Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Christians who point out unfair treatment are told they’re not really being treated unfairly, they’re just experiencing the loss of their “privilege.” This response is meant to be a conversation stopper, and to shut down Christians’ right to raise complaints about unjust treatment.

If you haven’t heard it before, just do a web search for the words “Christians complaining loss privilege” and you’ll get an eyeful. “Christian privilege” even has its own Wikipedia page, which (as of this writing) says:

When the dominant Christian groups impose their cultural norms, values, and perspectives on people with different beliefs, those people are oppressed…. The dominant group’s social values serve to justify and rationalize social oppression, while the dominant group members may not be aware of the ways in which they are privileged because of their own social identity.

Therefore, Christians should realize that what they experience as unfair treatment is likely instead to be a corrective measure restoring fairness to other groups, following injustices Christians are guilty of imposing on others without even realizing it. Where does this idea come from, and how accurate is it?

The concept of social privilege was advanced in 1988 by Peggy McIntosh, speaking about white privilege. The basic idea is that whites have hidden social advantages that people of color do not enjoy; so when people say “check your privilege” the general idea that people should either quit complaining or at least recognize how much they take for granted, that others cannot.

For example, one of the white privileges McIntosh talks about is, “I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.” That is, when a white person is rude, people rarely attribute it to his or her race, whereas if a black person does the same thing, people often think (or even say) it’s “because he’s black” or “because she’s black.” Thus at times I, and many other people of color, feel significant social pressures that whites may not feel.

This is the key to understanding privilege. Privilege is something that one group benefits from that other groups do not. It is not “privilege” for whites living below the poverty line to be excused from paying income tax since that rule applies to poor people of color as well. But it is privilege when people are treated differently based on their social grouping.

Which brings me back to the claim that Christians pointing to socially unfair situations are only reacting to a loss of privilege. Is that really the case? Does “privilege” apply to Christians the way it does to whites?

Christians have historically held a majority group position in our country. They clearly had more privileges in the past than they have today. So it is possible that if Christians feel anxiety connected with a changing world, that anxiety can be put down to a loss of privilege. Thus, some Christians are uncomfortable with new mosques being built around them. The freedom to build churches without significant harassment has been a privilege Christians have enjoyed; now, it is appropriate to extend that “privilege” to other faiths. So even though “check your privilege” comments may be used too often to shut people up rather than produce enlightenment, still there is nothing wrong with some introspection.

But this does not mean that “loss of privilege” is always the best explanation for Christians’ sense of being treated unfairly. Sometimes they really are being mistreated. My research has shown that conservative Protestants’ religious beliefs are often against them when they seek an academic position. It is not a unique privilege to expect to be judged for an academic position based on one’s merits, not one’s religious beliefs. Also, as I recently pointed out, non-Christians can exclude certain people from “public accommodation,” and not be stigmatized and punished for it as Christians have been. It is not a unique privilege to expect that the same rules be applied to others as to oneself.

We live in a post-Christian society. There are bound to be some people who will want to marginalize Christians’ voice. My work on Christianophobia shows there are persons of influence who hate conservative Christians so much, they want to eliminate them from the public square. We will have to fight to keep our place at the table. While it never hurts to think through the possibility that our complaints may be tied to the loss of past privilege, we cannot expect Christianity’s detractors to give the question such careful thought. There is a time for introspection, but there is also a time to call out the misuse of concepts like privilege to shame Christians and to shut us up.