1) I once heard a comedian sum up quite well how I feel about Christianity. He said that Elvis and Jesus were a lot alike, and one of the reasons he gave was this: "I like a lot of the stuff they did, but some their fans get on my nerves." And the truth is, I know a lot of wonderful Christians, and a fair few Christians who I'd like to gag and send somewhere else for a long long time. At its heart, Christianity is an admirable religion - love your neighbor, help the poor, try to be basically good.
2) Now we come to the other half of Christianity (split arbitrarily in half by me, into parts I like and parts I don't like. I freely admit it's an arbitrary split.) One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity that grates on me is that 'in order to get into heaven, you have to believe this way.' Good Christians who really are trying to be good and helpful to other people will, if they really believe in this tenet, immediately try to convert anyone they can, because they'll want as many people as possible to get into heaven. This unfortunately leads to a LOT of tension. I don't know that there's really any solution to it, but maybe a compromise can be reached - every Christian I meet is officially allowed to ask me to convert *once* and only once. Once I refuse, they aren't allowed to ask again, and they have to accept my refusal. Any chance that could become policy?
3) This is perhaps the most important thing I want to say. Christians are not a majority - not really. The truth is, get any three Christians together and they will disagree on something fairly fundamental to their faith. I can't count how many sects and branches of Christianity there are - Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and then the giant conglomeration we lump into Protestantism... This is something I say whenever the issue of 'separation of Church and State' comes up in US politics. You want your church to run the government? Well, the truth is no one sect of Christianity has a majority. Whoever you put in charge, eventually a majority of Americans will disagree with them. And the thing I like to bring up the most is, if you separate (as I do) the Southern Baptists from the other Baptists, the plurality of religion in this country goes to the Catholics, and most of the people who talk about religion being important in politics aren't thinking of Catholicism when they say that.
Basically what I'm saying is, you probably *could* argue that you're a minority, if you identify yourself as part of a particular branch of Christianity. If you really wanted to.
Oh, and I'm also saying that (with the exception of recovering Catholics ragging on Catholicism) people that make jokes about Christianity often lump the sects artificially.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-04 01:24 pm (UTC)1) I once heard a comedian sum up quite well how I feel about Christianity. He said that Elvis and Jesus were a lot alike, and one of the reasons he gave was this: "I like a lot of the stuff they did, but some their fans get on my nerves." And the truth is, I know a lot of wonderful Christians, and a fair few Christians who I'd like to gag and send somewhere else for a long long time. At its heart, Christianity is an admirable religion - love your neighbor, help the poor, try to be basically good.
2) Now we come to the other half of Christianity (split arbitrarily in half by me, into parts I like and parts I don't like. I freely admit it's an arbitrary split.) One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity that grates on me is that 'in order to get into heaven, you have to believe this way.' Good Christians who really are trying to be good and helpful to other people will, if they really believe in this tenet, immediately try to convert anyone they can, because they'll want as many people as possible to get into heaven. This unfortunately leads to a LOT of tension. I don't know that there's really any solution to it, but maybe a compromise can be reached - every Christian I meet is officially allowed to ask me to convert *once* and only once. Once I refuse, they aren't allowed to ask again, and they have to accept my refusal. Any chance that could become policy?
3) This is perhaps the most important thing I want to say. Christians are not a majority - not really. The truth is, get any three Christians together and they will disagree on something fairly fundamental to their faith. I can't count how many sects and branches of Christianity there are - Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and then the giant conglomeration we lump into Protestantism... This is something I say whenever the issue of 'separation of Church and State' comes up in US politics. You want your church to run the government? Well, the truth is no one sect of Christianity has a majority. Whoever you put in charge, eventually a majority of Americans will disagree with them. And the thing I like to bring up the most is, if you separate (as I do) the Southern Baptists from the other Baptists, the plurality of religion in this country goes to the Catholics, and most of the people who talk about religion being important in politics aren't thinking of Catholicism when they say that.
Basically what I'm saying is, you probably *could* argue that you're a minority, if you identify yourself as part of a particular branch of Christianity. If you really wanted to.
Oh, and I'm also saying that (with the exception of recovering Catholics ragging on Catholicism) people that make jokes about Christianity often lump the sects artificially.