Inspired by something another user said, I feel this question deserves discussion. Also, I am shamelessly creating exchristian content. We are still a small group but I like it here now and it will get better, but only if we use it. “Creating content” just means using the site. Talk to me. I’m open to input. Maybe I’m wrong… but:
Liberal/Progressive/Apologist Christians should not get a pass. The Bible is clear on a number of horrific things and is totally open to interpretation about another bunch of horrific things. In both the new and old testament. I argue that liberal Christianity is both insincere and perpetuates fundamentalist Christian beliefs, within a society, generation over generation.
The key dependent is childhood indoctrination. Liberal Christians still feed their kids the dogma. It all works. Not every kid, but some of them, from this Liberal Christian family, will have a hard time with some part of it and go reading the Bible. They say the Bible is the truth right?
They read the Bible and see where their parents are fudging it. They want to do better. Depending on circumstance, they either tighten up the faith, or they go full in to fundamentalism. I have seen it happen multiple times in 1, 2, and 3 generations in people I’ve met an known. Anecdotal, sure, but still.
Then, I argue, the cycle continues. How did Christianity survive this long? I’d argue this is all part of it. Even “lightly” indoctrinating children adds a chance, I’d argue significant, that the child becomes a fundy 20, 30, or 40 years in the future, when the chips are down, and someone says “come to my church, they’ll help”
Should I be more accepting? I’d love to hear what you think on this subject.
No, you shouldn’t be more accepting. “What is good about moderate and liberal Christians is how much of the bible they ignore”, I don’t remember where I heard that, it’s not my original thought. Things will get better when they aren’t believers anymore. They are the ones making demands on us non-believers. They started it, not you.
From Sam Harris:
Religious moderates imagine that theirs is the path to peace. But this very ideal of tolerance now drives us toward the abyss. Religious violence still plagues our world because our religions are intrinsically hostile to one another. Where they appear otherwise, it is because secular knowledge and secular interests have restrained the most lethal improprieties of faith. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.
Great quote. It was Harris’s “A Letter to a Christian Nation” that first woke me up to the idea that Christian moderates actually perpetuate the problem.
