A powerful cadre of Christians, characterized by their fundamentalist beliefs, is working overtime to impose their skewed views on America. Their view of freedom of religion is that they and they only should have the freedom to impose their religion on others, and to promote hatred of those they wish to dehumanize — including many of our most vulnerable. In Alabama, they have enacted law to prevent gender-affirming care for transgender youth. In Florida, they are trying to ensure that schools are anything but safe spaces for LGBTQ youth with the “don’t say gay” law. A theocratic majority on the Supreme Court stands on the verge of repealing Constitutional protections that affirm a woman’s autonomy over her own body — and the rationales they are using to overturn Roe v. Wade can soon be used to attack other individual rights on matters from interracial marriage to birth control. To accomplish their aims and consolidate their power, these theocrats (along with the racists and other bigots with whom they significantly overlap) have shown a willingness to destroy our nation’s very democracy and replace it with a fascist authoritarian state.
So it has been no surprise that a good number of writers and commenters in the Daily Kos community have been denouncing Christians and Christianity (and in some cases religion generally).
I was raised in a left-leaning Protestant denomination, in a hometown congregation that was generous in its service to the disadvantaged within our community and accepting of gay members long before that was common. So as I’ve seen various authors and commenters calling out Christianity and Christians as hateful, or harmful to our communities, or responsible for any range of the social ills facing us my initial reactions have been of the “not all of us” variety. And that is absolutely true. The hate-spewing fundamentalists attacking vulnerable people look nothing like the church in which I grew up. And lumping all Christians with the extremists overlooks the many leaders of faith who are fighting for justice, including moral leaders from black churches like Reverend Barber and Senator Warnock. I’ve sometimes commented myself, pushing back on those broad criticisms of Christians and offering rebuttals from my own experience or observation.
Reflecting on a recent diary got me to step back and reconsider that. Not my view that the harsh criticisms of Christianity doesn’t apply to all Christians — but my defensiveness about it. When I read a sweeping condemnations of Christians for their hateful behavior, it does make me feel bad, and I think “but that isn’t me!” So I had to pause and remind myself: this isn’t about me. It is about fear, distrust, pain that many have experienced at the hands of self-identified Christians. And that fear, distrust and pain is well-founded.
My discomfort or slightly bruised feelings are of trivial concern compared to the threats facing so many others:
Women — especially poorer women and women of color — whose reproductive freedoms are at risk and could face the horror of being denied an abortion that could be needed for their own health and well-being, including in cases of rape or incest.
Gay and lesbian couples — whose right to marry and to love who they love could be stripped away, and who face growing risks of violence as they are defamed with false accusations of ‘grooming’ children.
Transgender people — whose access to appropriate medical care, parental rights, and very identity and right to exist are under attack.
To my fellow Christian Kossacks: we have friends and allies facing an existential threat from the fundamentalist authoritarians, the people who are trying to turn America into their twisted version of Margaret Atwood’s Gilead. Instead of minimizing the concerns of those allies who criticize Christians through our defensive and dismissive “not all Christian” responses, let’s focus on standing with them against those who would oppress them. Instead of taking offense, let’s focus on defeating the very real forces of hate that would use their version of Christianity to promote actions we find abhorrent. Some internet criticism doesn’t threaten our right to worship and believe according to our own conscience, and our fragility matters far less than standing with the vulnerable against the real threats they face from fundamentalist extremists.