Not getting this is part of how you get people insisting that right-wingers aren’t “real Christians”, which lets them off the hook and erases the real harm that form of Christianity has done
I don’t like those people, as a Christian I have very little in common with them, but they’re Christians too
Ask me to lay out the basic tenets of my own weird personal Christian remix and you’ll get stuff (like I can honor and invoke other gods while being a follower of Christ) that ought to make one declare that I’m not a “real Christian” either!
Yeah, I don’t think my parents raised me Lutheran enough because once I saw Catholicism culturally in practice when I went to Portugal at age 9, I was probably a lost cause
Their mistake for raising me on stuff like Narnia and Tolkien and then showing me a form of Christianity with an elaborate magic system
(They know all of this and are extremely amused)
But seriously, dismissing Christians who commit harm as "not real Christians" is the same kind of defensive fragility as some white folks have who refuse to learn about and learn from their racial legacy. It's nescience all the way down.
Right. They’re not MY people, they’re NOTHING LIKE ME, therefore despite the fact that we both call ourselves Christians I CLEARLY have no obligation to confront the harm they’ve done and I’ve been complicit in
Heck, I’d argue that dismissing “bad Christians” is a poor excuse to avoid the hard work of rebuke and correcting that followers of Jesus are called to participate in. “We don’t claim them” is a cop-out.
Exactly this!! As a Christian, I hate the damage they have caused by using their religion as a weapon, but that doesn't mean they aren't Christians too. And I feel like dismissing them as "not real Christians" also serves as an excuse for us to not fight back, you know?
Like, if we dismiss them as "not real Christians" we don't have to take responsibility for the real harm Christianity has done to so many people. I hope that makes sense, my brain is mush today
I get scared to tell people I'm a Christian because of the harm that my religion has done, but... my discomfort isn't important. Pushing back is, in whatever small way I can.
More people need education in comparative religion; they'd find underlying values are not that differnt. One of the best courses I ever took in uni was Christianity in the Context of World Religions, taught by Hans Kung. A real eye-opener
I have long since left religion, but my lingering belief is that anyone who self-identifies as a Christian is a Christian, no matter who that inconveniences.
My Soc of Religion prof used to say you're a member of a religion if you profess at least 3/4 of the basic doctrine fairly accurately and feel at least mildly guilty about the observances you skip.
There's really not much of a litmus test beyond the creeds and early councils, and even then it's patently absurd to say that non-Nicene Christians like Oneness Pentecostals aren't Christian even if they do reject the doctrine of the Trinity
I will say that I think Mormonism has diverged enough so that attempts by regular Christianity to fix it are impracticable. But, like, the SBC? Yeah, we have to keep contending with them.
