@Fatal Freedoms,
"I may disagree with what you say, but i will defend to death your right to say it."- Voltaire
This is the same guy who said about 200 years ago, that in 200 years, Christianity would be wiped out in the face of the earth. Well, Christianity is not only alive, well and kicking, it is far robust than it ever was before.
Again, historicity.
Being offended is different from being blown to bits and pieces by people who believe piloting an airplane into buildings to kill "infidels" is martyrdom. And it is not a matter of having the government protect your feelings because even as early as the 1st century AD under the Roman caesars (Nero, Domitian, etc.), people of Christian faith were thrown alive into lions, burned at stake as torches in the Imperial gardens, fed into ravenous wolves as entertainment for the Roman elite, beheaded and crucified upside down in crosses all over the Roman Way. Check them out. These are documented facts, not rantings of a rabid religionist.
Oftentimes, in our loss of the historical and cultural context of our identity and where we are standing, we forget that the soil we are standing on had been irrigated by the blood of our ancestors and forebears. We are here and we stand speaking out our ideas today because many have laid down their lives and shed their precious blood for the freedom we so enjoy. Ancestors and forebears who crossed the Atlantic so they can exercise their freedom after, you guessed it, being persecuted for their faith in England.
No respect, man. We just diss our elders, bro.
Also, our own opinionated ravings are inexorably colored by our own insatiable desires, prejudices, idiosyncracies, preferences and what-have-you. We are children of our times and we grow up as adults of our culture.
And it is not a matter of "oversensitivity" either. Many African-Americans in our midst who have been for centuries maligned, mistreated and generally made to suffer life and indignity found solace in the hope of their Christian faith. Go to the Deep South and witness how strong the Negro spirituals and Gospel music are amongst the poor, destitute and disenfranchised "colored" of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.
You still see it today among professional athletes, beyond the veneer and facade of athleticism and pride and self-glory, there is the acknowledgment that there is one sovereign God who is not nowhere, but is NOW HERE.
It is not religious freedom, it is rather experential, efficacious, practical faith in the God who "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life."
Christianity was not established by the taking of lives but by the giving of that One Precious Sacred Life, the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
TEDEUM LAUDAMUS!