the brand of Christianity that is prevalent in the US has a strong inbuilt need to claim a persecution complex.
Only since the 1970s or so... (Except in the south, but even before then, it was different).
Shrill rhetoric, however, often disguises something else... a rot from within? Or a lack of interest from without? What's quite clear is that the Christian Right have lost this issue and are not able to claim any victories (that weren't empheral) since... well, have they ever?
maybe build a Marxian false-consciousness construct by claiming the victimhood complex is a relocation of the increasing dispossession of the (white) population reframed within the 'mystified' religious consciousness..
I've never liked term 'false-consciousness' because it assumes there is a 'true-consciousness'.
there is certainly truer and falser consciousness, if we are to consider property relations to be determinative in the final analysis.
