I grew up fundamentalist, then swung hard atheist, then ended up, as one friend who went to seminary described it, "the most christian atheist he's ever met". I've known Christians ignorant and intellectual, hateful and openly loving, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, and everything in-between.
Here's my take: A healthy faith is not about rules at all, or about finding a system for understanding the physical world or anything like that. If you get obsessed with rules you become a bitter fundamentalist; if you get fed-up with religion but stay obsessed with rules you become a bitter atheist.
A healthy faith is about people. Yourself, your community, the world. Cultivating habits of forgiveness and growth toward yourself, and openness and love toward others. Having a specific segment of your life dedicated to contemplation of the most important things in life, and doing so in a community on a regular basis. The iconography and the texts, ideally, are just a communal conduit for those ideas; symbols people can point to and use to talk about their thoughts and feelings around this stuff with others, and also to spark new thoughts and points of discussion.
Many (not all) of my close friends are christians, and none of them have ever tried to convert me. Some of them don't really think hell exists; most of them don't think some magic prayer is all that's needed to keep you out of it. Most, I think, see that even if it does, the best thing they can do for others is simply to love them and to help them be better through example and osmosis, if anything. They know they don't control others and they can't force them into whatever. They can only be Good and hope that it spreads.
I like this quote from Pope Francis:
> We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.
Again to iterate, it’s not just Christians who voted and continue to vote for him, it’s also a bunch of other people, but the common denominator seems to be an undertone of selfishness and heartlessness, people who are afraid of everyone else and want their life to not change the world be dammed, so yeah can’t really see anyone supporting this ideology to be a good person.
This seems to be a pretty close-minded view. Sure, selfishness and heartlessness could be a big motivator to vote one way. But as someone who knows Christians who voted for Trump, here are a few reasons which I'd argue aren't due to moral failings:
* Some strongly believe abortion is murder, and are worried about the number of lives thus being extinguished.
* Some believe that there is a growing anti-religious sentiment in their opposition, and they vote against that anti-religious sentiment. Every one of these friends is a strong proponent of religious pluralism.
* Many Christian voters come from less urban, less affluent areas of the country. These voters felt ignored by mainstream candidates, and Trump courted them better than most candidates in decades, actually speaking to the day-to-day issues of that constituency.
* Many Christians have different moral views than society at large. When viewing males as "the head of the household" is considered sexist and oppressive, couples that (both) opt in for such a household-model will understandably not be drawn in by progressive rhetoric castigating them for it.
Again, this isn't to paint a rosy picture saying "Bad people of group X are just as likely to vote either way". But to say that you can't see anyone supporting an ideology to be a good person under the hood is going to lead to a lot of animosity in life.
I didn't say that actually, though I also wouldn't say the inverse. I don't really know the exact answer, and I don't really think it's important here.
> Very few Christians seem to see the problems with that regime
It is important to note that Evangelical != Protestant, and Protestant != Christian, and Christian != Religious person. There are huge gaps between each sub-category and the parent category; evangelicals may be one of the larger categories in the U.S., and may be largely Trumpist (though even then, not all of them), but they hardly represent the whole of religion.
> the common denominator seems to be an undertone of selfishness and heartlessness
I feel an immense amount of anger towards Trump and his entire movement, not despite but because many of my family-members have aligned themselves with it. And yet, outside of those contexts, I still see them being good and kind to their loved ones and others. I've also come to see that their alignment is largely based in fear - which, even if it's ill-founded and driven by false narratives, is an emotion I can feel sympathy for. Wrestling with this dichotomy - seeing the evil they've confused with good and the ways it's changed them, while knowing that they are still my loved ones and they still contain some goodness underneath - has been one of the most stressful and difficult things I've had to grapple with in my entire life.
But one thing I've held onto from my religious days is the principle that human beings are not simply good or evil. All of us contain good and evil, and (both as individuals and as people with individuals that we care about) it's a question of identifying and nurturing the good, and trying to let go of the evil, each day anew.
> Wrestling with this dichotomy - seeing the evil they've confused with good and the ways it's changed them, while knowing that they are still my loved ones and they still have bits of good underneath - has been one of the most stressful and difficult things I've had to grapple with in my entire life.
Hear, hear. It was hard for this to come to a reckoning last year with everything else bad going on.
Very few people think they are not forgiving, loving and caring. Many people will open the book, find the things that reassure them they are loving, caring, and a wise person, and close it happy.
Your friends don't try to convert you because they hide themselves around you. If they tried, you would cut them out of your life, despite your empathy; just mentioning that you will pray for someone can make them angry. If they persisted, really believing their friend was in danger of losing eternal life, you would end the friendship.
Really, all the stuff you say sounds nice, but secular people only show love to people who they think are lovable. When you become one of the unlovables, they will cheerfully drop what you say and bring out the knives, and your philosophy is worthless to stop it.
> people who would have been seen as caring, loving and kind people to their families and others that liked them
Good and evil can exist within the same person. Evil can also masquerade externally with the signifiers of good. I don't know the people you're talking about so I can't really comment on them specifically; but being a human means being a paradox.
Not that that excuses what happened to you. It sounds like that was very hard and I'm very sorry to hear about it. I can't really speak more to it or to the people involved because again, I don't know much about it. I simply don't believe that even the worst human on earth is irredeemable or worthless in principle, whether or not they ever change in practice. Of course that doesn't mean they should be left to get away with doing whatever they want to whomever.
> Many people will open the book, find the things that reassure them they are loving, caring, and a wise person, and close it happy
The other half of "nobody is completely good or evil" is that life is a never-finished journey of self-work. Doing what you describe is a trap that many people fall into, sure. But I don't think it invalidates the efforts of people who decide to do otherwise.
> Your friends don't try to convert you because they hide themselves around you. If they tried, you would cut them out of your life, despite your empathy; just mentioning that you will pray for someone can make them angry. If they persisted, really believing their friend was in danger of losing eternal life, you would end the friendship.
With respect, you don't know them. My parents, unlike my friends, do try periodically to convert me, and I haven't cut them out of my life. It causes friction between us, sure, and they've learned that and they've dampened it some. But we make the relationship work.
When it comes my friends, I simply know they aren't hiding themselves. We talk openly about this stuff sometimes; we have good conversations. We don't avoid it like I have to with my parents. I don't mind when my friends say they'll pray for me, because I know they're saying it out of open love, and not passive-aggression. We respect each other's agency, we know we're on different journeys. I've known people who weren't that way. I've seen the hollowness of ulterior motives behind their smiles and their social gestures. I know the difference.
Real relationships go beyond and above disagreements, and the ones I get to pick for myself are with individuals who can tolerate nuance and paradox.
> Really, all the stuff you say sounds nice, but secular people only show love to people who they think are lovable. When you become one of the unlovables, they will cheerfully drop what you say and bring out the knives, and your philosophy is worthless to stop it.
I'm not sure where this came from (though I'd be happy to hear more about it). Above you seemed to take issue with religious people, but here you mention secular (non-religious) people
Denominational stance is reluctance: https://www.umc.org/en/content/ask-the-umc-what-is-the-unite...
> Do you follow the edict that if you’re not baptist then by definition you go to hell
I am not Baptist. But the ones I speak to, who are dedicated fundamentalists, seem to believe that I am going to hell since I am not and will never be "saved" in the way they prescribe. Furthermore, in their view, nearly everyone who existed before Jesus's time is condemned to Hell except for a select few who foretold of Jesus's coming. Crazy theology!
Also, keep in mind that Baptists have diversity. The Southern Baptists are the firebrand fundamentalists. There are others that are almost indistinguishable from mainline Protestantism.
I'm not a Baptist, but presumably nearly all of them find it sad and unfortunate and feel compassion for most of humanity.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, though. Only believing things that make you happy isn't a very good philosophy of life.
2. Do you follow the edict that if you’re not baptist then by definition you go to hell? How do you reconcile this with having friends or anyone at all you care about who are then going to hell?
Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable. I don’t come here as an atheist, just as someone who’s trying really hard to believe but finding no acceptable ground to stand at all. The only smart people I find religious (especially Christian) are ones who were born and grew up forced to go to church. Typically they’d give up on practising it in their teens, basically break every rule in their book for two decades and then somehow rediscover it because now it’s convenient to find some community and higher purpose in their life. The ones who convert from elsewhere when they are adults are almost always gullible and did so for the most transactional reasons you can think of.