Yes. Which of the two candidates would you say better represented Jesus’ teachings in general? Which one would you really expect to follow through on promises to do more of it once in office?
If you could still answer Trump, then your reasons weren’t really what you’re telling us they were.
Ya know, if the OP is going to be upset that Democrats and atheists are devoid of “Christian Values” he really needs to spell out exactly what those christian values might be. Since he didn’t I’ve pulled some off of wiki for starters:
The biblical teachings of Jesus include:[3]
•Love of God: “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (an excerpt from the Shema Deut.6:5), -Matthew 22:37 This is the first half of the statement, and the second half, given equal weight, is “love your neighbor as yourself” upon which hang all the Law and all the prophets. -Matthew 22:36-40
•Fidelity in marriage: “Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder”, derived from -Matthew 19:6
•Renunciation of worldly goods: “Gather not your riches up upon this earth, for there your heart will be also”, (Matthew 6:21)
•Renunciation of violence: “If a man strikes you on one cheek, turn the other cheek”, (Luke 6:29)
•Forgiveness of sins: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”, (Matthew 6:12)
•Unconditional love: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Luke 6:27-28)
Outside of “Love of God”, which is pretty much useless to atheists, and the hotly debateable abortion issue, I’d like to know exactly where the Republicans have the Democrats beat when it comes to putting their money where there mouth is in living these “Christian Values”.
And how in the world did they ever put someone like Trump in office whose Modus Operandi is the polar opposite of “Christian Values”?
“If a man strikes you on one cheek, turn the other” is the utter opposite of “If someone hits me, I hit them back…harder”
How can one justify this complete and utter hypocrisy when talking about Republicans and christian values?
The impression a lot of people have is that fundamnetalist Christians don’t want a separation at all.
If you are in fact a Christian, you should be willing to examine yourself and your faith. You might want to consider the fact that your perception of the efefcts of your Church is not what other people may perceive.
To use me as an example, absolutely the strongest impressions I get from conservative denominations in the United States are:
While I am sure there’s more to it than this, those two things are the overwhelming impression I get. My best friend’s parents converted to Southern Baptism after he moved out of the house and have become remarkably intolerant. They’re nice people, but are taught to hate and fear anyone different from them, and they repeat what they’re taught and seem very afraid of the world. I have never had occasion to meet a fundamentalist Christian who on closer examination wasn’t a massive bigot. On that score I’m like 0 for 15, maybe 0 for 20. I am sure some are not, and I feel bad for any reading this because I haven’t met them, but when you roll snake eyes 20 times in a row you start to get a little suspicious that it’s not a coincidence anymore. And it works in general, too, not just specific people. If I’m in the South and listen to a Christian radio station there is very, very little on the show that does not revolve around hatred for gays and Muslims. And the leaders of fundamentalist churches rally, again and again, around bigoted politicians; the absolute #1 priority in terms of political advocacy is hating gay people. It’s not just Donald Trump.
I am sure YOUR impression is very different. But you need to work on your PR. If someone like me just gets the sense that Southern Baptism is about hating people, why are you surprised people have a negative impression of churches? If they are purveyors of hatred, of course the impression they get will be negative.
Have you even considered this?
Being from the southern US, I assure you atheists are not high up on their lists either. With polls, often we are at the bottom of least trusted in America, although I understand we moved up from being least electable in a latest gallop poll from the bottom position to next to the bottom to overtake the socialists as least electable, which some contribute to Bernie Sanders, and we are only two points away from tying the Muslims.
Decades ago, our numbers were even worse only getting 18% in 1958, so we have came a long way getting 58% that would elect a godless president today in the US.
The internet has leveled the playing field, more young people than ever identify with it, and in higher academics, especially the sciences, atheists have a strong showing, especially with leading scientists.
Eh, while I agree with the impression, consider how many of your, say, 50 closest friends are YECs, then consider what the odds of that are given that half the country is basically YECs, and consider that you may be in something of a personal bubble, where the only things you hear about the opposing tribe are things filtered through that bubble and are likely intended to get you mad at the opposing tribe, rather than be their viewpoint.
Short version: read sections 3 and 4 of this, then this. Okay, this isn’t actually shorter. But the point is that our images of conservative christians are formed from about 100% things filtered through our ingroup to cause anger towards the outgroup, and 0% things actually from the outgroup.
Let’s be fair - those people you’ve met aren’t massive bigots themselves; they just believe that God is a massive bigot and if it were up to them they would have no problem at all with gays and Muslims and assorted other Others but who are they to go against what God says, you know? Their hands are tied on the matter. Can’t be helped. Ayup.
(That said, as BPC notes, it’s dangerous to overgeneralize on the basis of a limited sample size. And some fundamentalists are, I assume, good people…)
The ones that I have known were pretty decent folks.
To each other, right?
If you want to play dueling anecdata, knock yourself out.
I remember once a liberal was praising Europe as being “post-Christian”, meaning in most countries in Europe Christianity had lost most influence on society and generally is looked down upon. Churches in Europe, especially the cathedrals, are there mostly as tourist attractions.
They were hoping America would go in that direction.
I know I am.
nm
Well, they believed in being nice to everybody. “Golden Rule”, and all that… 
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
I would like that myself, with not just Christianity, but religion in general on the wane. I certainly don’t want those individuals with such beliefs persecuted in any way; I just want hyper-religious folks to not have the power to control others’ behavior.
Maybe you should explain what’s so fuckin’ good about churches, OP.
I think your post was half-joking, but the arrow of causality goes the other way. The God that people believe in always hates the same people they do.
You remember once a liberal did that? I praise Europe (much of it anyway) for that quality regularly, and I look forward to America going that direction. We’re just behind.
I understand that I am in a generally liberal (at least, non-fundamentalist) bubble and that anecdotes aren’t data. That wasn’t my point.
My point is to provide myself as a data point; I am not a conservative Christian, and all my interactions with them are negative. Literally every observation is one of extraordinarily narrow minded, intolerant people. I am personally acquainted with several people who have chosen a fundamentalist path, and it turned them into bigots. Their political influence is invariably in favor of bigotry, their media outlets of choice are bigoted, and their leaders are, to an extent not explainable by random chance, bigots.
It is possible of course that I have been exceedingly unlucky in my personal interactions, and that my perceptions of how fundamentalist Christians form their politics is tragically wrong, but I am quite open to correction. If, in fact, Christian fundamentalists are much more supportive of the rights of minorities than every bit of evidence I’ve ever seen would suggest, I would really like to be wrong.
What I’m trying to say to the OP is that people have genuine, honest reasons to feel negatively towards churches. Not “moral relativism,” but reasons like “Those people hate me” or “that churches teaches its followers to hate people I love.” I’d like to know
I don’t know you, but how many of those interactions are person-to-person? Like, almost everything I hear about fundies is awful. But almost everything I hear about fundies comes from call-ins on The Atheist Experience and blog posts on The Friendly Atheist and Love, Joy, Feminism. These are not places I would hear nice things about fundamentalists.
(That said, yeah, the negatives you hear are definitely legitimate and good reasons to oppose the church.)
Well, I can think of five people I’ve known really well who converted to a fundamentalist Christian faith. All became bigots. As I mentioned, my best friend’s parents are two of them. They’re still nice people, but they get worse every year, and are starting to show signs of turning against their only son.
On a casual basis, maybe a dozen more, including some relatives down in Arizona on my Mom’s side. All are bigoted to an extent I would not have thought possible in polite society. And, look, I’m smart enough to be making such observations as I can from original sources, not from liberal websites.
So again I’d like to OP to address this, or at least acknowledge that people may have a reason to dislike churches. I am no raving liberal, either. In a lot of regards I’m pretty conservative. I have no personal problems with people of faith, of any numbers of faiths. But gosh, if there’s anything positive coming out of the fundamentalist Christian churches, they do a terrific job of hiding it.