Is there an anti-Christian bias in certain segments of society? Professor George Yancey has documented this. You can read the more popular version of his research in the book, Hostile Environment: Understanding and Responding to Anti-Christian Bias. He was on my radio program recently to talk about his research and his new book.

He uses a term to describe what is happening: Christianophobia. He didn’t make up this word. It is in the dictionary. It is “an irrational animosity toward or hatred of Christians.” In many ways, it is similar to words like homophobia or Islamophobia.

He has encountered people who think that the term is merely a cover for a bunch of Christians whining about not getting their way. He says that fear and hatred of Christians is a real phenomenon with real consequences.

He uses this thought experiment. Imagine research showed that almost half of all academics are less willing to give a person a job simply because that person is Jewish. We would think that demonstrated some sort of anti-Semitism. What if we also found that those people who hate Jews are more likely to be wealthy and well educated?

George Yancey says we know these things about how Christians are treated. People with Christianophobia are more likely to be white, male, educated, and wealthier than other Americans. They believe they know what is best for our society. And they often believe that Christians will lead us back to the Dark Ages.

He has also found that those who have a bias against Christians do support measures that would remove Christians from the public square. But they want to implement these measures in a way that can be justified with non-bigoted reasons. They don’t want to look intolerant or bigoted, but they do want to marginalize and even punish Christians.

Sadly, few professors are studying this phenomenon. That is because of an anti-Christian academic bias that discourages such research. Anti-Christian bias exists, even if many in the academic world don’t want to acknowledge it.