Growing Hostility towards Evangelical Christians on Atlas

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I have been on this forum for one year and three months and the hostility towards Evangelical Christians I have noticed in recent weeks is not really anomalous compared to all the rest of my time here. While I dislike said hostility, I am not sure this post - which honestly sounds like you have a short memory - helps your case.

On another note, I cannot look at your "belief that Christianity is the only path to Salvation" without getting reminded of your history of equivocating as to whether Catholics - like myself - are Christian.

The answer is yes.

But the problem is that Jesus is clouded by all that other stuff in the church, a lot of which is actively harmful. Like how many LGBT people have been turned off to Christ by being raised Catholic? It's like if you're packing for a flight in a hurry but you don't need to carry a lot...but you pack a ton anyway, making it possible to overlook and more difficult to find the important thing you're trying to pack. Or as I heard one pastor put it "Catholicism is Jesus + works, we believe in Jesus + nothing."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If you are "turned off" from Christianity because you were raised with the expectation that you should also do good works...

It's not "good" works though, but rather very legalistic junk, and in this case what turns LGBT people off isn't even so much that but rather obviously the teaching that their sexual orientation is inherently wrong and any relationships based on it is sinful.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I have been on this forum for one year and three months and the hostility towards Evangelical Christians I have noticed in recent weeks is not really anomalous compared to all the rest of my time here. While I dislike said hostility, I am not sure this post - which honestly sounds like you have a short memory - helps your case.

On another note, I cannot look at your "belief that Christianity is the only path to Salvation" without getting reminded of your history of equivocating as to whether Catholics - like myself - are Christian.

The answer is yes.

But the problem is that Jesus is clouded by all that other stuff in the church, a lot of which is actively harmful. Like how many LGBT people have been turned off to Christ by being raised Catholic? It's like if you're packing for a flight in a hurry but you don't need to carry a lot...but you pack a ton anyway, making it possible to overlook and more difficult to find the important thing you're trying to pack. Or as I heard one pastor put it "Catholicism is Jesus + works, we believe in Jesus + nothing."

A lot of the same criticisms could be applied to various Protestant sects, though, where LGBT people have been denounced in arguably much more vocal ways.

I mean check out jesus-is-savior. This is not a Catholic website. (I haven't taken the time to figure out what brand of fundie the author is, nor do I very much care to.) It's an extreme example for sure, but I doubt you would be happier in what ever church this guy belongs to than the Catholic Church, which even takes a wink and a nod to LGBT issues in some parishes.

Yes I'm aware. They too should be condemned. My church offers a sanctuary for LGBT people from both them and Catholicism!

The bizarre mindset on this forum though is that it only should for the conservative Protestant sects. That it's totally finally for people from conservative Protestantism to convert to liberal Protestantism, but it's never OK for Catholics to convert to any type of Protestant because "that's not how things are supposed to work" or whatever but it is OK for them to become atheist, so basically the mindset is people raised Protestant can be whatever they want but people raised Catholic have only a binary choice of Catholic or nothing. It's a truly perplexing mindset that I can not understand in the slightest.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If you are "turned off" from Christianity because you were raised with the expectation that you should also do good works...

It's not "good" works though, but rather very legalistic junk, and in this case what turns LGBT people off isn't even so much that but rather obviously the teaching that their sexual orientation is inherently wrong and any relationships based on it is sinful.

Or as I heard one pastor put it "Catholicism is Jesus + works, we believe in Jesus + nothing."

The pastor's quote here seem to be referring to the sola fide issue, not to the complexity of church hierarchy.

Yes but he's not one at my church, just giving a rough example.

Anyway I know the Catholic high school in Bismarck is incredibly legalistic, like actually banning "unnatural" dyed hair colors and actually claiming that's against God, (at least they did when I was in high school, can't speak for now.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The bizarre mindset on this forum though is that it only should for the conservative Protestant sects. That it's totally finally for people from conservative Protestantism to convert to liberal Protestantism, but it's never OK for Catholics to convert to any type of Protestant because "that's not how things are supposed to work" or whatever but it is OK for them to become atheist, so basically the mindset is people raised Protestant can be whatever they want but people raised Catholic have only a binary choice of Catholic or nothing. It's a truly perplexing mindset that I can not understand in the slightest.

This supposed mindset only exists in your mind lmao. I have never seen anything like that on the forum, let alone enough times to consider it a collective "mindset". Why you would come up with such strange ideas, of course, is a truly perplexing thing that I can not understand in the slightest.

Well for example Gully Foyle a truly HORRENDOUS poster whose garbage I've been been bemoaning for over a decade once said something along the lines of "If you're practicing a different religion than your parents or maybe your spouse, there's a problem."

If it wasn't super late I could dig up other threads but a lot of Europeans seemed to have a difficult time grasping that in the US religious identity is basically self-selected (in the US even people who are the same religion as their parents made a conscious decision to stay that) and thus tried to just deny that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well for example Gully Foyle a truly HORRENDOUS poster

Go read his posts about the Green Party, or his junk on AAD about how Tulsi Gabbard was a serious candidate.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not "good" works though, but rather very legalistic junk

Please don't use that word.

Why not?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Large portions of the world, including most of the Atlas Forum hate you and always will. If they don't, you are probably doing something wrong. That's simply a result of standing for something. Truth is inherently divisive. Never change your beliefs from pressure.

They will hate you and you have to love them anyway. And until that is something an outsider sees from the Christians they know and not from everyone else, it's going to keep getting darker outside.

It's extremely generous for you, as a Catholic, to refer to Evangelical beliefs as "truth," when the vast majority of them would never do the same back to you.

You're committing the common fallacy here of assuming that almost all evangelicals are hostile to Catholics like it's still 1928 or whatever. That's not true at all today. For one look at how many evangelicals supported Rick Santorum in 2012 and Marco Rubio in 2016. Also try to find a Catholic bashing article in Christianity Today. Etc.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not "good" works though, but rather very legalistic junk

Please don't use that word.

Why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

That's a bit of a stretch and has nothing to do with a school banning "unnatural" dyed hair colors or for example the Catholic prohibition on birth control. What term would you use instead?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Large portions of the world, including most of the Atlas Forum hate you and always will. If they don't, you are probably doing something wrong. That's simply a result of standing for something. Truth is inherently divisive. Never change your beliefs from pressure.

They will hate you and you have to love them anyway. And until that is something an outsider sees from the Christians they know and not from everyone else, it's going to keep getting darker outside.

It's extremely generous for you, as a Catholic, to refer to Evangelical beliefs as "truth," when the vast majority of them would never do the same back to you.

You're committing the common fallacy here of assuming that almost all evangelicals are hostile to Catholics like it's still 1928 or whatever. That's not true at all today. For one look at how many evangelicals supported Rick Santorum in 2012 and Marco Rubio in 2016. Also try to find a Catholic bashing article in Christianity Today. Etc.

Would you refer to Catholic doctrine as "truth" ? Would right-wing Evangelicals?

I can't speak for TJ obviously but I assume by "the truth" he meant socially conservative doctrine on homosexuality and abortion the Catholic Church also holds to. I wouldn't call that "the truth" obviously but I would be willing to say that for things like the divinity of Jesus even if it was a Catholic arguing for it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't have a problem with criticism of Evangelical beliefs, as long as it's criticism of things that Evangelicals actually believe and not a caricature of Evangelical Christianity.

This doesn't really happen here often, but I've gathered that some people at places like DU and some parts of Reddit basically believe that almost all or at least the majority of evangelicals believe in snake handling, prosperity theology, speaking in tongues, Calvinistic predestination and KJV-Onlyism, which is laughable because not only do the majority of evangelicals not believe in any of those, it'd be almost impossible to find one who believes in all.