[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.
Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.
And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn’t make them hypocrites?
For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
The gambit of American Christianity is just the wildest snarled mess of hair splitting bullshit one can hope to theologically take seriously (there are actual church splits over folding chairs vs pews).
“BROADLY” you can understand American Christianity as being one of two flavors, what you’re observing is Evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes a “born again” experience and a “personal relationship with God”, basically they all but come right out and say that they believe what’s convenient to their already existing worldviews because these are the Christians that derive from trying to preach a religion that holds the story of Exodus as a core myth to slave oligarchs and also to their slaves.
The other flavor of American Christianity is “Mainline Christianity”, this is not to mean mainstream, Mainline refers to how these are the denominations that found the most traction along rail towns. This is the group of denominations closest to what you consider to be what Christianity is meant to be, and they’re currently having severe retention issues because the evangelicals are making the mainliners’ younger members disgusted with Christianity altogether.
This is interesting, but I don’t think it attempts to answer the question. I think there’s a correlation between people that can so passionately believe in a obvious bullshit, whether it be the Bible or Reaganomics/MAGA.
I mean if you’re looking for a nature answer you’re probably not gonna find it with me.
I don’t trust these people, I believe they wish harm on me, but I don’t believe in the slightest that there’s a facet to them as a fact of their biology or anything else of that unchangeable nature that makes them into these zealous lunatics.
A toxic community will begin to warp even the most innocent souls into something far more vile and ugly, and these places and churches have been incestuously reinforcing toxicity for hundreds of years now.
Grew up in a religious household with 8 years of private school operated by a religious institution in the states.
Never really believed and went full atheist around 13 years old.
Good feelings about something not on the bad list (usually something sexual) they take as a message from god. In other words, if they want something that benefits them, those feelings are used to justify their shit behavior because its some divine touch making them feel that way.
At least that’s been my experience. I wouldn’t trust them either.
The Bible isn’t obvious BS.