News

Moore [a former Evangelical leader] told NPR in an interview released Tuesday that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,’” Moore said. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”
Moore said he thinks a large part of the issue is how divisive U.S. politics are, which is now spilling over into the church. He pointed to how a lot of issues are “packaged in terms of existential threat,” leading to the belief among everyone, not just evangelical Christians, that “desperate times call for desperate measures.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

I personally hope Christians use the blowback as a way to reconnect to the core principles of their faith and reflect on the precepts of radical kindness at the core of Jesus's teachings. I feel very fortunate that my family drifted wide from religion back in my Grandparents day. I grew up an outcast in my wider community but there was never any question we were loved.

A lot of people who joined our open family did so with a lot of baggage. Families that figured them as failures for not living up to expectations or who had some kind of isolating pain their religion told them they basically deserved. It made me feel rich in a way so many were poor just being cherished by my family for being unreservedly me. It becomes an armour that makes me very resilient.

Being queer I see a lot of the people I know deal with this broken part of them, this rejection that who they are is not loved by the people for whom our society posits their natural attachments should entitle them love... and am able to be there for them. A lot of those who flee from religion do so as true refugees. They have to build from nothing. The reason queer communities are tight knit is because they realize that people can't exist without some kind of family and if you don't have one you make one from scratch.

A lot of the people in this position don't nessisarily hate the religion but they intimately know what it has taken from them. When your neighbours love you more than your family your neighbours become your family.

I mean, you threw yourself in here, so I feel this is fair game...

Listen, while I certainly respect some of the concessions you are making here in acknowledging the issues with the broader issues of modern Christianity, at a very fundamental level the core beliefs are problematic for a modern society.

My guess is that you believe a dead body came back to life and floated up into the sky.

In part, I make this assumption because Paul effectively mandated this as a litmus test in 1 Cor 15 in response to Christians at the time who rejected that belief.

So you believe that things outside the scope of what is naturally possible has occurred.

This is then tied to a belief of inherent unworthiness such that without this event having occurred, you are somehow deserving of suffering and it is only through this event that you could have avoided such a fate.

You were most likely fed these beliefs as a child - beliefs people in the first generation after Jesus weren't even all that keen on - and you will likely continue to pass them along generationally.

The entire time effectively ignoring that the version of Christianity which survived was simply the one that had successfully adapted beliefs in line with supporting authoritarianism of the Roman monarchy, of slavery, and of financing the organization out of the pockets of its members, etc - ideas that I'm skeptical you'd end up endorsing if they were positioned to you on their own, and are each beliefs that can be individually challenged on their connection to a historical Jesus in the first place.

So the social exchange of even a "good Christianity" minus the worst parts of today's oversteps is still one in which children are raised to believe in magic, in their inherent unworthiness without the religion, of continuing on outdated and obsolete social norms and practices, and on preserving ideas that benefit authoritarianism.

Much as I think you'd probably agree it wouldn't be good for people growing up in a world of science and technology to be indoctrinated with beliefs about Muhammad having been able to split the moon in half or a belief that the universe is in fact the dream of a giant turtle, beliefs that you yourself subscribe to happen to run counter to everything from an evidenced based approach to understanding the world and our place in it.

Christian certainty in their beliefs led to suppression of ideas ranging from the notion matter was made up of indivisible parts (atomism) to the idea life that existed around us was not from intelligent design but simply based on what survived to reproduce and what did not - both ideas present and broadly discussed in Jesus's day.

With all due respect for the freedom to have faith in something, at a certain point faith should not be put on a pedestal over evidence backed evaluations and it is necessary to let go of the past in order to embrace the future.

Fellow Christian here, well said! I am so sickened by Christmas who want to use the government to force their beliefs on everyone else.