Liberal churches report surge in participation in reaction to Trump presidency

[Antonio the Sixth]

Give it a year or two, and things will change back.

"Real Christian"'s hatred of "liberal" churches is truly strange.  I don't think Jesus would hate 'em!

Liberal churches tend to be cesspools of hypocrisy, materialism, and selfishness which dilute Christianity into just another worldly social club interested primarily in virtue signalling and appeasement.

Conservative churches do this all the time.

I'm not saying that liberal churches are without fault on those things, but the prosperity preachers and Jerry Falwells of the world have been far more detrimental to Western Christianity, and the moral bedrock of civilization as a whole, than any John Shelby Spong-esque figure.  When the postmodernists and the fundamentalists and the materialists are the ones who set the moral and religious dialogue, this sadly is the end result.  The world is falling further from God's grace, but not for what the fundamentalists believe is causing that.

Not to mention the fact that Evangelicals endorsed a candidate who is in every respect antithetical to all the "values" they're supposed to care about. Then again, so did RI...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Give it a year or two, and things will change back.

"Real Christian"'s hatred of "liberal" churches is truly strange.  I don't think Jesus would hate 'em!

Liberal churches tend to be cesspools of hypocrisy, materialism, and selfishness which dilute Christianity into just another worldly social club interested primarily in virtue signalling and appeasement.

Conservative churches do this all the time.

I'm not saying that liberal churches are without fault on those things, but the prosperity preachers and Jerry Falwells of the world have been far more detrimental to Western Christianity, and the moral bedrock of civilization as a whole, than any John Shelby Spong-esque figure.  When the postmodernists and the fundamentalists and the materialists are the ones who set the moral and religious dialogue, this sadly is the end result.  The world is falling further from God's grace, but not for what the fundamentalists believe is causing that.

Not to mention the fact that Evangelicals endorsed a candidate who is in every respect antithetical to all the "values" they're supposed to care about. Then again, so did RI...

Uh, I voted for Kasich in the primaries and Maturen in the general, so...

Oh? I remember you saying you planned to vote for T***p at some point. Did you change your mind?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Give it a year or two, and things will change back.

"Real Christian"'s hatred of "liberal" churches is truly strange.  I don't think Jesus would hate 'em!

Liberal churches tend to be cesspools of hypocrisy, materialism, and selfishness which dilute Christianity into just another worldly social club interested primarily in virtue signalling and appeasement.

Conservative churches do this all the time.

I'm not saying that liberal churches are without fault on those things, but the prosperity preachers and Jerry Falwells of the world have been far more detrimental to Western Christianity, and the moral bedrock of civilization as a whole, than any John Shelby Spong-esque figure.  When the postmodernists and the fundamentalists and the materialists are the ones who set the moral and religious dialogue, this sadly is the end result.  The world is falling further from God's grace, but not for what the fundamentalists believe is causing that.

Not to mention the fact that Evangelicals endorsed a candidate who is in every respect antithetical to all the "values" they're supposed to care about. Then again, so did RI...

Uh, I voted for Kasich in the primaries and Maturen in the general, so...

Oh? I remember you saying you planned to vote for T***p at some point. Did you change your mind?

I waffled on the matter quite a bit but ultimately didn't vote for Trump.

Good to know.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I hate to go full moderate hero, especially in a thread as PROMISING as this one, but I think both of you make good points--there's nothing wrong with having a more reserved, or even skittish and uncertain, faith, but forthrightness and willingness to proclaim the Gospel do need to be treated as normative and as the ideal to strive for.

I can't really disagree, but I'd point out that many of the ways in which people (especially Evangelicals of the kind RINO Tom is talking about) tend to express their forthrightness and willingness to proclaim the Gospel is often arrogant, condescending and even ostentatious. I'll admit I used to oppose these manifestations for political reasons, but that's not really an issue I have any more. One of the reasons it bother me now is that, very often, it comes across as virtue-signalling, as a way of using faith to proclaim one's superiority over others (which I'm sure you'd agree is not a very Christian attitude to have).

What's even more disturbing to me, though, is that a lot of well-intentioned proselytism betrays a fundamental unwillingness to understand where non-Christians are coming from. However true this faith might feel, and however pressing the need to convert, it's important to realize that a different faith (or atheism) will feel just as true to someone else, and that neither the Christian nor the non-Christian have any universally valid argument to bring up that the other side must take at face value. Accepting this reality, and taking it seriously, should have serious implications for how religious people talk about their faith. From what I've seen, though, many American Christians seriously miss the mark on this front (so do Dawkinsian atheists, of course, but those are not even worth caring about).