When will white, christian moderates speak up?

[Measure_for_Measure]

@Czarcasm

Will someone please tell me why moderate Christians, who are supposedly in the majority in this country, who are supposedly the “real” Christians in this country, don’t hold more sway in this country?

My take is that all Christians are real Christians but that, being sinners, all Christians will be unchristian from time to time. But that’s a nitpick. I agree with the underlying point: mainline Christians have ceded the field to those wearing their faith on their sleeves, praying on the street corner and pushing a political agenda wholly independent of the Gospel (i.e. anti-gay and anti-abortion).

Part of the difficulty is ideological, I think. I’d summarize the gospels as saying, “Love God and His creation, love thy neighbor as thyself, but don’t be a sanctimonious prick about it.” So a good Christian can’t launch rhetorical napalm on the late Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, because, well it’s unchristian.

Algher: I much prefer this sort of response…

@Algher

What part of ordaining gays, and now performing gay marriages is sitting on our hands? We are NOT accommodating the conservatives in our church - we have changed, and they are stuck either leaving or dealing with it themselves.

We laid down the smack, as you put it. When the PCUSA voted VERY recently - that was laying down the smack. That has made more news than Phil Robertson - check the links I posted earlier in this thread - just look for the rainbow flags.

…to this one:

@Algher

So, once again, we ARE speaking up. But because we don’t make incendiary statements - it just is not that interesting. This is more of an issue with the nature of news than our actions.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Because moderate and liberal Christians have ceded a part of discourse to Christian conservative loudmouths. By repeated referring themselves as “Christian”, one theologically squirelly subset has damaged the brand. Many millennials have taken them at their word and thereby associate Christianity with, well, bigotry, intolerance, cultural drama and scientific ignorance. Now frankly, I part company with the OP regarding the Duck Dynasty clown: I’m not sure how much he matters. But the underlying topic and question is legitimate.

Basically, we need a couple of mainline equivalents of say, Bill Nye the Science Guy. The fact is that the media loves controversy. A handful of mainline or liberal Christian Reverends need to place themselves on every big reporter’s rollodex and provide standard replies to the bible pounders. Start off bland, more in sadness than in anger. Leave it to another reverend to ramp it up as appropriate.

I’d endorse the following.

@Czarcasm

2. When some far-right church demagogue gets national airtime claiming to speak for all Christians, it wouldn’t hurt if MC leaders made an effort to contact the largest media they have access to in their area to ask for equal time. Not making the effort and saying Why bother-they wouldn’t let us get on the air anyway" is something I have no respect for. If and when airtime refusal actually happens, you follow up with press releases that contain the news that you were refused equal access, and the original message you were going to put out…no screaming involved, of course.

By the way, “fighting fire with fire” doesn’t mean battling an out of control wildfire by setting off another out of control wildfire.