It is hard. Our church updated their policy on guns a couple years ago. No guns allowed on church grounds with the only exception being active duty law enforcement. We had a brother who found this to be hard enough that he stopped coming to church. His wife and kids continued on for a couple more months, but it is difficult when only one parent is encouraging family participation and they have gradually drifted away.
There are good and bad Christian’s. God will judge each of us eventually. The Christian’s I know are good people and many do missionary type work in country’s like Haiti where they build schools, sewer systems, provide medical attention, etc. They spend their time away from home to help those in need. They also have food and clothing banks for the poor. The worst Christian a ever new was my uncle. He was a deacon at a southern Baptist church and elder. He would not let his wife swim any where near another man and constantly told everyone what a super good Christian he was, patted himself in the back constantly. It was always about him. What I hated about him the most was during family reunions or holiday gatherings he would tell at least on N joke and they were disgusting, just like he was. He made it perfectly clear that blacks were not equal to him and definitely hated them. I been exposed all my life to different churches, denominations, and Christian’s. I found there to be very few bad ones just like we find in every day people.
I like your first paragraph, but I don’t think the second is true. I think most are like tilly. He’s conservative, but generally fair minded, and I think he tries to live his faith. I’m not a Christian - in the sense I don’t belief Jesus was the son of god and rose from the dead - but I respect tilly and those who follow the teachings of Jesus. (I like the Jeffersonian Bible.)
See my other post. I will say unequivocally that a true Christian does not support Donald Trump, who lives a life Jesus would condemn.
Would a true Christian support any American president or even the country itself, one of the greatest forces for evil, misery and suffering in the world? IMO, a person calling themselves an American patriot and Christian is fooling themselves about at least one of those things.
That’s what I’m talking about. Many people call themselves Christian but it’s not a faith to them, it’s a shield they hide behind. They say they’re being attacked because of their faith so that others will gather to them for support and protection. Marco Rubio is a prime example who posts a daily Bible verse to proclaim his Christianity, but his actions are anything but Christ-like.
Being “good” is aspirational, and there are degrees of “goodness”. Most people in my life experience are good and kind and helpful. Trump is not. There are many others like him, but he’s an outlier. We are how we were raised, and most parents do a good job of that. The ones that don’t usually have hateful and spiteful children, and they’re the ones who make life so unpleasant.
Seems like people are more likely to ascribe "trying to be good" or aspirational goodness to people they identify with by blood, politically or some other affinity, I'm not sure that was Jesus' message.
Agree, thankfully my church doesn’t delve into it. There is so much good work and helping others that can be done with that time and energy. getting into politics is divisive and angry and IMO drives people away from the church. Especially when religion is primarily used as a cudgel against “them”.
This is the problem I run into when people only hear or read what I’m saying with a view to find something to attack rather than trying to understand my point. I wrote this: “I think there are good Christian people out there that live a good Christian life, but they can’t be identified by church attendance or following a particular church doctrine. They can only be identified by their actions and that makes them a rare commodity.” So I don’t think I'm painting with a broad brush. But to ignore the negative impact on our lives by organized religion is indefensible. We need to look no further than the SCOTUS to see it’s now being run by the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Politicians are being told to vote a certain way by church leaders or they’ll be denied communion, or they’ll be excluded from the church’s voter guide. I would prefer to vote for a President that’s atheist because I want someone who believes that when they push that button to start a nuclear war, that there’s nothing after. No pearly gates, no 72 virgins, nothing.
"The survey also identified a close overlap between support for Trump and a desire to break down the walls between church and state. Seventy-three percent of respondents who believe Trump was a “great” or “good” president also wanted church and state to be integrated." Assuming this is accurate, one interesting aspect to me is that these folks would seem to otherwise have very high levels of distrust of the government a/k/a the deep state. I wonder if they've thoroughly considered the potential repercussions of an integration of church and state. They may like being able to put Christian monuments on public property, for example. But if the political winds change and/or the percentage of the non religiously affiliated continues to increase, might the government have more power to regulate churches after the wall of separation is razed? Given that even sincere Christians strongly disagree about so many issues, practices, and doctrines, might integration of government and religion result in a watered-down, luke warm version of Christianity they don't recognize - maybe similar to the way that Christmas is largely seen as a commercial season celebrated by tons of people who aren't even Christian? Do they trust in public school teachers to write prayers or teach their kids about the Bible? Would they be okay with a Jewish teacher calling into question the divinity of Jesus or a Protestant teacher making comments about transubstantiation? I wonder whether they have thought through the other side of this coin.
Not only that but church is boring. They need to change their message, and/or how they message or they’re going to continue to bleed members. America’s Church membership is at its lowest numbers in years, poll finds
I think this post misses the point I was trying to make in the OP. The article was specifically differentiating "Christians" from "Christian Nationalist." It is not Christianity that was raised as a concern, but the jumbled conflagration of religion and nationalism (and perhaps cultural identity). This violates our founding principles and historically has caused much violence/death/war. But those generically attacking all Christians in posts above also perfectly miss the point of the OP and article. The article cites many Christians who reject nationalism and extremist churches. Those Christians are rejecting and have formed groups to fight Christian nationalism. Why attack them? Kind of perfectly encapsulates the current world where most folks agree on what is important - rejecting hateful, judgmental people. But instead of standing together on that important principal, folks get bogged down in attacking the motivation/belief/culture of the other. Christians in this case feel attacked, though they were not in the OP, just Christian Nationalism. And some folks feel the need to attack all Christians based on these Nationalist knuckleheads, despite the fact that most Christians are not Christian nationalist (though the percentage has risen - troublingly to both groups). Sad to me.
That evangelical Christians are still Trump's most devoted supporters tells you all you need to know. Christian nationalism is not some fringe offshoot. It's infected American Christianity and true Christians should be very concerned about it.
Was on the Jax news yesterday that a few local churches were filing a suit against the Methodist umbrella for allowing gay marriage and women and gay as clergy….. Crazy abounds
Maybe I missed it. But there are far bigger issues than Christian Nationalism when it comes to Christianity and following Christ. Apostasy is extremely dangerous. And there absolutely are some churches that peddle nationalism in their churches. But this is a very small group. I got the feeling you think this is a bigger thing than it really is. Cherry picking a couple of churches to make it look like Christian Nationalism is a real threat and major thing happening in Churches across the nation is pushing a false narrative if you ask me. A much bigger issue with the Church in America is that many (denominations for that matter) preach apostasy from the pulpit on matters to make people feel good. But that is a different topic. I apologize if I missed something from the OP. But I have not been to a church where the narrative of the OP has ever been an issue.
A little more depth would be that they are filing suit to leave the UMC organization without paying high fees to the organization to keep the church buildings that their congregations paid for (some over 100 years ago). They don't agree with the current leadership, but the suit isn't over forcing the UMC to practice a particular form of theology as you suggest. Its also not just a few churches...its almost 100 across the State of FL.
