Comment by cabaalis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cabaalis | Hacker News Reader

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I am a Christian, and I believe this is caused directly by a few factors:

1. The history of actions taken by theocracies is not good. There is a strong modern social justice movement, and even saying something bad 10 years ago is enough to cancel someone. Now imagine a group that committed multiple genocides over the centuries.

2. A growing rise of "spiritual but not religious" has led young people to eschew attending church. These young people grow up and have young people of their own who are now never exposed to Christianity.

3. Relegation of religion to personal matters alone, taboo in public.

4. Christians have allowed the book of Leviticus to overwhelm their message. Because of what is said about LGBTQ, Christian == bigot in many people's minds.

I'm sure there are fellow Christians who visit HN. I think these are the primary obstacles that must be overcome in order to grow the cause. All the mission work and happy Easter messages in the world won't make a lick of difference against these 4 issues.

I'm not personally religious, but it always struck me as odd that modern churches don't take more of an socially progressive activism role. The historical Jesus was quite the rabble-rouser, activist, and not conservative in the least.

From my personal observations, the religious groups that seem to be activists tend to be activists with puritanical and conservative motivations (i.e., yell at people who they perceive are doing ungodly things even though modern society has deemed those things to be acceptable)

The other side is religious groups that are socially progressive (be kind and open, pray for people, provide services to those who need it, etc) but tend to be more of a passive supporter of equality.

Churches have had their "brand" tarnished because a few extremist religious groups wrapped up bigotry and social conservatism in a cloth of "religious freedom" and were really loud about it. The more progressive churches didn't speak up to fight back and counter it, and now the whole religious community is tainted. The "abusive priest" controversies didn't help matters either.

If there were churches that supported and encouraged the social justice that actually resonates with today's population, especially the young population, they would find a far more receptive audience.

I would consider going to a church if it was leading Extinction Rebellion marches, organizing protests against businesses that were bigoted, pushing their members to support the community and vote for new libraries, citizen investigation boards in police departments, fair elections, progressive drug treatment diversions instead of prosecution, etc.

The intolerance of Christian groups for non-Christian is a part too. I think it has to do with the myth of being persecuted that hasn't been true since Constantine.

Tell that to the Catholics in England and colonial America, or the Protestants in Ireland, or the Jacobites in Scotland, or churches of various denominations in many Islamic countries or territories, such as the Congo.

In general for every group X, you can find a subgroup Y who's done terribly toxic stuff somewhere.

The larger and more coordinate the group, the more likely. It doesn't need religion. It needs humans, organising, to happen.

Of course. Even subgroups within the Christian church itself have been guilty of such atrocities at various points in history. But to say that all organized persecution of Christians ended with Constantine is just historically wrong.

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