It can also help in many respects if we preface ideas that are based on our own religious beliefs with just that. A really good example of that is a thread on birth control in marriage. It's one thing to state that the Catholic Church believes ___________, and after studying this viewpoint the poster believes _______________, and quite another to say Well, I'M Catholic, and ~I~ don't believe _______________. (I'm doing this from invention, without any attempt to quote a poster, so please forgive me if I have done so inadvertently). The second way of doing so merely annoys everyone out there who DOES believe ____________, and gets into a war about picking and choosing and sexual abuse and abortion and it goes downhill from there. If a poster remembers that it's one thing to state his or her own mind, and not to act as if the church they and others posting may belong to is wrong, and posts accordingly, perhaps people won;t get defensive?
Again, I'm singling out no one, as I invented my scenario, and I only chose the Catholic Church as the church in my example because they have an easily recognized pro-life platform, so I felt that people would recognize the issues that trigger a downward spiral that I mentioned, not for any other reason.
Does this make sense? It's just that rarely do we get posters who stick to exactly what their Church says...most add their personal experiences, so there's a lot of variance, then we see people defending their Church, or defending their personal feelings, or just being defensive.