Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) bashed former President Trump online and said Christians who support him “don’t understand” their religion.
“I’m going to go out on a NOT limb here: this man is not a Christian,” Kinzinger said on X, formerly known as Twitter, responding to Trump’s Christmas post. “If you are a Christian who supports him you don’t understand your own religion.”
Kinzinger, one of Trump’s fiercest critics in the GOP, said in his post that “Trump is weak, meager, smelly, victim-ey, belly-achey, but he ain’t a Christian and he’s not ‘God’s man.’”
In their defense, neither do Christians that don’t back Trump.
You should talk to some ELCA Lutheran’s or Unitarian Universalists. Not all Christians are bad.
I’ve spent plenty of time with Lutherans and Quakers and the lot. What overall percentages of Christendom do you think these sects compose?
It’s irrelevant to the premise of the conversation what percentage of Christians act their religion. Your statement included all other Christians - that’s false and this person was clarifying that there are indeed Christians who are actually Christian.
Christianity is not worthy of hate. It’s a pacifist religion that very specifically calls for a separation of church and state, and glorifies the meek.
The problem is few human beings find that appealing, because by acting that way you lose a lot. That’s the point of the religion. That’s why there are so many pacifist Christian martyrs.
Hell, there being relatively few of them helps his point. The reason so many people just think “fuck man Christians are terrible” is because they only (or so close enough as to not matter) interact with shitty people who abuse Christianity for their own purpose
Meanwhile Jesus specifically cautioned against that.
I don’t think people don’t really act their religion, it’s the religion that acts them, or embodies what their ideology is, or what the ideaology of the state is, or ruling class. The best definition I’ve heard for ideology is, “the mechanism that harmonizes the principles that you want to believe with what advances your material interest.”
I grew up fundamentalist in the Mennonite Brethren and Evangelical Baptist tradition, then and was exposed to some Christian Socialist ideas and the New Monasticism movement in my later teen years. The radical pacifism of my ancestors required they migrate around Europe to avoid anabaptist persecution, conscription and military service, and they got very lucky by avoiding both the Russian Revolution escaping to the Weimar Republic (which included bribing train guards with paska buns), and the rise of the Nazis by emigrating to Canada.
I’m now an atheist but find a lot of atheists are not very knowledgeable about religion and use their performative opposition to it in a way to assert moral superiority in a way that gives them power in a political and civil religious sense. To me many atheists are ardent followers of civil religion, accepting the morality of individualism and the default morality of our culture, which itself has a lot of Christian aspects. As a Christian I found myself essentially untouched by all atheist arguments because they didn’t seem to recognize the religious beliefs I had. We actually read some of the New Atheist books like God Delusion in Bible Study, an agnostic religious professor was present at a session to answer questions and provide better resources for anyone interested.
That’s where you’re wrong kiddo. Christianity has been a religion of violence since its inception.
Don’t judge groups or individuals for what they say. Judge them for what they do. Compare what they do to what they say. Evaluate the difference to decide if you should trust them. Christianity is and pretty much always has been a religion of violent extremists who will quickly resort to some of the worst tendencies imaginable. The vast majority of civilization destroying tragedies of the last two thousand years can be attributed either directly or indirectly to the spread and or conduct of Christianity. If not that, then Christianity found its way into the justifying elements. There is nothing redeeming or virtuous about Christianity or Christians, by merit of their actions. Its mass child graves in Canada, or Ireland, or any where else you find Christians; its the consistent and repeated attempts to turn women into a second class of people; its the othering of any religion, creed, or race they can’t or haven’t subjugated: Christianity lacks any redeeming qualities, and should not be apologized for.
Who cares if there are a microscopic number of truly good pacifist Christians? Almost assuredly those people would also be good people without the stone of Christianity hanging around their necks.
The incredibly small number of “good” Christians do not even come close to making up for or justifying Christianities actual material role in making the world a worse place.
Not all of them are bad, but all of them agree blatant sexism, racism, slavery and genocide aren’t deal-breakers.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ~Steven Weinberg
The ‘all’ in your comment makes this incredibly easy to refute. I am a Christian and I believe sexism, racism, slavery and genocide are all deal breakers. Frankly I’m not sure if you’ve met any actual Christians.
The Bible makes it really clear that not everyone who calls themselves a Christian should be considered one. Have a look at Matthew 7:1-5 and also especially verse 21:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Lots of modern ‘Christians’ may have never considered that that verse might apply to them.
“Let me also quote some unsubstantiated bullshit” ~ Stalin (who was atheist, btw)
The person in that quote has lived their entire life as a shut-in. It’s the only way they could possibly think that.
This person lives in a world in which our prison systems exist. Prisons are ubiquitous, barbaric, and exist out of good intentions (removing criminality from society).
That’s not at all the only example, but it’s the easiest. Nationalism is evil based on love of country. War is evil as a concept, and the vast majority of wars were due to ideology or resources, and some were straight up just hate. People with the hands technically blood-free ardently supported the Khmer Rouge, for what they earnestly believed were noble reasons.
Like this whole idea is just nuts. Look right here on Lemmy. People on Lemmygrad are mostly not terrible people, they just exist in a culture that is misguided as fuck. The “Dirtbag Left” movement is reactionary movement to the general (in their view, sterilized, stale, and corporatized) cultural view that communism is a failure and a joke. By being abrasive and uncompromising, they’re really campaigning for legitimacy.
Now that’s really dumb, for sure, and does not work, as has been proven by their continuous isolation regardless of platform, but it is a plan that is, at least conceptually, noble.
Hollow succor when the bad ones do bad in your own name, without meaningful distinction. Christianity very clearly has no mechanism to prevent bad actors, and its god doesn’t seem to care to prevent them, either.
“A few bad apples spoil the whole cart.”
Edit: typo.
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I’ve always been a bit confused there. Historically I understand it came out of Protestantism. But my friends that attended a Unitarian Universalist “Church” seemed to do Christian things. But Is it correct that not all Unitarian Universalist have a church? Or perhaps it could be that because I went to a Lutheran Church and took religion classes with Unitarians they just were able to be conversant about theology in an intelligent and respectful way, and able to see positive aspects of it. It’s also been a while since I thought about John Adams and that form of Deist Unitarianism that believed in some God as a ground for some things.
Thanks for the correction.
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I’d be willing to bet the amount of people - believers or not - who have devoted significant study to the Bible understanding its context, translation difficulties, relevance to the epoch at the time it was written (and the time it was “set”), and it’s journey between Judaism and modern Christianity, how it has changed over the various schisms and decrees AND has a solid grip on the ecumenical questions, conventions, devices, rituals… (e.g. “What colors should a priest wear on January 6th and why?”) are few and far between.
It’s a massive text with a huge amount packed into every line. Atheist or no, anyone claiming to understand the Bible without doctorate level study is lying.