I would say that the "system" of organised religion is very broken and goes against the teachings of Jesus. As far as I can tell, Trump is probably the closest figure to the anti-christ in terms of his greed and lack of charity.

Personally, I don't think that the organised Catholic church was about following Jesus' teachings, but more about consolidating wealth and power. It's disingenuous to call it "Christianity" if it just chooses convenient parts to follow. I mean, Jesus was very specific about not amassing wealth.

Jesus was a Jew preaching within a framework of Judaism which he clearly believed in and claimed authority from.

That framework rejected him, and I can sympathize with arguments that the system of "Christianity" that developed was not the system he intended, but I don't think it would be accurate to describe Jesus as anti-system per se.

Either way, any definition of Christianity that excludes Catholicism or any other organized sect doesn't seem useful.

It's like people defining Capitalism to require pure free markets, just so they can say the US or British Empires never really engaged in Capitalism. It just seems like an exercise in semantics.

> It's like people defining Capitalism to require pure free markets, just so they can say the US or British Empires never really engaged in Capitalism. It just seems like an exercise in semantics.

Not quite as real-world Capitalism has an approximation of free markets. I would say that's quite different from "Christians" going against welcoming strangers and feeding/healing the poor. In my view Jesus was against being judgemental, so sects that prioritise being judgemental cause me some cognitive dissonance when they are described as Christian.

As a Christian, I totally get your cognitive dissonance and agree with you, that Jesus was very much not racist or xenophobic, and instead preached love and compassion.