As an ultra-liberal person I’ve been glad to find myself not hating Christians. Thinking Christians are hate-filled nutjobs is pretty easy since a small group of fundamentalists took over the mainstream image of Christianity.
What I learned this week in the Drew Westen book I’ve been talking about non-stop is the a bit about the difference between “fundamentalists” and “evangelicals.” Sometimes people are both. But, if you’re like me at all and assume that both are driven by fear and hatred for people they don’t understand, driven by fear that what’s “theirs” will be taken away, driven by an unquestioning and freakishly disturbing willingness to submit to their authority figures no matter what those “leaders” say…?
Nope. That’s pretty much just the leaders and a lot of the followers of the Christian fundamentalists.* Think Pat Robertson.
The evangelicals aren’t likely to be anything like a lefty liberal, but they typically understand Jesus’ message as being about caring for the poor, loving your neighbor, and all those highly relevant Christian concepts.
Join me, won’t you, in moving the evangelicals into the “probably good-hearted people” category?
The fundamentalists, on the other hand, are the ones so often filled with fear and hate. Frightened lemmings following their wealthy selfish evil authorities off the cliff into a wonderful Disneyworld where everyone looks, talks, believes, sees, hears, sounds, tastes, smells, and shits like they all think they’re supposed to.
* As I was Googling, I came across some articles defending fundamentalist Christians, too. It sits right with me to not assume they are all scary fucking assholes. So, check this out as an example of how it’s possibly just a third of them perpetuating hate, fear, and selfishness: http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/