Christianity has a lot of history. It does really well when in direct and mostly peaceful contact with other beliefs — to the point of being able to literally take over the Roman empire well before the fall while under subjugation, and for many centuries afterward as the Holy Roman Empire working with other religions in relative peace for the era.
It doesn’t tend to do as well when it is the aggressor. Something about the message of Jesus seems to lose its luster when used on the offense too much.
The younger generations are leaving religion at an accelerated pace. The millennial age grouping is now just as likely to be non-religious as Christian:
fivethirtyeight.com/…
Indeed — mainstream Christianity has been used as a conservative weapon against the rest of society for so long now, that that has largely become its identity in the younger generations.
Not that this is completely new — every actor, comedian, and most random folks have their pet preacher imitation, usually with profoundly regressive views they want to insist be pushed HARD on everyone. Few of these Christian Preacher ideas in folks heads are of loving believers, because the mindset pushed the hardest upon others is that of attack, attack, attack, and hate.
That’s not a good place for religion to act. There’s a reason that Islam has been able to brand itself as ‘The Religion of Peace’ with a strait face — Christianity has largely given up that very concept, despite the words of Jesus. Not only that, but also of giving to the poor, of embracing the destitute, and respecting humble work far above wealth or the wealthy, at least as a core communicated message.
In short — aggressive Republican-style conservatism has been and is killing the very idea of Christianity for most of the people that will still be in this world in a few decades.
And there’s no better example of this than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the literal symbol of every disdain you can have for Christian ideals. Virtually every admonition that Jesus every had against bad action and wealth is represented EXACTLY by Donald Trump. But in the name of aggression, that is exactly who the Christian mainstream picked as the exemplar of the furtherance of their beliefs.
Is there any question as to why that’s a self-destroying belief system?
Christianity will survive this, and there’s still plenty of very good folks that will carry it forward — but there really should be a period of recognition of these events. This is more than some little hickup or evangelical-only embarrassment. This is systematic across the entire belief system, outside a few isolated churches. This is a deep wound that won’t heal for a very long time — and should be recognized.
Christianity needs to legitimately pick up the mantle of ‘Religion of Peace’ if it wants to have a place beyond the current era.