While Jesse Ventura can be dismissed as a showman and a maverick, using antics clearly designed to play to the disgruntled, disenchanted and disenfranchised, his remarks tapped into a deep antipathy for people of faith. His comments about religion go much deeper and resonate with an anti-Christian bias that seems to be increasing in popularity. While Ventura pontificated in Playboy, Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City was engaged in a culture war with the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibit included grotesque and hideous art, allowed under first amendment interpretations as freedom from censorship. We will not dignify the Brooklyn Museum exhibit by providing any details other than to say that it included a bare-breasted female Jesus and a portrait of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant feces.
Believers can expect open and honest argument about their doctrines and social teachings.
But it is not civil to attack a religion by trying to degrade its symbols. It's also interesting to consider one of the primary stereotypes that the secular world uses when it encounters people of faith. This theory postulates that Christianity, and religion in general, thrives in less-educated, impoverished and rural settings. The idea is that religion is more capable of manipulation and control without the presence of educational enlightenment, often with artificial contrivances and appeals to fear. Anti-Christian sentiments are not based in fact or logic, but owe their existence to baser human emotions.