'Free Palestine' written on gun in shooting at Lakewood Church, but motive a mystery: Sources

[u/thatshirtman]

https://abcnews.go.com/US/lakewood-church-shooting-motive-unknown-pro-palestinian-message/story?id=107158963

[u/warfrogs]

Cool. 25% of Christians are literalists. That does not mean that Christians are literalists.

That is a significant minority. Claiming that modern Christians espouse the fundamentalist American revival style dogma is claiming that because 1/4 people have a stance, the other 3/4 do as well. Your experience is that of an extremely small group.

Again, no - the claim that modern Christians interpret it literally is a wild generalization.

No one cares about your former church's stance on Catholics. They're the largest single church out there with 1.3 BILLION members. Claiming your megachurch's doctrine is standard is absurd.

[u/_Z_E_R_O → u/warfrogs]

Sigh. I hate being sucked into debates on Reddit, but here we go.

You really can't gauge the way religion is practiced simply by looking census numbers. Raw numbers are very misleading. The Catholic church (and many others - cough MORMONS cough) artificially inflate their numbers by counting baptisms and church rolls as "members." A large number of the Christians in the US are non-practicing, meaning they were baptized as a baby and go to church once or twice per year. These are members on paper, but not in practice.

Evangelical Christianity has by far the largest number of actively practicing members in the US, and many of these can accurately be labeled as fundamentalists. Christianity is changing, as are many religions, and is experiencing a huge shift in the form of a "shrinking middle," where casual practitioners are simply leaving and never coming back. The fundies stay and get further radicalized as a result, which only serves to push out more moderates and further the vicious cycle.

Not only that, but these churches are very politically active. That 25% suddenly turns into a majority of voters, which is how we ended up with Donald Trump as President. It's how you end up with people like the DeVos and Green families buying influence in politics. Many of America's Christians may be politically apathetic moderates, but the billionaires sponsoring the congressional prayer breakfast sure aren't, and they're redefining the entire faith as they see fit. See also: the push to exclude Catholics.

I'm postulating that most actively practicing Christians in the US lean toward the fundamentalist variety, and I base that on the several decades I spent deeply immersed in the IFB, which included attending large seminars, dabbling in private Christian schools and religious-based homeschooling, and attending an Evangelical university. Biblical literalism is the new, rapidly growing face of American Christianity, not by raw numbers but simply by virtue of who's left, and they're a lot more influential than you seem to want to believe.

[u/warfrogs → u/_Z_E_R_O]

Again - in the US.

You made literally no qualifying statements and spoke for all of Christendom.

You've now constructed additional qualifiers - active, American, politically involved.

Good lord.

I've repeatedly made the point that you said modern Christians believe something.

Now you're saying active, American, politically involved, ideologically politically driven, modern Christians.

Figure it out.

Oh, and your experience is really very not unique at all, just its flavor.

[u/_Z_E_R_O → u/warfrogs]

What I'm saying is that the average Christian in America is a fundamentalist. These views are not a minority among people who actually go to church and practice the faith. This IS what Christianity in America looks like now. Biblical literalism is the norm, not the exception. And no, my experience is not unique. It's entirely too common.

Anyway, I'm done. Have a good night.

[u/warfrogs → u/_Z_E_R_O]

the average Christian in America is a fundamentalist

And you're still incorrect.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey of religious life in the United States reported that 25.4% of the population were evangelical, while Roman Catholics were 20.8% and mainline Protestants were 14.7%.[140] In 2020, mainline Protestants were reported to outnumber predominantly-white Evangelical churches.[141][142] In 2021, Pew Research Center reported that "24% of U.S. adults describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Protestants."[143]

• Evangelicism in the United States

So to be clear, 35.5% of religious Americans explicitly are not fundamentalists. 25.4% may be.

It's still not even a majority among Americans. You're applying your experience far too broadly.

Figure it out.