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It's a choice
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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I know this is probably going to get downvoted, but I'm getting tired of people using "evangelical Christian" as the term for the problematic flavor of Christians. If you look up what evangelical Christian means, it's just that there's an emphasis on the authority of the Bible, sharing of faith, and personal salvation. Maybe it's the sharing of faith that seems problematic*, but by context, I think you're more referring to political conservative Christians.
*If that is the case, I hope it's just when it's done in an aggressive/tactless/heavy-handed way. I'd like to think we haven't reached the point as a society where someone sharing their faith respectfully is seen as problematic.
yeah that’s the problem, particularly when you try to apply it to governance.
Which is a fool's errand, as the whole reason for Jesus (or at least a big part of it) is that you can't save people through laws. Nobody can live up to those standards, so everyone would be a criminal.
doesn’t stop people from doing it though.
The problem is the sharing. If they only did it when asked no problem. But they don’t. They leave shitty tip notes and letters on your door if not outright invoke you to talk with them by knocking randomly. They try to change the laws for everyone to conform to their own personal “salvation” and impose that on us all. They stand outside clinics and shame people trying not to die. If they kept it personal no one would care. But they don’t.
https://apnews.com/article/ohio-miscarriage-prosecution-brittany-watts-b8090abfb5994b8a23457b80cf3f27ce
There’s two others that nearly died from evangelicals trying to over share. Stop this and no one would give a fuck. Until then: in for a penny in for a pound.
It's ok, the rest of us are tired of evangelical Christians being the problematic flavor of Christianity.
That venn diagram a circle within a circle.
Whether people WANT to share your personal superstitions or not. That's why evangelical Christians are worse: they evangelize to those of us who have made it clear that we don't consent and, which is much worse, pass laws based on the assumption that everyone must believe in their favorite fairy tales.
Congratulations on getting the point! If only you hadn't immediately dismissed it again, there might have been hope for you yet.
What you don't seem to understand is that telling people who have not asked about your weird relationship to your invisible friend is an INHERENTLY aggressive, tactless and heavy-handed way to attempt to convert people. Don't make me trot out the penis example..
Because believing that the Bible should continue to have authority over modern society IS a conservative view that's very political in nature.
There's a difference between sharing your faith and making it illegal to not follow its rules. That's what I was trying to emphasize.
I fit the definition of evangelical Christian, though I generally don't use that label. I believe the God is the ultimate authority, and by extension, the Bible is the ultimate authority over Christians. That does not mean I believe in forcing people to follow its rules or punishing them if they don't. A lot of the laws simply don't work or make sense if you don't have faith, and the Bible makes it clear that you need a change of heart to follow the laws, not vice versa. That's why I'm not voting for or supporting movements to ban abortions (also the biblical basis of that is questionable) or force shops to close on Sundays.
I believe in the sharing of faith, but I'm not acting like an arch user or a vegan who has to work it into conversation every chance they get (yes, that's an exaggeration.) My friends already know I'm a Christian, and most people in Western society already know the basic tenets of the religion, so sharing that repeatedly isn't going to do much. And I can't force someone to be saved or bring them to salvation, God has to call them. So all I can and should do is help to show it's real by the way I live my life, demonstrating love for all mankind, and hope they get the idea. If that much is problematic, I think we've got issues.
The reason I take issue with demonizing evangelicals is that it comes off as "Christianity as a whole might be fine, just don't be an evangelical because they're the bad ones," and then you look it up and it becomes "you can be a Christian, just don't tell anyone and don't believe the Bible." I figured that isn't what was meant exactly, which is why I'm asking for a different label to be used, because that's how it comes off.
Youre doing it right now. No one wants to hear about your faith, or how "You might be one of the good ones" that exact thing has been said to persecute too many actual good people who are literally just trying to go about their day.
Its typically not seen as a good thing to go around proclaiming how terrible your critical thinking skills are.
Your argument is the same one cops use to justify "bad apples": it's not all of us, it's only some of us.
Before any religion starts preaching to their neighbors or "sharing the faith," y'all need to get your own folks in order. You may not demonize LGBTQ+ people, or want to ban abortion, or force others to live under the same tenets as you, but those who wear your cross and share your God do.
I would argue we definitely have issues. You will not change my mind, but religion has done significantly more harm across history, particularly Christianity, than any amount of Christian do-gooding will ever be able to undo. Millions across history have suffered, been enslaved, had their rights taken away, been tortured, and killed at the hands of "Christians," and that includes the modern day. Christian groups are the ones helping to spread HIV/AIDS across Africa because god forbid anyone use a condom, Christians are the ones pushing for abortion bans, and Christians are the ones trying to pull the US into an authoritarian theocracy.
So if you don't want to be associated with the ills of Christianity, you may want to reconsider, in my opinion, what benefit God provides to mankind. Because from where I'm sitting, it's literally zero. The world would be a much better place without religion, and you shouldn't need the promise of an eternal paradise and eternal salvation to, as you put it, "demonstrating love for all mankind." If you can't live that way without "God" telling you, then you're exactly the problem with Christianity.
"Christianity as a whole might be fine, just don't be an evangelical because they're the bad ones," that's about what I got from it. In my church at least, we're starting to focus more and more on doing actual outreach that doesn't include evangelizing. Those people who believe that we need to tell all our neighbors regardless of whether they want to hear are becoming more and more of the minority.
I get that a lot of evangelicals are bad but the level of hate Lemmy has for them is... Excessive
How can you respectfully tell someone that they will burn for all eternity for not following the same book you do?
Two of those three things are at best annoying and at worst deadly to the evangelical Christian's victims
Proselytizing in any form is a problem. Keep it to yourself.
I don't we were ever at a time where sharing your faith respectfully was problematic. We were and are always in the phase where people sharing and using their faith as an excuse to be a dick is problematic.
If someone is religious but they're chill with my people and the lgbt community then I'm chill with them.
Anyone who's actually an evangelical Christian should be. The Bible says to emulate Jesus, and that Jesus is a friend of sinners. Even if someone walks in naked and wasted with "I love Satan" tatooed on their chest and they punch you in the face and steal your wallet, love is not rude.
There's a bit of "No True Scotsman", going on here I think. You cannot deny what we all see every day, Evangelicals working every day to suppress LGBTQ and women's rights. That's what they do, that's what they are.
[Edit for typo]
No True Scotsman is a tricky one here. In the original, it works because strictly speaking, a Scotsman is just anyone who lives in Scotland, so you can't prescribe additional requirements to it. As for Christianity, I feel the term should be limited to those who actually follow the Bible, but in general use it's just anyone who chooses to call themselves that. I'd love to have a separate term for those who follow the Bible so we can avoid this problem, but if it catches on, the grifters would start calling themselves that too.
In any case, the Bible is the rulebook for Christianity, and calling yourself a Christian implies that you believe it, so I think that it's fair to say a true Christian is one who follows the Bible. But then, the Scottish law is the rulebook for Scotland. Though calling yourself a Scotsman doesn't necessarily imply that you're not a criminal, that's just the default assumption for everyone (barring racism and other prejudices.)
You're not going to split hairs out of this one. Trying to say that these are not Evangelicals because no true Evangelical would do this is pretty much the "No True Scotsman " evasion. When people say, "Evangelicals", this is exactly the group to which they are referring.
The one or two "True Evangelicals" in the US can consider themselves exempt from this thread.
And I think you could waste your entire life looking for a single person that fits your arbitrary definition of what a true Christian is.
All you're doing here is trying to carve yourself out a comfortable little niche where you can hide and pretend that the criticisms against Christianity as an institution don't apply to you, because that's easier than honestly examining your belief system.
By that metric we'd have only a dozen or so "real" evangelical Christians
Yeah, and that's sad, but it's a narrow road.
All flavors are problematic. It shows a lack of critical thinking skills that leak into every facet of their lives, showing that they can’t be depended on to make rational decisions. The vast majority of this worlds problems have religion as a root cause, and the rest are just greed, which goes hand in hand with most organized religions.
If you call yourself a Christian while evangelical Christians are making all these problems, you are helping them make problems. They love more than anything being able to claim that they're in the right because they're in the majority. If you want to follow the teachings of a middle eastern Jew from the Roman era, that's fine, but don't call yourself a Christian because that label has been ruined.
Not only that, it's unlikely most of the beliefs, teachings and rituals done since the establishment of the Eastern Orthodoxy (~110AD?) are part of Jesus* original teachings. Add the differences that happened after the catholic schism, then protestant reform, plus other shenanigans and you get to today.
^*^ ^Him^ ^or^ ^any^ ^other^ ^figures^ ^that^ ^were^ ^responsible^ ^for^ ^the^ ^"creation"^ ^of^ ^the^ ^new^ ^religion^
But they don't like being called fundamentalist zealots and they get less angry if you use terms that make them appear less crazy.
If someone's out trying to bring about a second Holocaust, you can call them a Nazi. It wouldn't be right to call them "someone with an old German mindset."
You should probably look up what evangelical actually means then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism
It requires proselytizing.
If that's the case, why is it that every single evangelical pastor, on TV, is absolutely guilty of using The Lord's Name in Vain?
That refers to attempting to cast magic using The Lord's Name, not cuss words.
Catholic means universal, but not all Christ worshippers are Catholic.
Orthodox means correct, but not everyone thinks Orthodox believes are correct.
Evangelical leaders do cause so many issue in the US.
The pages from the Bible are worse than toilet paper
I read the Bible as a child, because I believed what l was taught.
Now, Jesus is my one and only role model - Jesus sacrificed his life to spread a message that is only more valid 2k years later
Jesus was the shit. He's my only hero - everyone else I've ever looked up to let me down.... Jesus died so he would never be the villain.
He never needed to be magic - he was just in harmony with the creator. Be was in harmony with existence lol. His every appearance was to deliver a message
His message was bastardized. Read the new testament - without the assumption of magic. Read it for yourself - as a child, I got through it all on the toilet. - and I read it cover to cover, you can read the new testament in few hours