I came back to this site without high expectations about the level of discourse over the horrible and cruel way that this government is treating immigrants. My worst suspicions were confirmed when I clicked through the political threads and saw how self-professed Christians were shrugging away the "zero tolerance" rules that separated families (so much for being "pro-family") and locked kids away in tent city concentration camps in the desert.
This is the problem with a lot of American Christianity today: it swallows camels and it strains out gnats. It's of utmost importance, to a lot of "Christians" here, that a baker is given a choice not to bake a cake for those people (homosexuals), or that a pharmacist is spared the "injustice" of having to prescribe birth control pills to women.
But when it comes to policies that are actually pro-life and pro-family: keeping immigrant families together; providing prenatal and postnatal attention, help and money to women; feeding the poor; healing the sick; fighting for equal justice and equal protection under the law...most or all of these things are ignored if not treated almost like heresy in some quarters.
I don't ask for Christians to be perfect. Lord knows that I am far from it, and I don't expect people to toe a line that I myself cannot even begin to touch. Some consistency, though, would be a welcome change.
Speaking as someone who considers himself a "Millennial" or "Xennial" (I was born at the end of Reagan's first term and was in late high school when 9/11 happened), I can tell you that most people in my age cohort are sick of this Christianity. We're sick of an American Christianity that is long - very long - on condemnation and contempt for "the other" and short on compassion. We're sick of an American Christianity that has fed on a diet of "culture war" politics for so long that its interest in justice and equality is emaciated. We're sick of a Christianity whose holy book tells us that the kingdom of God is not here on Earth and yet seeks to establish it here on Earth - or at least in the American government.
I don't claim to have all the answers or to be a perfect Christian myself, but I want to find a more authentic Christian experience than the kind we often see today - one that shrugs and turns its back on mistreated migrants but obsesses over bake shops. One that obsesses over whether a baby is carried to term and doesn't give a flip about the baby or its mother after its born. This is not "Christianity"; it's cultural Christianity. It's rot that we need to address and fix.
This is the problem with a lot of American Christianity today: it swallows camels and it strains out gnats. It's of utmost importance, to a lot of "Christians" here, that a baker is given a choice not to bake a cake for those people (homosexuals), or that a pharmacist is spared the "injustice" of having to prescribe birth control pills to women.
But when it comes to policies that are actually pro-life and pro-family: keeping immigrant families together; providing prenatal and postnatal attention, help and money to women; feeding the poor; healing the sick; fighting for equal justice and equal protection under the law...most or all of these things are ignored if not treated almost like heresy in some quarters.
I don't ask for Christians to be perfect. Lord knows that I am far from it, and I don't expect people to toe a line that I myself cannot even begin to touch. Some consistency, though, would be a welcome change.
Speaking as someone who considers himself a "Millennial" or "Xennial" (I was born at the end of Reagan's first term and was in late high school when 9/11 happened), I can tell you that most people in my age cohort are sick of this Christianity. We're sick of an American Christianity that is long - very long - on condemnation and contempt for "the other" and short on compassion. We're sick of an American Christianity that has fed on a diet of "culture war" politics for so long that its interest in justice and equality is emaciated. We're sick of a Christianity whose holy book tells us that the kingdom of God is not here on Earth and yet seeks to establish it here on Earth - or at least in the American government.
I don't claim to have all the answers or to be a perfect Christian myself, but I want to find a more authentic Christian experience than the kind we often see today - one that shrugs and turns its back on mistreated migrants but obsesses over bake shops. One that obsesses over whether a baby is carried to term and doesn't give a flip about the baby or its mother after its born. This is not "Christianity"; it's cultural Christianity. It's rot that we need to address and fix.
