This is false. Conservative fundamentalists say the exact same things Christ did, that HE is the only way to salvation. It was the Pharisees, judging other's giving, and twisting scripture that angered Jesus. Conservative fundamentalists have not created God, nor Jesus in the image of republicans, that is false, unless you can articulate how they did that. You could also explain how we have confused any of Christ's teachings, and how we have rejected them for "secular thinking". If you can't, then your rant is just that, a rant, unfocused and untrue. It is liberals that say homosexuality isn't sin, that women can hold pastorate offices in church. It is conservatives that give more to charity. It is conservatives that hold the Bible as the sole authority.
You need to explain these points.
I posted this on another thread. It details how current non-Christians feel about Christianity. It's obvious that these negative attitudes of those we want to reach for Jesus are caused by the Christian Right's hypocrisy and support of a political agenda over Christian evangelism.
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Actually, I'm serious about this. I'm currently reading a book called "UnChristian" by David Kinnaman which reinforces what I've believed for a long time. The author is president of The Barna Group, a Christian company which provides research and resources to denominations and churches to aid in evangelism (demographics, insights into what people think and believe, etc.). They can be found at:
http://www.barna.org/
Anyway, this book investigates why the Christian church is failing to reach the Busters (children of the Boomers) and the following generation (what they call the Mosaic generation. It focuses on people aged 16 to 29. There are about 24 million of them in the US compared to 21 M Baby Boomers. About 40% of this group is outside the faith compared to about 27% of Boomers.
This is what I've learned so far. (I've read about 2/3 of the book.)
Most of these outsiders have attended church in the past but have opted out.
38% of this group have a negative attitude towards Christians compared to 50% towards evangelical Christians. This unfavorable image is due to:
Anti-homosexual (against people not acts) - 66%
Judgmental - 57%
Hypocritical - 54%
Too much involved in politics - 46%
Out of touch with reality - 37%
Insensitive to Others - 27%
Others
They feel that Christians are not interested in forming a relationship with them but only notching up another "salvation." Interesting enough, many church goers feel about the same about the church but to a somewhat lesser degree. The outsiders don't have a negative view of Jesus but rather think that the church has distorted His message.
Because the Christian religion is so pervasive in the US, 84% of these outsiders say that they know Christians personally. Much of what they believe about the church is based on personal experience not the media, etc.
Looking at this a different way, the Barna Group presented several descriptors of a religious and asked this age group (16-29) which ones applied to present-day Christianity. They included the unchurched as well as those who attend church. This is the result.
Unchurched Church Goers
Anti-homosexual 91% 80%
Judgmental 87% 52%
Hypocritical 85% 47%
Old-Fashioned 78% 36%
Too involved in Politics 75% 50%
Out of Touch with Reality 72% 32%
Insensitive to Others 70% 29%
Boring 68% 27%
Not accepting of other Faiths 64% 39%
Confusing 61% 44%
The question might be why do we care? Of course as Christians we have different values than the unchurched. The reason we should care is that these are the people we’re trying to reach with the gospel. We don’t have to accept homosexual behavior to accept and care about homosexual people. Jesus was often criticized because he spent time with the worst of sinners (prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans, etc.). The Christian ideal is to love the sinner but not to accept the sin.
Appearing judgmental, hypocritical, too involved in (Republican) politics is not the way to reach out to a sinful world going to Hell. I myself have been told twice to my face that a Democrat cannot be a Christian. That one statement automatically reduces the “potential harvest” of souls by 50%. Of what value is it to "win" a political argument and cause someone to be forever estranged from Jesus?
If people are told the story about America being a Christian nation rather than a free nation where everyone can worship as they choose why wouldn’t they assume that they are automatically going to heaven since they are a citizen of that nation? Why do we have to put manger scenes on the court house lawn rather than on the church lawn or the lawns of believers? What do we gain by trying to force our religion on others? It doesn’t work as these statistics show. They only develop an animosity towards us which makes it impossible for us to reach them with the gospel.
Just what is the Christian Right’s real objective, winning souls or winning votes? I don’t believe they can do both and that’s why the SBC didn’t reach its goal of 1M baptisms. We are not reaching the lost because the church is increasingly becoming a club for insiders rather than a place of hope for the lost.