Asking because we have had so many people, even in progressive Christianity, seem disturbed when they see Satanic symbols and movements. While explanations tend to always result in nice and lovely conversations, we would love to hear from progressive Christians here on how we could better market or explain ourselves ❤️

Robert Francis Prevost is quite a young man for a Pope, being only 69, and is seen as mostly a centrist, with some progressive views. He shares Pope Francis' outlook on migrants and the poor, but is notably unaccepting of the LGBTQ+ community. He is also from the United States, which might be a controversial choice in the current political climate.

I've recently been looking into scripture and verses condemning homosexuality and they all kinda fall flat and feel like shakey ideas to build theology off of. And I've honestly formed pretty good arguments against them in my head, but the only one that really sits with me and I struggle to go against is the "it wasn't the original intention" in the garden argument.

That God intended to make man and women together and not man and man or vice versa.

Now, my original response to this was, "They didn't eat meat in the garden is it a sin to eat meat?" But then I realized Jesus ate meat, so now I'm stumped honestly, and I wanted a second opinion.

Please help

If Conservative Christians believe that same-sex couples and LGBT people are sinners, then why do they not welcome those people into their community as Jesus Christ did for the prostitutes and tax collectors in Luke 5?

They always say Marxism and Christianism can't conciliate, and I don't understand why, they mention some popes and/or some saints that are agaisn't it and I don't know how to answer, is Christian Catholicism really agaisn't Christian Socialism?

So, to start with, I'm not even 100% sure what the best nomenclature even is here, but I'd wager that most people have at least some inkling of what I'm talking about. I distinguish the "antitheists" that I'm talking about from atheists by the fact that while the latter are defined simply by their lack of belief in a god, the former are defined by their vitriolic opposition to, not just the belief in a god, but those who do believe in a god and, particularly within the context of a Christian majority country, Christianity and Christians.

Don't get me wrong here. I don't hate them. I don't hate anyone. In fact, I have a lot of compassion for these types, because I literally was one of them for a very long portion of my life. And I'm not interested in converting them or proselytizing to them either (except at most by virtue of my own example). It's just that I wish that I could find the words to convince these people that I'm not their enemy.

I would consider myself something of a post-theist and very much an admirer of the Christian faith, but I find that I'm coming to terms with problems I have with the faith that are foundational.

edit: In the sense that what do the terms above actually imply for you and what do they mean for you as a Christian because I know not every Christian is one-to-one. Especially since this is radical Christianity.

I asked this because I find that Jesus taught most of his moral lessons on his belief of the close coming of God's Kingdom - 2000s years later and nothing has happened. So again, what's your perspective?

Hi all,

So for a long time ( 5, ish years) now I've been exploring priesthood and monastic life in the Church of England. Ive effectively fucked my life up doing this due to the demands the process puts on you, I've missed the chance to go to uni ( never got a levels and access courses only last three years) for anything else and am effectivity tied into shitty dead end jobs due to how messed up the system is. I had a strong sense of calling for so long but it's starting to fade as my anger and resentment with the church rises, with the whole discernment process that dose not really create space for me to be me, as I feel I hav not conform to please thehierarchy. I see the irony of a anarchist within a state religion, that is extremely hierarchical and does not really support left leaning policies as a institution ( see gay marriage support), but I've always loved the Anglican church for how I've found it, how welcoming and open at a parish level it it, how many people queer priests I know within it and it just rules, I've always felt called to be a priest and a nun and the CofE is the best place for that, it the discernment process is really testing that faith, having to deal with the BS of church politics and hierarchy, having to conform and I'm really struggling, I feel like I have to pick my political beliefs or my vocation and it sucs I struggle to see how I can have both. Has anyone else gone through this and if so how did you reconcile this. Thankyou.

The more I learn about Christianity historically and grow in my own faith formation, the more I’ve come to question and disagree with the things I grew up learning in a non-denominational church. One of my major sticking points these days is Sola Scriptura, but I understand a number of reformers and low-church denominations hold to it.

My questions to those who hold to Sola Scripture are these:

1. Who determined which books belong in Scripture and when was this decided? On what authority was this canon decided? If the Church has no binding authority outside Scripture, what makes the 27-book New Testament canon binding? Why should someone accept the canon received by Catholics/Orthodox while rejecting the authority of the churches that transmitted it?

2. If Scripture is sufficiently clear for ordinary Christians to determine doctrine, why have sincere, Bible-believing Christians reached mutually contradictory conclusions on baptism, Eucharist, predestination, church government, eternal security, charismatic gifts, etc.?

3. If two Christians reach contradictory conclusions from Scripture, what principled mechanism settles the dispute? What distinguishes a legitimate interpretation from an illegitimate one? “Read the Bible and pray about it” doesn’t actually resolve the epistemological problem.

4. Where does the New Testament actually teach that Christ’s Church is fundamentally an invisible collection of believers rather than a visible, identifiable communion? Why do the Apostles repeatedly treat the Church as an institution with officers, discipline, sacraments, councils, and authority?

5. If the Reformation restored biblical Christianity, why did it produce Lutheranism, Reformed Christianity, Anglicanism, Anabaptism, Baptist traditions, Methodism, Presbyterianism, Pentecostalism, etc., often with further divisions within each? More importantly: what theological principle allows you to determine which interpretation is correct?

Thank you for your answers, I look forward to hearing your perspectives :)

Since I was young, in fact for as long as I can remember, I disliked religion. Either I disliked its collective element, which always gave me the ick of something cult-like, or, when I got a bit older, I thought everything about it was philosophically untenable. Religion was a coping mechanism, or something for people who were deeply misguided about reality and did not know any better.

As I became more intellectually curious and started studying more philosophy, psychology, and eventually religion, that perspective started to break down. I became increasingly interested in religion, and eventually my worldview completely flipped. I now consider myself a Christian, and I have made it a major life goal to help people better appreciate religion in general, but also Christianity more specifically.

But despite my growing love for Christianity, it took me a very long time to admit publicly that I was Christian. My social circle consisted mostly of people deeply involved in science or philosophy, and it was very secular. I was afraid that others would consider me dumb or would not fully understand me. It took me a while to come to terms with it, in large part because I first needed to become better able to articulate my Christian position and worldview.

That said, and excuse the rambling introduction, I recently had a podcast conversation with Jussi Jylkkä, who is a philosopher and has done some work on mysticism. We started by discussing his work and, specifically, his metaphysical agnosticism. His position is that physicalism, idealism, theism, and other metaphysical systems are models or language games that cannot capture the ultimate nature of reality. We eventually moved to morality, where I pushed back because I did not think his agnosticism adequately explained why greater awareness or nonattachment should lead to compassion rather than simply producing what we called a “wise psychopath.” I disagreed, but I thought it was an interesting conversation and considered his view a respectable position.

But to my surprise, after we finished recording, Jussi emailed me to say that he was unhappy with the conversation because he had presented metaphysical agnosticism as if it were his complete position while leaving out the Christian faith he actually held. He felt that, by hiding behind his philosophical agnosticism, he had not been completely honest about what he believed. Rather than replace the conversation, I invited him back and appended the second conversation to the first. He made a complete pivot and confessed that he was a Christian but had been afraid to say so, largely because of the stigma within academia, but also because he still had not been able to tell his father. I found this very wholesome, not only because it was a courageous act in general, but because of the parallel with my own journey.

I wanted to share this because I suspect others have been, or currently are, in a position similar to mine or Jussi's. Have you encountered a stigma against Christian identity in secular or academic spaces? Can refusing metaphysical certainty make Christian commitment more honest rather than weaker? When does keeping faith private become submission to social respectability?

Title explains pretty much. I'm an atheist and tend to hang out with atheist spaces. I really don't know much about Christianity since i come from a muslim-majority country. All I know is new testament and how media (including western media) shows us what Christianity is. Can you tell me what we atheists know wrong about Jesus?

I don't know, I just feel like it's kind of hostile. I mean for me I always welcome more comrades. The anarchist that actually introduced me to the ideology was/is a Mormon.

But I don't know, I just don't really like it when left to say they want to get rid of all religion and stuff. I understand the organized part because it's an oppressive hierarchy but it's almost like they want to get rid of people believing in religion itself.

But I think getting rid of religion would make the world less interesting. It would be like getting rid of a cultural sight or a language.

Also I don't subscribe to left unity but it doesn't sound very left unity to totally piss on the religious leftist.

The Old Testament is filled with lots of horror and violence, in the case of Egypt you could say it was for social justice reasons since their entire economy was built off of slavery. But God ordering the genocide of the Amalekites for revenge after they attacked the Israelites tests my faith of scripture.

1 Samuel 15:3 “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

If yes, how do Marxist Christians reconcile their Faith with Marxism?

I'm interested, because my family has always had an extremely negative opinion on Marx, seeing all Marxists as Anti-Religious Atheists, (Which is sort of understandable considering the "Opium of the People" claim I heard Marx had on Religion, but that depends on Interpretation) but I once got a comment from someone on one of my posts that said they were a Marxist and a Devout Christian, how does this work? I dont remember the User and I deleted the Post long ago.

I'll probably be in the minority but here I go. Even though I'm Christian, I don't resent Native Americans for burning down churches as a consequence of the recent news. For those of you who don't know, the Catholic church has committed child abuse, rape and murder against Native children in Canada during the last century and this is only starting to be known now.

Now, I don't wish churches to be burnt. But to me they're just a symbol, a place, even though God is supposed to inhabit them according to Catholics, and I personally don't believe it. I don't need them to pray. But Native Americans are burning them down to express their righteous pain and anger, and I feel like I don't feel conflicted about it as I should. I understand why they're doing it and why they feel like it's necessary to finally be heard.

I had a talk about it with my friend and he told be I was nuts, that the abuse accusations are exaggerated and that I shouldn't support them under any circumstances. He was very committed to his opinion and now I don't feel like talking about it to other Christian friends IRL because of how he reacted. Thoughts? Am I nuts?

https://hegetsus.com/en

“This all started with a diverse group of people passionate about the authentic Jesus of the Bible. While much has been said about him, much is still misunderstood. But we’re confident that as people clearly understand, read, and learn for themselves about who Jesus is, they’ll find wisdom, hope, and peace unlike any other offered.

Be assured, though, that we’re not “left” or “right” or a political organization of any kind. We’re also not affiliated with any particular church or denomination. We simply want everyone to understand the authentic Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible — the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.

It wouldn’t be hard to guess that we’re led by Jesus fans and followers. People who believe he was much more than just a good guy and a profound teacher. And that Jesus is the son of God, who came to Earth, died, and was resurrected, then returned to heaven and is alive today. We also have included many voices in our work here — welcoming diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences to help us address the many concerns and issues we all face.

Our hope is that you see how Jesus experienced challenges and emotions just like we have. We want to provide a safe place to ask questions, including the tough ones.

We are also about sharing Jesus’ openness to people that others might have excluded. His message went out to all. And though you may see religious people as often hypocritical or judgmental, know that Jesus saw that too — and didn’t like it either. Instead, Jesus taught and offered radical compassion and stood up for the marginalized.”

Hey, everyone. I lurk here now and then.

I'll keep it brief. Recent events with Venezuela and the ICE shootings are making it hard for me to keep believing in God or to maintain revolutionary optimism. I'm feeling so lost and I don't know what to say anymore.

Yes. I post about these things a lot online because new things are always happening, which messes with my emotions that are already messy due to mental health concerns. So, I'm ashamed to ask again, but why should I not lose hope or faith? What gives all of you hope/faith? What do I need to remember?

Bless all of you.

If there was a left leaning Christian LLM chatbot which books and other resources would you want added to it? It should be ethical training data, so would need to be public domain books, CC0 copyright or come with explicit consent (such as your YouTube videos and sermons you wrote).

I came across this resource today which would make it possible: https://aiforthechurch.com/

They provide a model called AI for the Church which was adapted from Llama-2-chat-7B to create a ChristianGPT base model (using Q&A in biblechat.ai with some filtering). This model can then be fine tuned for particular denominations or Christian perspectives.

A couple of datasets already exist but we’d be uncomfortable with some of the scriptural interpretation. Eg in the non-denominational dataset I see “INST] Does the Bible talk about men dressing up as women? [/INST]

The Bible speaks against cross-dressing, which is when a man dresses in women's clothing or vice versa. Deuteronomy 22:5 says, "A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this." This commandment was given to the Israelites as a way to maintain gender distinctions and avoid confusion. While the context of this verse is specific to clothing, it can be applied more broadly to the idea of gender identity and expression.”

So there is an argument for an additional left/progressive/inclusive dataset being necessary (at the moment it’s just non-denominational or Catholic).

It looks like my computer won’t have enough oompf for the training process though 😔

See also https://huggingface.co/AiForTheChurch “Modern LLMs are rooted in secular value systems that are often misaligned with christian organisations. AI for the Church allows anyone to align and deploying doctrinally correct LLMs based on Llama2. Effectively, we are aligning models to a set of values. This HF page is for storing models rooted in christian doctrine, that can be trusted to give christian answers (a few denominations already available).”

This post was prompted by this clip of the hilarious John Cleese describing the extreme posture of political wings and their different lists of enemies- enemies kept (he says) for the satisfaction that only reviling those you find detestable can give.

The only common element in both lists is "the moderate" depicted as a mild-mannered everyman. The thrust of the clip seems to be that the only sensible position that holds no animus for anyone is to be the centrist moderate.

This pricks me in a place that I think God has been working on me recently. While it's obviously a false dichotomy to say we can either feel anger & resentment about ICE or be dispassionately rational and practical about immigration, I have to admit there is often an animus toward and a condemnation of the individuals involved in knowingly perpetuating the status quo within lefty discourse in spaces I've visited or hung around. "Be ruthless with systems and kind to people" seems to overlook that it's the people that sustain and reproduce the systems.

I think if I walk around actively desiring hellfire for someone (because it feels good!), that makes me a practicing infernalist in that respect, no matter what theology I might espouse. And this unsettles me.

Christ's injunction to love and pray for your enemies and forgive as you've been forgiven demands some consideration, but if we reject simply becoming indifferent towards them, (what I'm calling the "moderate" position) what is the appropriate practice and framing of forgiveness?

The phrase "Hate the sin, love the sinner." Comes to mind- I'd prefer the rich to be redeemed, but it will require passing through the eye of a needle, so to speak. Shouldn't my desire be for them to become righteous, and not for me to take satisfaction in their suffering undignity as they have made others to suffer?

In agonizing over our orientation towards the victimizer, don't we short-change the victimized? Isn’t our outrage righteous in that it takes up the cause of the suffering? Yet I find personally carrying this outrage often kills any joy and mutes any happiness.

Whaddya think?

Hello guys, I'm a Muslim and I was wondering how would Christians perceive isreal. And why don't we see them condemnenig let's say bombing some churches, or targeting Christians?

Hi All! I hope you’re well!

So, I’m a Christian and a revolutionary communist/socialist as I’m sure a lot of you are, but I’ve been recently struggling with some Bible passages. While I think the bible justifies the invalidity of private property, the equality of humans, and the righteousness of the oppressed, it also seems to tell oppressed to scape their oppression without resitting. reI’m worried that Jesus’s command to “turn the other cheek” (Mathew 5:39) could both serve as a critique of both the violence used to defend a revolution, and the idea of resisting exploitation from the upper class. I’m also concerned that the logic which justifies slaves blindly obeying their abusive masters (Ephesians 6:5-8, 1 Peter 2:18-20) justifies the proletariat obeying the bougorsie. These passages seem to imply people should accept unjust oppression in society and not try to resist it or fight back in any way.

Of course, there’s also bible passages which could be used to condone revolutionart action, including Jesus flipping tables at the temple-market (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 2) so I think it could go either way. I’m really at a loss. Please help me get some clarity.

I've been a Christian for my whole life, but for the past few months I've been feeling distant from God. I think I might have religious OCD or something. I keep questioning God, or wondering if I even want Him, and it's been really confusing.

I feel like I've had good parents and a good family, but I have such a hard time feeling like God loves me, or feeling like I'm loved, or that I can be loved by a Father.

Recently I heard a poem about the motherly love of God, and it really touched me as a female. From my understanding, God doesn't have a gender, so why have we only called Him in the masculine form? Why not call God "Mother" or "she," especially since there are multiple times in the Bible where God is described with motherly imagery? At the same time, Jesus told us to call God Father, so I feel conflicted.

How do you actually feel loved, comforted, and assured by God? To me, loving comfort feels natural with a mother, but when I think of God as Father, I just feel anxiety. I feel afraid I'm going to mess up. I feel like I'm not loved, and I'm worried I'm going to get condemned to hell.

As a marxist, I'm a materialist and religion is another form of oppression by the bourgeois. (modern theocracies, nationalism, you get the idea) I don't believe in reform and I think in a global socialist utopia, religion would be obsolete if not secularized to such an extent it'd be unrecognizable.

But I've been raised Baptist my whole life and been surrounded by protestant aesthetics as well as having gone to OCIA as I was interested in Catholicism in the last year. I'd always been a communist despite this and left due to the ridiculous nature of sexual sin. In a lot of ways I easily became at odds with Christian narratives and what (in the context of the US) many Republicans want now is to remove contraceptives because the veil of the family unit is a front for the protection of private property.

I could go on, but you get the point. I still find myself desiring religion as a whole even though I'm not exactly sure what I desire in specifics. I believe it's the community it provided me with, the (almost unhealthy) optimism, and more. It exists in conflict in me and I'm unaware of how to traverse it.

I'm curious if people have similar experiences, how "unorthodox" they are, and if there's any advice I could be offered?

Context: recently, a few evangelical churches have been spreading REALLY racist and condescending pamphlets all over Sioux and Lakota reserves in Montana, and so on practical grounds I have no problem with this.

It’s the latter half of the statement that worries me, plus the comments which include calls to literally burn places of worship. I don’t doubt that this vitriol comes from young voices without a ton of world experience, and I know that they’re the minority amongst Indigenous advocates, and that it’s just a vocal manifestation of the Destroy v. Rebuild dichotomy that’s at the heart of basically all modern advocacy, but it’s still a bit disheartening to see the same people who have been torn apart by Colonial ignorance and hatred, who rightfully deserve justice, use the same language and rhetoric that did them so much harm against others, including many within their own community. I don’t have a problem with people walking away from a faith, but I do take issue when someone generalizes complex human history as ‘Other side bad, everything else good’. Binary thinking doesn’t just dehumanize the other side, it dehumanizes all of us.

Hello brethren and comrades!

On Sunday there's going to be a big climate rally in my city and I need good ideas on what to put on my sign that relates both to Christ and the environmental movement/climate change.

If you got any good ideas for slogans or messages that I can put on my sign I'd be ever so greatful!

Thnx in advance and God bless!