Just a few months ago, I thought it was insulting to be called a “theocrat.” I was wrong. “Theocrat” is almost a compliment compared to what the Left is calling Christians now.

According to a New York Times review, we Christians are fascists—that’s what the Nazis were. And if we’re not stopped, we’ll try to take over America. It’s an illustration of how vicious the invective has become against faithful Christians.

“Of course there are Christian fascists in America,” writes Rick Perlstein in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. How else, for example, to explain the cadres who took former Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument on tour?

Perlstein was reviewing the latest in the recent crop of hate books about the Christian faith, this one titled, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, written by Chris Hedges. He details all the wacky killings, like the Aryan brotherhood over the last twenty-five years, and then concludes by saying that Christians are about to do the same thing. Talk about guilt by association.

The really dangerous thing here is that, by writing this kind of stuff, they are likely to embolden some nut to start shooting pastors and Christian leaders.

Perlstein was honest enough to admit that there has been no violence from Christians lately—but he reminds us that there used to be, and may be again, driven by all those violent Left Behind books.

Gee, what a backhanded compliment! We’re not as bad as we used to be—or will be in the future.

American Fascists is just the latest book in a long line of anti-Christian literature to hit the best-seller lists—all reviewed and promoted by the New York Times. Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, suggests that the government may have to stop parents from sharing their religious beliefs with their kids, calling it a form of child abuse.

What’s behind this witch hunt? Two things.

First, it’s an effort to drive Christians out of public debates, like abortion and same-sex “marriage,” and sadly, there are signs it might be working.

Second, as Sam Schulman noted last week in the Wall Street Journal, atheists are trying to move heaven and earth (so to speak) to destroy belief in God.

In the Victorian age, it was atheists who were gentlemen, rather civilized, though held in low public regard. Today, atheists are trying to turn the tables: turning religious faith into “a cause for personal embarrassment.”

To the new atheists, religious belief is both misguided and contemptible, “the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote,” Schulman writes. Belief in God is “a form of stupidity”—or so they say.

But the faith these atheists present is a parody of the faith that thousands have given their lives for, and for causes like ending the slave trade and human rights causes today. Look over the history of Western civilization, as Rodney Stark, the great sociologist, writes, and you’ll see that Christianity has been the source of all the great reforms and advances of Western civilization.

The best response to these attacks, of course, is just a loving assertion of the truth and a renewed effort to silence the critics by doing good.

And in the midst of these best-selling books that try to embarrass us out of our faith, we ought to remember the words of the Apostle Paul: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for all those who believe.”

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Rick Perlstein, “Christian Empire,” New York Times, 7 January 2007.

Mollie Ziegler, “We’re All Fascists Now,” Get Religion, 10 January 2007.

Sam Schulman, “Without God, Gall Is Permitted,” Wall Street Journal, 5 January 2007, W11.

Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason (Random House, 2005).

Michelle Goldberg, “The Holy Blitz Rolls On,” Salon, 8 January 2007.

Dr. Benjamin Wiker, “If I Only Had a Brain,” To the Source, 10 January 2007.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 060804, “The ‘Threat’ of Theocracy: Somebody Take a Chill Pill.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 061129, “A Cultural Cold Front: Bashing Religion.”

BreakPoint Commentary No. 070102, “Brooking No Debate: Scientism, Crowbars, and Bats.”

Regis Nicoll, “Faith under Fire,” BreakPoint Online, 8 December 2006.

Roberto Rivera, “Re: The Blasphemy Challenge,” The Point, 21 December 2006.

Jeff Clinton, “Beyond Belief: Atheism Defended?” The Point, 8 December 2006.