It's gonna be a bad time to identify as 'Christian'

Newly-emboldened Christian groups are working feverishly to remove women's human rights to bodily autonomy. The inevitable result: deaths and unnecessary suffering, to say nothing of the economic impacts of making half the population second-class citizens.

A convicted fraud, sexual abuser, and bankrupt is hawking Bibles he and his followers certainly have never read, to say nothing of the $5k 'prayers-for-sale' grift from his spiritual advisor. That's good dollar, that Christian dollar. We have the marketing science to show it is.

His buffoonish, ketamine-fueled billionaire sidekick openly scorning and mocking empathy as a flaw in human nature, to say nothing of the Biblical beatitudes of mercy, meekness, purity of heart, peacemaking, and the thirst for justice.

I know, I know...

You say "Not all Christians" or "I'm not that sort of Christian" or "Those aren't real Christians".

What you're saying is "You're looking at the wrong stuff, dummy! Look over here at the sandal-clad thrift shop volunteer, the community-building, the 'all are welcome' signs."

Somehow me noticing Christo-fascism has become the problem here. I'm the problem here. 'True' Christianity is just fine and dandy.

Hear this: That is straight-up gaslighting, and only serves to FURTHER ENABLE Christo-fascism. It makes you just as much of a bully as they are. You are perpetuating the problem.

Their deep assumptions are the same as yours:

• you accept Jesus as your personal saviour

• you thus accept you need saving

• because you're inherently wicked and sinful (see 'original sin')

The root of Christo-fascism is a theology of fear, neediness, and self-loathing.

The inevitable results in cognitive impairment, cognitive dissonance, disconnection between mind and body, disconnection from intuition, self concept, and personal autonomy. It means you can’t separate punishment and abuse from love, like a celestial DV situation. 

This kind of psychological trauma affects society AS A WHOLE, so yes, this toxic theology is everybody's business. 

I'm not a Christian, and NEITHER ARE YOU.

Jesus gave pretty clear directions when he said “If you want to follow me, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor. Leave your profession, Leave your family. They don’t matter. The world is ending soon.”

Apologies to the 'Jesus Christians' who DO jettison all their possessions, quit their jobs, leave their families, live communally, and dedicate themselves to looking after the less fortunate, even to the point of donating their spare kidneys to folks who need them. Google the media beat-up "The Kidney Cult".

If you’re NOT doing that, shut up with your ‘Christian values’. It’s claiming a moral high ground without and actual moral action. Like supporting a team in a sport you won’t play.

I decided a long time ago that I couldn’t do any of that, so I am not a Christian.  Most Christianity goes against Jesus himself.

If by Christian values you mean being nice to people, maybe you're confusing religion with bourgeois politeness (which is a social transaction). Maybe you think the Golden Rule is exclusively and originally Christian. It's not.

In short: Progressive Christianity gaslights us and further enables the extreme right.