That’d be because most Christians are Talibangelicals & have little in common with the fellow they claim to fellow. I’ve always said if Christians followed only the Gospels in that bible of theirs & forgot/ignored everything else, the world would be a better place..
For two thousand years, Christianity existed on the foundation of hating people, namely Jews, Muslims and other non-Christian groups. You can just turn around and say “well all the Christians since the dawn of Christianity are fake Christians, including St Peter, Martin Luther and every single pope except maybe three”
Own your fucking shit. Do better.
Also, while I’m sure @jimmyswaggert didn’t mean it this way, there’s kinda some hugely antisemitic undertones to the whole “The problem with Xianity is all those Jewish texts argument.
Stop blaming Jews for uniquely Xian expressions of bigotry.
The history of Christianity has been riddled with bigotry, but it isn’t the book’s fault. Not the Pentateuch, not the Prophets, not the Gospels, not the Epistles. The problem is, and has always been, the perversion of the text and its meaning by deliberate misinterpretation, and the long-term strategy that has plagued Christian communities of restricting access to the text.
@twodotsknowwhy, while I agree that Christianity has frequently embraced and perpetuated bigotry and oppression, I take umbrage with the idea that Christianity was founded on these things. The Bible doesn’t espouse them. The Apostles railed about bigotry in the early Church on a regular basis - that stuff is in the Bible itself! Are you claiming that Peter, a Jewish man, hated Jews? did the early Church somehow hate Muslims in the first century AD, when Islam didn’t even exist (the prophet Muhammad wasn’t born until the 6th century AD)?
The Church does need to do better. We have taught for centuries things that are not only antithetical to the book we claim to consider holy, but which are offensive on purely secular principles as well. But Christianity is not based on these things. We can choose to practice our religion in a way that respects others, rather than denigrating them.
Obviously I dont think that Christians hated Muslims before the founding of Islam, only that for 2,000 years Christians hated non-Christian groups, including when relevant, Muslims. Use some damn critical thinking.
There is antisemitism in the new testament. Therefore, Christianity was founded on antisemitism. For two thousand years. Christians defined themselves by their hatred of non-Christians. Look at the Crusades for fucks sake.
Are you saying that every single Christian until the mid 20th century wasn’t a real Christians or didnt really understand Christianity? That’s quite a claim.
I’m not trying to make sweeping claims about every single Christian who ever lived. I’m trying to discuss the interpretation of the Bible which has been taught by significant individuals, and which has been used in harmful ways by those individuals. The fact is, we don’t KNOW about the internal experience of every Christian who lived - not even about MOST Christians. We know about what specific, famous, influential Christians did and said.
Some Christian thinkers - admittedly, influential ones - put out harmful interpretations of the Scriptures, which were adopted by some ordinary Christians. Do you have transcripts of every sermon ever preached during the past 2,000 years, to prove they were all based in hate? I don’t. Do you have specific demographics of all the Christians who ever lived, to show they were all bigots? Cause I don’t have those, either, and I’d sure like to see them.
I would also like to note that the Bible, as it exists in the English-speaking world, is a translated work. Some translations of the original have been bigoted. In fact, I would even cede that MOST, if not all, have contained elements of bigotry. However, the content of the translation does not necessarily reflect the content of the original. I don’t claim to fully understand the Bible, but after my own personal study (reaching back about two decades now) I can say with confidence that modern translations are flawed, and that the original text can be extraordinarily opaque.
