themselves this way. Seventy-five percent of them agreed that "The mass media is hostile toward my moral and spiritual values," compared with 52 percent each for black and Hispanic evangelicals.

Evangelical Christians are in prominent positions in politics and culture all over the place. They aren't forced to the back of the bus, they aren't segregated into their own schools, and they aren't denied the ability to marry one another. What sort of persecuted minority is this, really? Every minority should be "persecuted" in this manner.

To be fair, though, the idea of being "persecuted" is really a consequence of the Bible rather than reality. Christians read that they will be persecuted for their beliefs and they accept that as the truth, regardless of what actually happens to them in reality. This, unfortunately, is a common theme.

Read More:

• Religious Right
• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry
• Evangelicalism