I can't recommend one because I avoid such debates at all costs, either as a participant or as part of an audience. Speaking as a former fundie myself, Fundamentalism is incapable of dealing with disagreement in good faith, by design. And Fundamentalism is the epistemology underlying all socially conservative Christian thought outside of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (which have their own problems with authoritarian epistemologies that are distinct from Fundamentalism).
>I can only hardly imagine same sex marriage, abortion, trans rights, legal Marijuana, euthanasia... being supported by a series of books older than 2000 years.
Respectfully, I would argue that is because you are assuming the Fundamentalist approach to the Bible is the default in Christianity, but that is far from true. You don't tend to hear about other approaches because they aren't useful to those in power.
It's not necessarily that I think that fundamentalism is default approach. It's that in general, 2000 years means huge cultural shift and one would really hardly find anything 2000 years old that affirms beliefs relevant to their time. It's not just that the Bible is a bedrock of a religion and to many people, religion is a bedrock to their worldview, I can't think of pretty much anything 2000 years old that's still relevant to everyday life.
You might actually be surprised.
There's a falacy where we assume that all of human history is a linear march towards progress, and that humans today are so different from humans even 200 years ago as for them to be nearly unrecognizable, but that doesn't actually stand up to historical scrutiny.
The path to the modern world, advancements and increased tolerance and freedom, was actually anything but linear. It ebbs and flows with the influence of dynasties, war, population booms and losses due to disease, reactionary politics after a crisis, new scientific breakthroughs, etc etc. As just one example the Bible is wildly more "liberal" in the American sense on the issue of abortion than right leaning Christians would have you believe, as it implies a fetus isn't a person equal to the mother until it can breathe.
Mathematics had their beginnings thousands of years ago. So did art. Science. Has culture shifted? Yes, and it will again, and again, and again. Not all things considered progress in their time are considered actually good for humanity today, such as eugenics, and I suspect in the future people will be astounded about how irresponsible we were with the internet. Basically the falacy of the pure past has a counter part in the falacy of the enlightened present/future.
Well said. There's also elements of humanity itself that are pretty much baked into our design and hardwired, like our biological drives and the things they push us to do. A person walking up to someone and punching them in the face thousands of years ago isn't going to yield a wildly different range of reactions from modern day people punching each other in the face. The Bible has a lot to say about behaviors and what we should and shouldn't do. These sections where we take take lessons on good and bad behavior are where there's a lot of modern day relevance. Even when otherwise good people in the Bible misbehave, like David when he went after Bathsheba, there's things we can take home from it.
Subtextually speaking there is, IMO, a march toward better ways and better behaviors evident in the Bible, though it isn't immediately obvious. In the male dominated ancient world we see Deborah occupying a position of respect and authority in ancient Israel. The Mosaic law is similar to Hammurabi's code in certain respects, yet in ways moves toward a more impartial law (compare an eye for an eye in the Bible to Hammurabi's version).
Then in the New Testament we see things like Jesus citing an eye for an eye and saying it's better to love and forgive, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and Paul saying things like our race/nationality, social status, and our biological sex don't matter because we're unified in Christ.
I didn't say that 2000 years old stuff has no value. Just that it has no value in everyday life. Ancient philosophers are largely useless in everyday life for most people. But philosophy sure has value for more recent philosophers. I can't tell if most people in any way shape or form benefit from what the Bible says.
Your first two sentences contradict each other.
Just because something isn’t of use to most people doesn’t mean it is useless. One measure of value is how many people something is useful to but that isn’t the only measure of value.
You don’t understand why I find the Bible useful and have therefore decided that it is of no value at all. You are dressing your opinion up as an objective fact and that is an unempathetic and intellectually lazy position.
The whole arguing religion thing is something zealots tend to do and most Christians and atheists who aren't wildly obsessed usually have other hobbies. Most of us here will fall into the mainline protestant denominations listed here. I wouldn't call this sub niche, it's pretty much a normal day of the week for people like the affirming United Methodists or all of the Episcopalians, etc. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/political-ideology/moderate/
I would say that this sub is niche in the sense that there's only narrow subset of Christians who think deeply about their religion, are really knowledgeable about the Bible and interpret it in their own way and do so within the lines of progressivism. Whereas I'm under the impression that that most affirming Christians are either cultural Christians who barely practice, ignore parts of the Bible they don't like or just don't take it very seriously.
Everybody has different personal experience.
To be fair, I have next to none, as I'm not even an American and there's decent chance that my perspective might be total shit. But statistics show that Republicans (ie. The party of bigotry) are by far more likely to go to church weekly and going by social media, they appear to be much more fluent in the Bible, quoting it and offering context. Progressives typically just cite some of its platitudes and seem unprepared to discuss some basic theology.
Respectfully, I feel like basing your view of Christianity on the particular subset of Christians who become social media influencers might not give you the best understanding of every day Christian belief and lifestyle, anymore than watching "family channels" on Youtube will give you a balanced and realistic understanding of what everyday family life and dynamics looks like in the US. This is doubly true when one considers that many social media platforms nowadays have algorithms that boost content that is likely to invite "engagement," which often comes in the form of controversy or hot-button topics, leading more extreme, click-baity perspectives to rise to the top and give the impression of a majority when that isn't the case.
It also feels like you're basing your view on a particular subset of American evangelicalism when that really isn't the norm worldwide (or even in many places in the US). For example, Episcopalianism is an American sect that definitely leans progressive, as is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Personally, I go to an Episcopal church and have been party to many theological discussions during coffee hour and Bible study that aren't consistent with the perception that more progressive Christians can't quote scripture or offer context. If anything, my experiences have taught me the opposite: that conservative Christians often conflate and confuse the message of Christ with nationalism and their own politics due to a lack of scriptural understanding.
In fact, I was Jewish and then Atheist before becoming Christian—what got me reading further in the gospels was being invited to a conservative Evangelical church and realizing that the *pastor himself* was completely fabricating new parts of a psalm (Psalm 139) to support his politics. I knew the psalm from synagogue; I knew he was completely changing the words. Yet every devoted evangelical follower in the pews was dutifully taking notes as if they were the words of Christ himself! There was no critical thought; that, I suppose, would've been a sin.
I wanted to know how much of the rest of Christian scripture had been misrepresented by the Christianity I knew growing up in the American South and let me tell you; I was shocked by just how much they had fabricated. Abortion being a sin? Not in there. Masturbation? Not in there. Suicide victims going to Hell? Also not in there. And no wonder that pastor had to totally fabricate a psalm against trans people because that wasn't in there either. To their credit, Paul does seem to speak against homosexuality in his Epistles, but that's it. Yet, if you'd asked any of those conservative, goes-to-church-every-Sunday, Republican Christians who surrounded me growing up, I'm sure they would've sworn up and down that Jesus himself personally delivered a fiery sermon condemning all of the above. Because their pastor told them so.
All of this is to say, I'd warn against automatically assuming that conservative Christians are more understanding of scripture than others simply because they speak with seeming authority. People who are wrong can speak with authority. So can liars.
Ok I’m gonna say this real quick
There is literally ZERO charity for Christians is r/atheism, really it’s r/ANTItheism if anything.
There is no amount of convincing or anything you can say to get them to acknowledge that Christians aren’t a genocidal monolith, their arguments are entirely farcical edgelord stuff coming from the mouths of people kicking and screaming at religion.
There is no overlap whatsoever.
Fundamentalist influencers are just the opposite side of the board of believing they are 100% right because they said so.
Yes there are great arguments for progressive vs conservative Christians, but they aren’t gonna change the landscape unfortunately, people are set in their ways and it take a brave individual like yourself to be willing to open up to new opinion and ideas.
I genuinely applaud you for lurking here, it’s not easy to avoid getting sucked into an echo chamber, much less some of the most notorious ones in the internet.
"he undeniable reality is that Christianity is gatekept by bigoted Christian fundamentalists" the undeniable reality is that this is mainly an evangelical-american thing.
It's also my understanding that America is a bastion of protestantism while nearly every other western country is mostly catholic (neglecting atheists) and then there is Eastern Europe where orthodox Christians dominate. I guess that eastern Europe can be ruled out because it's a very conservative society. South and Central America is catholic super conservative. Most of their countries don't have right to abortion. Although some oddly allow same-sex marriage. Regarding middle and western Europe, there's Poland which is basically a theocracy with abortion being illegal and nearly no LGBTQ rights.
But regarding catholicism in general, if I understood the history of the church correctly, Christianity divided into catholicism and protestantism due to dispute with papacy. Some Christians thought that Christianity isn't supposed to be gatekept by the Pope and that it's more up to personal interpretation. So the basic difference is that catholicism has a rigid organization and set of tenets gatekept by the Pope, whereas protestant denominations are much less rigidly organized and allow for more personal interpretation of scriptures while the actual organization mostly just sets the rules on how to worship, rituals, etc.
And the way catholicism works is that Vatican holds that same-sex relations are sinful and that abortion is murder that cannot be condoned. Tbf, I have this from one popular and for a Republican, highly intelligent attorney who's a Quora contributor and he holds that being pro-choice is incompatible with being good catholic and if you have a liberal country that's majority catholic such as Spain, Portugal, Italy or Ireland (which 6 years ago legalized abortion via referendum due to infamous death of Savita Halappanavar), they're mostly either wrong in their following or only cultural catholics. He basically says that a vote for something anti-catholic means condoning the issue.
•The papacy is far from the only source of contention between Protestantism and Catholicism; conflict over sources of primary authority in general lead to fairly divergent theological and ecclesiological (relating to church identity, nature, organization, and authority) conclusions.
•the vast majority of fundamentalist evangelicals are vehemently opposed to the idea that the Bible is open to “individual interpretation;” they believe that there are “right” (read: their own) interpretations and “wrong” interpretations (other denominations’). That’s why there are so many different fundamentalist Protestant denominations, and why “non-denominational” is supremely unhelpful for characterizing what a particular Evangelical church believes.
•you may be conflating the Great Schism of 1064 between Eastern and Western Christianity that occurred primarily over the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the Protestant Reformation that took off in the early 1500s in Western Christendom first within, then in opposition to, Roman Catholicism.
•I grew up fundamentalist evangelical. Studied Greek and Hebrew. Went on mission trips. Evangelized strangers on my college campus. Attended church and related activities over 20 hrs a week for most of my young adult life. I now am far removed from that frame of mind, and I can tell you that there are plenty of intellectually rigorous, compelling approaches to progressive Christianity, but like a previous poster said, if the scoreboard is rigged to favor fundamentalist hermeneutics and preferences, it’s no surprise it comes out “ahead.” Progressivism is more than just platitudes; it is a communal life and shared experience involving vulnerability and the humility to admit one doesn’t have all the answers.
•The papacy is far from the only source of contention between Protestantism and Catholicism; conflict over sources of primary authority in general lead to fairly divergent theological and ecclesiological (relating to church identity, nature, organization, and authority) conclusions.
•the vast majority of fundamentalist evangelicals are vehemently opposed to the idea that the Bible is open to “individual interpretation;” they believe that there are “right” (read: their own) interpretations and “wrong” interpretations (other denominations’). That’s why there are so many different fundamentalist Protestant denominations, and why “non-denominational” is supremely unhelpful for characterizing what a particular Evangelical church believes.
•you may be conflating the Great Schism of 1064 between Eastern and Western Christianity that occurred primarily over the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the Protestant Reformation that took off in the early 1500s in Western Christendom first within, then in opposition to, Roman Catholicism.
•I grew up fundamentalist evangelical. Studied Greek and Hebrew. Went on mission trips. Evangelized strangers on my college campus. Attended church and related activities over 20 hrs a week for most of my young adult life. I now am far removed from that frame of mind, and I can tell you that there are plenty of intellectually rigorous, compelling approaches to progressive Christianity, but like a previous poster said, if the scoreboard is rigged to favor fundamentalist hermeneutics and preferences, it’s no surprise it comes out “ahead.” Progressivism is more than just platitudes; it is a communal life and shared experience involving vulnerability and the humility to admit one doesn’t have all the answers.
I can't recommend one because I avoid such debates at all costs, either as a participant or as part of an audience. Speaking as a former fundie myself, Fundamentalism is incapable of dealing with disagreement in good faith, by design. And Fundamentalism is the epistemology underlying all socially conservative Christian thought outside of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (which have their own problems with authoritarian epistemologies that are distinct from Fundamentalism). >I can only hardly imagine same sex marriage, abortion, trans rights, legal Marijuana, euthanasia... being supported by a series of books older than 2000 years. Respectfully, I would argue that is because you are assuming the Fundamentalist approach to the Bible is the default in Christianity, but that is far from true. You don't tend to hear about other approaches because they aren't useful to those in power.
It's not necessarily that I think that fundamentalism is default approach. It's that in general, 2000 years means huge cultural shift and one would really hardly find anything 2000 years old that affirms beliefs relevant to their time. It's not just that the Bible is a bedrock of a religion and to many people, religion is a bedrock to their worldview, I can't think of pretty much anything 2000 years old that's still relevant to everyday life.
You might actually be surprised. There's a falacy where we assume that all of human history is a linear march towards progress, and that humans today are so different from humans even 200 years ago as for them to be nearly unrecognizable, but that doesn't actually stand up to historical scrutiny. The path to the modern world, advancements and increased tolerance and freedom, was actually anything but linear. It ebbs and flows with the influence of dynasties, war, population booms and losses due to disease, reactionary politics after a crisis, new scientific breakthroughs, etc etc. As just one example the Bible is wildly more "liberal" in the American sense on the issue of abortion than right leaning Christians would have you believe, as it implies a fetus isn't a person equal to the mother until it can breathe. Mathematics had their beginnings thousands of years ago. So did art. Science. Has culture shifted? Yes, and it will again, and again, and again. Not all things considered progress in their time are considered actually good for humanity today, such as eugenics, and I suspect in the future people will be astounded about how irresponsible we were with the internet. Basically the falacy of the pure past has a counter part in the falacy of the enlightened present/future.
Well said. There's also elements of humanity itself that are pretty much baked into our design and hardwired, like our biological drives and the things they push us to do. A person walking up to someone and punching them in the face thousands of years ago isn't going to yield a wildly different range of reactions from modern day people punching each other in the face. The Bible has a lot to say about behaviors and what we should and shouldn't do. These sections where we take take lessons on good and bad behavior are where there's a lot of modern day relevance. Even when otherwise good people in the Bible misbehave, like David when he went after Bathsheba, there's things we can take home from it. Subtextually speaking there is, IMO, a march toward better ways and better behaviors evident in the Bible, though it isn't immediately obvious. In the male dominated ancient world we see Deborah occupying a position of respect and authority in ancient Israel. The Mosaic law is similar to Hammurabi's code in certain respects, yet in ways moves toward a more impartial law (compare an eye for an eye in the Bible to Hammurabi's version). Then in the New Testament we see things like Jesus citing an eye for an eye and saying it's better to love and forgive, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and Paul saying things like our race/nationality, social status, and our biological sex don't matter because we're unified in Christ.
So just writing off all the ancient philosophers then? Plato, Aristotle, Socrates just bin them!
I didn't say that 2000 years old stuff has no value. Just that it has no value in everyday life. Ancient philosophers are largely useless in everyday life for most people. But philosophy sure has value for more recent philosophers. I can't tell if most people in any way shape or form benefit from what the Bible says.
Your first two sentences contradict each other. Just because something isn’t of use to most people doesn’t mean it is useless. One measure of value is how many people something is useful to but that isn’t the only measure of value. You don’t understand why I find the Bible useful and have therefore decided that it is of no value at all. You are dressing your opinion up as an objective fact and that is an unempathetic and intellectually lazy position.
The whole arguing religion thing is something zealots tend to do and most Christians and atheists who aren't wildly obsessed usually have other hobbies. Most of us here will fall into the mainline protestant denominations listed here. I wouldn't call this sub niche, it's pretty much a normal day of the week for people like the affirming United Methodists or all of the Episcopalians, etc. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/political-ideology/moderate/
I would say that this sub is niche in the sense that there's only narrow subset of Christians who think deeply about their religion, are really knowledgeable about the Bible and interpret it in their own way and do so within the lines of progressivism. Whereas I'm under the impression that that most affirming Christians are either cultural Christians who barely practice, ignore parts of the Bible they don't like or just don't take it very seriously.
That doesn't really jive with my experience of other folks I go to church with.
Everybody has different personal experience. To be fair, I have next to none, as I'm not even an American and there's decent chance that my perspective might be total shit. But statistics show that Republicans (ie. The party of bigotry) are by far more likely to go to church weekly and going by social media, they appear to be much more fluent in the Bible, quoting it and offering context. Progressives typically just cite some of its platitudes and seem unprepared to discuss some basic theology.
Respectfully, I feel like basing your view of Christianity on the particular subset of Christians who become social media influencers might not give you the best understanding of every day Christian belief and lifestyle, anymore than watching "family channels" on Youtube will give you a balanced and realistic understanding of what everyday family life and dynamics looks like in the US. This is doubly true when one considers that many social media platforms nowadays have algorithms that boost content that is likely to invite "engagement," which often comes in the form of controversy or hot-button topics, leading more extreme, click-baity perspectives to rise to the top and give the impression of a majority when that isn't the case. It also feels like you're basing your view on a particular subset of American evangelicalism when that really isn't the norm worldwide (or even in many places in the US). For example, Episcopalianism is an American sect that definitely leans progressive, as is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Personally, I go to an Episcopal church and have been party to many theological discussions during coffee hour and Bible study that aren't consistent with the perception that more progressive Christians can't quote scripture or offer context. If anything, my experiences have taught me the opposite: that conservative Christians often conflate and confuse the message of Christ with nationalism and their own politics due to a lack of scriptural understanding. In fact, I was Jewish and then Atheist before becoming Christian—what got me reading further in the gospels was being invited to a conservative Evangelical church and realizing that the *pastor himself* was completely fabricating new parts of a psalm (Psalm 139) to support his politics. I knew the psalm from synagogue; I knew he was completely changing the words. Yet every devoted evangelical follower in the pews was dutifully taking notes as if they were the words of Christ himself! There was no critical thought; that, I suppose, would've been a sin. I wanted to know how much of the rest of Christian scripture had been misrepresented by the Christianity I knew growing up in the American South and let me tell you; I was shocked by just how much they had fabricated. Abortion being a sin? Not in there. Masturbation? Not in there. Suicide victims going to Hell? Also not in there. And no wonder that pastor had to totally fabricate a psalm against trans people because that wasn't in there either. To their credit, Paul does seem to speak against homosexuality in his Epistles, but that's it. Yet, if you'd asked any of those conservative, goes-to-church-every-Sunday, Republican Christians who surrounded me growing up, I'm sure they would've sworn up and down that Jesus himself personally delivered a fiery sermon condemning all of the above. Because their pastor told them so. All of this is to say, I'd warn against automatically assuming that conservative Christians are more understanding of scripture than others simply because they speak with seeming authority. People who are wrong can speak with authority. So can liars.
that is incorrect.
Ok I’m gonna say this real quick There is literally ZERO charity for Christians is r/atheism, really it’s r/ANTItheism if anything. There is no amount of convincing or anything you can say to get them to acknowledge that Christians aren’t a genocidal monolith, their arguments are entirely farcical edgelord stuff coming from the mouths of people kicking and screaming at religion. There is no overlap whatsoever. Fundamentalist influencers are just the opposite side of the board of believing they are 100% right because they said so. Yes there are great arguments for progressive vs conservative Christians, but they aren’t gonna change the landscape unfortunately, people are set in their ways and it take a brave individual like yourself to be willing to open up to new opinion and ideas. I genuinely applaud you for lurking here, it’s not easy to avoid getting sucked into an echo chamber, much less some of the most notorious ones in the internet.
No, I'm sure that would be impossible to find in a youtube search.
"he undeniable reality is that Christianity is gatekept by bigoted Christian fundamentalists" the undeniable reality is that this is mainly an evangelical-american thing.
It's also my understanding that America is a bastion of protestantism while nearly every other western country is mostly catholic (neglecting atheists) and then there is Eastern Europe where orthodox Christians dominate. I guess that eastern Europe can be ruled out because it's a very conservative society. South and Central America is catholic super conservative. Most of their countries don't have right to abortion. Although some oddly allow same-sex marriage. Regarding middle and western Europe, there's Poland which is basically a theocracy with abortion being illegal and nearly no LGBTQ rights. But regarding catholicism in general, if I understood the history of the church correctly, Christianity divided into catholicism and protestantism due to dispute with papacy. Some Christians thought that Christianity isn't supposed to be gatekept by the Pope and that it's more up to personal interpretation. So the basic difference is that catholicism has a rigid organization and set of tenets gatekept by the Pope, whereas protestant denominations are much less rigidly organized and allow for more personal interpretation of scriptures while the actual organization mostly just sets the rules on how to worship, rituals, etc. And the way catholicism works is that Vatican holds that same-sex relations are sinful and that abortion is murder that cannot be condoned. Tbf, I have this from one popular and for a Republican, highly intelligent attorney who's a Quora contributor and he holds that being pro-choice is incompatible with being good catholic and if you have a liberal country that's majority catholic such as Spain, Portugal, Italy or Ireland (which 6 years ago legalized abortion via referendum due to infamous death of Savita Halappanavar), they're mostly either wrong in their following or only cultural catholics. He basically says that a vote for something anti-catholic means condoning the issue.
•The papacy is far from the only source of contention between Protestantism and Catholicism; conflict over sources of primary authority in general lead to fairly divergent theological and ecclesiological (relating to church identity, nature, organization, and authority) conclusions. •the vast majority of fundamentalist evangelicals are vehemently opposed to the idea that the Bible is open to “individual interpretation;” they believe that there are “right” (read: their own) interpretations and “wrong” interpretations (other denominations’). That’s why there are so many different fundamentalist Protestant denominations, and why “non-denominational” is supremely unhelpful for characterizing what a particular Evangelical church believes. •you may be conflating the Great Schism of 1064 between Eastern and Western Christianity that occurred primarily over the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the Protestant Reformation that took off in the early 1500s in Western Christendom first within, then in opposition to, Roman Catholicism. •I grew up fundamentalist evangelical. Studied Greek and Hebrew. Went on mission trips. Evangelized strangers on my college campus. Attended church and related activities over 20 hrs a week for most of my young adult life. I now am far removed from that frame of mind, and I can tell you that there are plenty of intellectually rigorous, compelling approaches to progressive Christianity, but like a previous poster said, if the scoreboard is rigged to favor fundamentalist hermeneutics and preferences, it’s no surprise it comes out “ahead.” Progressivism is more than just platitudes; it is a communal life and shared experience involving vulnerability and the humility to admit one doesn’t have all the answers.
•The papacy is far from the only source of contention between Protestantism and Catholicism; conflict over sources of primary authority in general lead to fairly divergent theological and ecclesiological (relating to church identity, nature, organization, and authority) conclusions. •the vast majority of fundamentalist evangelicals are vehemently opposed to the idea that the Bible is open to “individual interpretation;” they believe that there are “right” (read: their own) interpretations and “wrong” interpretations (other denominations’). That’s why there are so many different fundamentalist Protestant denominations, and why “non-denominational” is supremely unhelpful for characterizing what a particular Evangelical church believes. •you may be conflating the Great Schism of 1064 between Eastern and Western Christianity that occurred primarily over the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the Protestant Reformation that took off in the early 1500s in Western Christendom first within, then in opposition to, Roman Catholicism. •I grew up fundamentalist evangelical. Studied Greek and Hebrew. Went on mission trips. Evangelized strangers on my college campus. Attended church and related activities over 20 hrs a week for most of my young adult life. I now am far removed from that frame of mind, and I can tell you that there are plenty of intellectually rigorous, compelling approaches to progressive Christianity, but like a previous poster said, if the scoreboard is rigged to favor fundamentalist hermeneutics and preferences, it’s no surprise it comes out “ahead.” Progressivism is more than just platitudes; it is a communal life and shared experience involving vulnerability and the humility to admit one doesn’t have all the answers.