A Pebble in my Shoe

[jennythereader]

It rubs me the wrong way when people can't seem to see the differences between all the myriad varities of Christian, and just lump all Christians together as "religious nut-jobs who are anti-everything."

Comments

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

The more liberal and moderate denominations could definitely do more to promote their vision of Jesus's teachings. Unfortunately the nutjobs all seem to have bigger budgets.

[siderea]

My impression is that the nutjobs have bigger budgets because there are actually more of them.

I work in an urban ghetto, in population which has historically been 99.9% Catholic (50% Italian, 50% Latino). But what I'm seeing in my office is large numbers of ex-Catholics, who identify themselves as "Just Christian" and "Non-denominational", but who, it turns out, have fallen in with particularly conservative, xenophobic, belligerent Protestant churches. There is, in fact, a social movement among right-wing Protestant churches to brand themselves as Christian-Just-Christian, insisting they don't belong to any specific denomination, and thereby rebrand all Christianity as them-just-them.

It is being highly successful among these lower income folks who were raised Catholic (and I saw evidence of it when I was working in a predominantly Black, raised-Baptist neighborhood, too). This is also, of course, quite popular among our prisoners.

It fits very neatly in with the Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous approach, too, which is flagrantly Protestant, but which bills itself as not specific to any faith. It's amazing how many patients I've had for whom all the meaningful introduction to religion they've ever had was in AA/NA (the CCD they had in grade school didn't stick); and from there, "Christian" churches which stress being saved, testifying to unbelievers, and the judgment of a wrathful-yet-loving God, are a pretty natural step.

These folks are notable in that they know approximately nothing about actual Christian teaching. I mean, even the basics. Their attraction to religion is the deal it offers them, "if you do X, you'll get Y." Y might be a cushier afterlife, it might be an insurance policy against future misfortune, it might be relief from intolerable negative feelings in the here-and-now, but the whole point of religious belief for them is maximizing the value they get from the minimal possible effort. That they have no idea what the Ten Commandments actually contain, what the Sermon on the Mount says, who the apostles were, who Judas was, what the difference is between Catholicism or Protestantism (actual question!), or really anything other than "Jesus died for your sins" (maybe.) And they certainly don't have any idea of what "their" religion forbids them; the idea that religions typically make some things against the rules, is something that makes them squirmy -- or blank.

Boy, there are a lot of these people.

So that's the face of "Christianity" I see daily. Not on anybody's news, just walking into our clinic.

I think you guys got a problem. And it goes way, way, WAY beyond just a PR problem, and way, way, WAY beyond just a "few nutjob".

There is a cultural war on for the heart and soul, and very definition of "Christian". I don't think your side is winning.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

All of that disturbs me on a very deep level.