Not at all what I meant. It’s just, think about the fact that, by definition, churches are organizations. It’s really easy to crowdsource funding when you have an organization with lots of members (or if you’ve been, say, pillaging and squirrelling away filthy lucre for hundreds of years.)
Now compare and contrast with a person who leaves a church after realizing the message in their book is different than the hateful message being spewed. A singular person can’t even begin to hope to fight the financial resource this campaign commands. There’s no special church for “people who are Christian who just realized their church was being hateful and changed churches” and even if there was, those people would be wary of joining a new church.
Sure, but with the sheer number of churches, you’d think the “good” Christians would all coalesce around one that is critical of the bigots and fascists who claim to speak for them. Surely in the roughly 2000 years of church history, there would be plenty of time for a “good” church to form and attract members.
People who leave hateful churches still joined them in the first place.
Right, but you’re just dodging the question by kicking it further back in time. Are all Christian churches bad? If not, then why aren’t more of them speaking out against the bad ones representing them? Isn’t their silence complicity in the hate propagated in their Lord’s name? Are we saying all Christian parents are bad for raising their kids in hateful churches?
I obviously refuse to generalize to “all churches bad” as I haven’t been to them. I can say that in my work, I take 2 disabled women to church on Sundays (I’m not a religious person but my job is to enable them to live their lives and they love the music and seeing their families) and their church has explicitly been saying things like “stop idolizing politicians” and “stop asking if someone deserves to be hungry and just feed them.”
I think people who never step foot in churches aren’t qualified to assume they all say the same thing and I think taking the view that they’re all evil is a little too convenient. If life were that black and white, it would be so much simpler.
If 11 people sit down to eat dinner with a Nazi, that’s a dozen Nazis sharing a meal.
I know there are reasonable people with good hearts who attend church. I know there are progressive churches who aren’t based on hate and bigotry. I have spent plenty of time in churches to recognize that they can be a force for positive change in the world.
My argument is that they, the good ones, do not criticize the bad ones because the good ones do not benefit from it. They do not want to invite the scorn and ire of the bigots because it’s bad for business. There’s a reason why the bad churches are booming, and why the progressive churches are dying. The good Christians are putting their faith in God to sort it out, while the bad Christians are preying on the fears and jealousy hiding in the hearts of all humans.
I respect your opinion but it feels too monolithic to me. It’s a statement that encompasses 100% of people and categorizes them and I can’t ever get behind such a thing. There could be, for all I know, churches that do speak out again “Christians.” How would I know?
You’d know because you would hear it, everytime Christians spewed hate, the “good” ones would be there to tell them to shut the fuck up. Probably not with those words, but with that force. They would be telling the world that fascist bigots don’t speak for them, and that’s not what their faith is about.
Like I said at the top, if fascist bigots claimed to speak for me, I’d be there to tell them they don’t.
All the decent Christians are poor? Only bad Christians donate money to churches?
Not at all what I meant. It’s just, think about the fact that, by definition, churches are organizations. It’s really easy to crowdsource funding when you have an organization with lots of members (or if you’ve been, say, pillaging and squirrelling away filthy lucre for hundreds of years.)
Now compare and contrast with a person who leaves a church after realizing the message in their book is different than the hateful message being spewed. A singular person can’t even begin to hope to fight the financial resource this campaign commands. There’s no special church for “people who are Christian who just realized their church was being hateful and changed churches” and even if there was, those people would be wary of joining a new church.
Sure, but with the sheer number of churches, you’d think the “good” Christians would all coalesce around one that is critical of the bigots and fascists who claim to speak for them. Surely in the roughly 2000 years of church history, there would be plenty of time for a “good” church to form and attract members.
People who leave hateful churches still joined them in the first place.
Or were born into them.
Right, but you’re just dodging the question by kicking it further back in time. Are all Christian churches bad? If not, then why aren’t more of them speaking out against the bad ones representing them? Isn’t their silence complicity in the hate propagated in their Lord’s name? Are we saying all Christian parents are bad for raising their kids in hateful churches?
I obviously refuse to generalize to “all churches bad” as I haven’t been to them. I can say that in my work, I take 2 disabled women to church on Sundays (I’m not a religious person but my job is to enable them to live their lives and they love the music and seeing their families) and their church has explicitly been saying things like “stop idolizing politicians” and “stop asking if someone deserves to be hungry and just feed them.”
I think people who never step foot in churches aren’t qualified to assume they all say the same thing and I think taking the view that they’re all evil is a little too convenient. If life were that black and white, it would be so much simpler.
If 11 people sit down to eat dinner with a Nazi, that’s a dozen Nazis sharing a meal.
I know there are reasonable people with good hearts who attend church. I know there are progressive churches who aren’t based on hate and bigotry. I have spent plenty of time in churches to recognize that they can be a force for positive change in the world.
My argument is that they, the good ones, do not criticize the bad ones because the good ones do not benefit from it. They do not want to invite the scorn and ire of the bigots because it’s bad for business. There’s a reason why the bad churches are booming, and why the progressive churches are dying. The good Christians are putting their faith in God to sort it out, while the bad Christians are preying on the fears and jealousy hiding in the hearts of all humans.
I respect your opinion but it feels too monolithic to me. It’s a statement that encompasses 100% of people and categorizes them and I can’t ever get behind such a thing. There could be, for all I know, churches that do speak out again “Christians.” How would I know?
You’d know because you would hear it, everytime Christians spewed hate, the “good” ones would be there to tell them to shut the fuck up. Probably not with those words, but with that force. They would be telling the world that fascist bigots don’t speak for them, and that’s not what their faith is about.
Like I said at the top, if fascist bigots claimed to speak for me, I’d be there to tell them they don’t.