[supersour]

"The [Republican] party has never been more avowedly Christian or more clearly out of line with gospel doctrines."

I think this introduces one of the largest spiritual problems of our generation. I have talked to an astounding number of young Christians [the group for which I identify] who have been turned away because of the Church's failure to answer their questions on a sophisticated enough level. And I don't fault them for that. But as most of our churches become more extreme and socially conservative, I think there is a huge community of people who yearn to belong to something more progressive (and, ironically, more aligned to the gospel).

I really hope to see a solution because the current trend of complete rejection of the church is unfortunate and much wisdom will be lost. But you see that the younger postmodern generations really are afraid of institutions and power as a whole, which is why their protests are led in a decentralized manner (BLM, women's march). I would guess a portion of this mindset is due to a bit of a "perfectionist complex", i.e. many live in fear of being criticized by the mob and thus will refrain to committing themselves to an institution short of perfect. Unfortunately, this makes them far less effective movements than they could be. They have something to learn from the church in this regard.

[brightball]

This is actually one area where a lot of the “mega churches” seem to be a better fit. They are less oriented on church community and specific denominational biases, which is designed to create a less intimidating environment for curious people to attend and learn.

I have been in different churches for most of my life outside of about 6 years where I decided I knew better. I’ve never heard anything close to what angry Reddit culture seems to think is preached.

The issue is more that the Republican Party tries to paint itself as Christian to appeal to voters. Somehow this has created a lot of Democratic policy and talking points among their base which seem to take aim at hurting churches or labeling churches as a threat somehow...which naturally causes people to become more defensive.

The issue is that so many policies being pushed by Democrats over the last decade exist around the idea of controlling what people are allowed to do or say, going to far as to target all things Christian as something that should be disallowed.

It’s scary not just from a religious perspective but from the idea that people support such controlling policies at all.

The mindset it takes to believe that you know what’s best for other people is terrifying.