“Who spends this kind of time attacking Christians?” Gaslights Christian

Christians Prove by Their Actions There is No Wrong Way to Interpret Christianity

Christian Email

Your article on Westboro is ridiculous. Millions of Christians with varying degrees of orthodoxy exist in the world and, in general, follow Christianity with a high degree of agreement. That is why cults like Westboro are cults and rare. Who spends this kind of time attacking Christians? 

You must be angling for something or trying to get back at Christians for some perceived wrong. You must realize you are alone in your opinions.

Dear Gaslighting Christian,
Christian manipulation is alive and well. For a moment, I thought you might make a point, but your words soon devolved into the expected accusatory dribble Christians rely on to show critics negatively. No one has any valid criticism of Christians, and any attempt to criticize must be motivated by anger or some other experience coloring the person against the religion.

Way to go, trying to make me and others feel bad about revealing the truth concerning Christianity!

Your initial point, though wrong, does invoke a response. Yes, varying degrees of Christian orthodoxy exists, and yes, there are extreme differences between cults and mainstream churches, but the variations would not be possible if not for the malleable nature of Christianity. To be clear, Christianity is a shared set of beliefs open to interpretation, resulting in various sects. Every mainstream church has offshoot organizations and lay organizations representing different views of the religion, such as People of Praise, Knights of Columbus, the KKK, Christian Nationalists, etc.

The term “cult” is ambiguous because any Christian sect or group could be considered a cult by another mainstream church, such as many Christians categorizing Mormons as cultish or nonChristians. For groups of such rareness, cults certainly share a lot in common with mainstream believers, typically voting the same, holding opposition to the same things, like LGBTQ and abortion, and using almost the same Bible. It would seem to the objective observer that cults or fundamentalists appear willing to adhere more strictly or literally to their version of biblical inerrancy than most Christians, which probably explains why these groups are never truly admonished by the mainstream. Christians ban books, boycott movies, and refuse to patronize businesses or serve consumers they perceive as unChristian. Yet, these same Jesus lovers never protest outside churches like Westboro Baptist or any cults.

This inherent bias towards any person calling themselves Christian is unsurprising since mainstream churches share nearly the same history, biblical origin, and doctrines as Evangelicals and cults, making any protest an exercise in hypocrisy.

More than sharing religion, mainstream Christians turn a blind eye to these groups because the “cults” or “fundamentalists” typically emphasize Christian politics, racism, abortion opposition, and many other Christian goals with harshness mainstream churches prefer to avoid. On some level, individual Christians must be aware of this shared religion and values since they take no action against their undesirable brethren. As long as someone claims themself a Christian, there exists some acceptance from all Christians, and as stated in my article,

Anyone armed with a bible, an opinion, and endurance to cherry-pick passages can claim the title Christian and start a church based on their beliefs — no matter how loathed by the majority.

There is not a damn thing any Christian can do to stop their fellow bible thumpers, nor any motivation to do so.