This is not over. - Jan 6 was the "test transaction"

I do hope they are able to pull some back and influence enough to make a voting difference.

I don’t appreciate maligning a religion because you don’t understand it. If you were maligning Jews, everyone would be calling you out for. If you said the same thing about the Muslims you would be called out.

What makes you think it is ok to malign Christianity? And yes Jesus was born of a virgin birth. And no I don’t believe that dinosaur bones were placed on earth to test our faith. Many people who called themselves Christians aren’t. There are some people who do horrible things in the name of Christianity. But that doesn’t mean that Christianity isn’t real or that there are Christians who live out the Bible.

Frankly, I am disappointed in the continual disrespect to TRUE Christians and their faith. Are there nut jobs out there? Yes as in any religion. Why the constant hate?

And

Exactly!! I don't know why this is so hard to understand! Some of the most devout Christians I know are very much anti gay rights. And I have two gay children; these are relatives who I do not feel the same way about anymore. How can you profess to love my children, yet be actively against them having the same rights as every other American? How does my child marrying someone of the same sex affect YOU and the way you live your life? Oh wait! It doesn't! 

I would never mistreat anyone. You are making some many assumptions.

You might not, but it is under the guise of “Christianity” that legislators are trying to pass laws that that take away protections of women, LGBTQ, and POC from mistreatment. The lawmakers call themselves Christian and say that they are trying to pass those laws exactly for that reason. 

And, sadly, it is not just a few “out there” Christians that want to do away with equal rights for LGBTQ people. It isn’t just a few Christians that want to outlaw abortion altogether and take away a woman’s control over what happens to her body. It is a sizable portion, and they elect lawmakers who will attempt to take away human rights - because LGBTQ and women are less human/worthy than white straight Christian men (and even a sizable portion of Christian women believe this to their own detriment). 

If you vote for lawmakers who pass laws that take away the rights of people, then, yes, in a roundabout way you are mistreating people. 

As an aside, do you know much about Judaism? Because Merge mentioned quite a few of our beliefs in her paragraph that you claimed only called out Christians. The Old Testament is ours, we just let you use it. 😜

IF 'true' Christians, as you say you are, stood up and spoke out about those you think are not 'true' and many of us think are way off maybe we would be in much better shape in this country.

Good people are good people regardless of what religion they practice or don't practice any at all.

TOO many good people are not speaking out.

It is funny, because I was really into reading about Victorian life when I was a kid, and I remember thinking that it was just unbelievable that people really did believe in spiritualists, eg, and would give them tons of money, but it does seem like that sort of thing is just a thread that runs through every generation.  I've watched a lot of people spiral out of control this past year (not Q-related), and I am willing to bet that the changes to American life in response to COVID have exacerbated the paranoia and the willingness to put faith in things that seem, to outsiders, completely ludicrous.

Yes, the themes of recent, bewildering changes and fear as a catalyst to paranoia and faith-willingness, along with downright denial of what actually happened to cause the changes, is certainly front and center in many of the personal narratives.

These are a couple of very, very typical types of narratives. (My writing.) 

“My father has always believed in conspiracies - JFK, moon landing, 9-11, all the Loose Change stuff on YouTube in the 90s - but never like now. He really fell down the Q hole after [the 2016 election] [COVID] [George Floyd] [the 2020 election] [the COVID vaccine]. Now he rails non-stop about the Deep State and Jews and international cabals and Hollywood…and trafficked children and Bill Gates and George Soros and blood-drinking, pedophiliac, satanic liberals. Also, victimized Donald Trump is our way out.”

“When I was growing up, my mother* was a hippie-dippie, liberal, Democratic-voting, pro-education, LBGTQ+ type. That all changed dramatically after [the 2016 election] [COVID] [George Floyd] [the 2020 election] [the COVID vaccine] and she now rails non-stop about trans kids and gay marriage and BLM protesters and lying scientists…and trafficked children and Bill Gates and George Soros and blood-drinking, pedophiliac, satanic liberals. Also, victimized Donald Trump is our way out.”

So, it seems the already pre-disposed types and the atypical types landed in the same murky pool with several common enemies and the same savior. It’s fascinating that, in the face of such change, so many people have changed themselves with ideological about-faces.

(*Lots of stories about mothers, wives, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, SIL - alone or in pairs. Parents and couples, yes. Fathers, brothers, husbands, yes. But so, so many mothers. And the women seem especially lured by the trafficked/sexually abused children themes.)

New threats of violence by Qanon, over the 2020 election..

On Wednesday, CNN reported that on some corners of social media, adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory are still plotting how to overthrow the results of the 2020 election — and have hinted at further violence like the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

www.rawstory.com/qanon-threatens-more-election-violence/

Check the board and see that I have spoken out. I have spoken out over and over. I have quoted scripture to those that say they are Christians but aren’t.

Actually, you've already had your apology. It was included in the message you quoted. The whole message was addressed in the conditional tense and came with a conditional clause apology already. 

A large amount of Christians have been very vocal and active in the anti-gay sphere and other liberty-restricting subjects. They use scripture to defend their agenda. To say that other people don't understand the Christian religion because the literal quotes from said religion's handbook that very much suit this anti-gay, anti-women agenda don't align with your personal selection of quotes from that same handbook is not a fair statement to make. The Bible is by essence paradoxical and includes a significant amount of anecdotes and stories that do support the agenda the "other" Christians are pushing. There's no denying that. It is not up to non-Christians to selectively edit out those stories to please the Christians who've decided to abide by the love all principle. It's not up to the non-Christians to support this edited approach to the Christian handbook. That's for the Christians to sort out. As things stand, the Bible is not a book of universal love and respect. It has some passages that allude to that but it has many others that don't. To expect non-Christians to understand that you're a selective believer is not super realistic. Considering the full content of the Bible, it'll likely be up to the supporters of this religion to put their hands up and say "whoa whoa, I'm following the message of inclusive love, not the exclusivity causes elsewhere in the book" when discussing the use of biblical scripture or other Christian messages in today's socio-political context. That's not prejudice, that's the task of differentiating oneself from those who do follow the more than questionable scripture contained in the same book.

People are weary. There's a Christian-led crusade against individual freedoms in the US right now. Standing on one's soapbox and pointing fingers while turning the argument to "I'm not that kind of Christian" and implying those who have suffered/suffer from Christian-centric attacks on their rights or are allies to those who suffer are in the wrong is not helping the cause forward nor is it very demonstrative of that Christian love and implied forgiveness. I understand it's annoying from your side of the wall but the superiority accusation is ironic in the "love all" stance you claim. The ones who have deeply been prejudiced here are the LGBTQ+ people (among other minorities). Not the universal love Christians. I hate when this kind of detracting happens.

More generally, I get being being defensive about religion.

I’m a lapsed Catholic but use my way-too-much knowledge about Catholicism to debunk egregiously inaccurate assertions here about Catholic doctrine…or to disagree with those who present (minority) Catholic fundamentalism as rank and file beliefs…or to disagree with sweeping generalizations about all (not half) American Catholics being politically conservative. It’s frustrating to read people present themselves as national authorities based on family or community experiences, so I’ve become, very weirdly, a Catholic apologist here. 

Just like it has been frustrating to watch, for 40 years, the politicization of American - usually Evangelical - Christianity and the destruction that stifling politicization has finally wrought. (Hell, I’m old enough to remember when many Evangelicals didn’t much care - in an organized way - if other people got abortions…or who was president.)

So no, people in general are not going to shy away from criticism of this ideological tsunami cloaked in Christianity because it might offend individual mainline Protestants or Catholics. The observations and criticisms and reactions are not Christian persecution or disrespect; if anything, they show disrespect for the lengths to which too many Christians have bastardized the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ - whether we believe him divine or just historical.

This is about most of Former's cabinet members and their lack of ethics, criminal activities... Perdue, Price, Pruitt, Ross, Mnuchin..... and the list goes on and on and on....

Trump's corruption was so bad that his appointees are getting lost in the mess: columnist Charlie Pierce
Sarah K. Burris
June 29, 2021

www.rawstory.com/sunny-perdue-trump-administration-corruption/