ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 6:49 pmKen, I am seriously interested in your viewpoint on this. I'm not trying to trap you, just trying to see if we have any common ground that we can start from to try to understand each other.
Sure. I grew up in the Mennonite Church before the merge that became MCUSA and my father became a Mennonite minister later in life after I left home. My huge extended family has a variety of ministers, professors farmers, etc. Some ultra-conservative (politically) some very liberal. After I got married my wife's medical career took us to Waco TX. She grew up Catholic and wasn't particularly interested in the Mennonite games and clannishness of the church and we eventually settled on Episcopal as a compromise we were comfortable with and made some very good friends in the Episcopal Church there.
One of the most distasteful things about living in an intensely Southern Baptist community like Waco is how performative all the Evangelical Christianity is. It is always aggressively in your face. Public prayers at football games, school board meetings, graduations, faculty meetings at a public HS, etc. Cheerleaders holding up bible verse signs. The big local Baptist megachurch youth groups would produce color-coded t-shirts and all wear them on the same day at HS so everyone would know who the cool Christian kids were and who wasn't. They dominated the clubs, student government, sports, etc. But is very alienating to every kid who isn't part of that group. The kids of other faiths, and those who just aren't the popular crowd. In a city with 200 churches it isn't enough to put up Christian creches in the church front yards at Christmas we have to have a battle about putting one in front of city hall as well. And put a 10 Commandments monument in front of the courthouse even though at best only 2 of the 10 Commandments have any basis in law. I find it all the opposite of the teachings of Jesus about how we are supposed to pray in secret not perform in public, and treat our neighbors and strangers in our midst with love and generosity. Its about "look at me" rather than being generous and loving. And in Waco it's the same strain of Christianity that violently supported 100 years of Jim Crow segregation and is utterly untroubled by racism that remains within the community.
Other faiths have their own performative elements. Hasidic Jews with all their special rules. Muslims with the dietary rules and rules about dress. The focus can slip to "Look at me God, how devout I am" "Or Look at me general public, how devout we are" rather than asking: "how should we treat others?
I find the best parts of Christianity to be those that focus on how we should treat others. With love and charity and generosity. And the worst parts of Christianity to be the judgmental performative aspects. Everyone. And I mean absolutely everyone picks and chooses which aspects of Christianity they wish to follow. Some follow a vow of poverty and turn inward like the monastic societies. Others spend their time evangelizing on street corners. Some focus on outward appearances. And others pick specific narrow teachings to focus their lives around. Speaking in tongues, handling snakes, protesting abortion, helping refugees, etc. etc. Every denomination does the same thing to some extent. And we all have our own personal strengths and traits that we struggle with.
Myself I struggle with being judgmental. As a teacher this can be a bad thing. When faced with a difficult and trying student I sometimes have to remind myself "this is someone's child who loves them." And I have remind myself that many kids live unsafe lives with abusive parents, dangerous families, economic uncertainty and even hunger. And that maybe learning the Krebs Cycle isn't the most important thing in this child's life today. Or when I'm driving around my own city and see homeless encampments under freeway bridges I find myself being judgmental and intolerant and wishing the city would just clean it all up and chase them away. Or back in Texas the obnoxious idiots rolling coal in their tricked out F250s with the confederate flags in back blasting around town full of road rage. Being charitable and generous can be a struggle.
I have a cousin, now deceased, who was a very conservative Mennonite minister. Conservative politically not in Menno terms. I think they were Conservative Conference. He was a big huge burly guy who made the focus of his ministry to be anti-LGBT. He devoted thousands of hours to that one mission. Fighting against other ministers who were more tolerant within their own churches. Trying to get other ministers expelled or disciplined. Going to school every school board meeting to rail against trans kids using the bathroom. Campaigning against gay marriage. He would become enraged and shout down any others who disagreed. Red faced, veins bulging. Full of spite and hate while always quoting verses from memory. It was not a good look for him or Christianity. People found him terrifying. And I would think to myself: "Out of all the injustice and suffering and violence in the world, this is what you want to focus your life on? Hating the most vulnerable among us who just want to be left alone? Is that the picture of Christianity that you want to present to the outside world?
So when I see these sorts of things crop up in the news. The wedding cake baker who decides to tell a gay couple "I refuse to serve you because I disapprove of who you are" I know that it comes across as being judgmental and intolerant and uncharitable. It is saying "my disapproval is more important than helping my customers, who are probably my neighbors, celebrate a day that is important to them. And for that reason it comes across (at least to the outside world) as being performative. Publicly expressing my disapproval is more important to me than simply helping my neighbors or customers.
And since we are talking about the decline in Christianity. It is this culture war stuff that I honestly think is accelerating that decline. Along with the vast majority of evangelical church leaders who cast their lot entirely with Trump. I work with young people every day and when they see that sort of thing they just roll their eyes and want no part of it at all. If you live in a closed Menno world full of youth who are carefully curated to be carbon copies of their conservative parents you may not see it. But in the wider outside world, Christianity frankly looks angry, intolerant, bigoted, and ignorant. Especially to a large majority of youth who tend not to hate or disapprove of their LGBT classmates. Even the right wing Southern Baptist ones in Texas. They really don't. And who, like most youth, earnestly seek to make the world a better place.
So there you have it. I think the angry intolerant and political aspects of Christianity are what is driving it's decline in this country. I think Trump represented peak right wing political Christianity. Or Christian nationality. Whatever you want to call it. And much of the rest of the country took a good 4-year look at it and decided they wanted to have nothing of it. Every year the country becomes more diverse, less white, more urban, and more tolerant. If Christianity wants to thrive and survive as a dominant faith, it needs to learn how to swim in those waters, not just Trump-land where it is speaking only to the faithful.
There are so few that even understand...