Americans, broadly, are already positively disposed towards Christianity. Americans, broadly, are Christians. They don't need a condescending ex-hippy "cool pastor" to explain to them there is more to Christianity than Billy fucking Graham. They already know.

These sort of shifts happen every 40 years or so. Last one was 1980. Either the nation will turn sharply left, and Christianity will go left with it, or it will turn right into authoritarianism and we will be in a lot of trouble. I am an optimist so I see us turning left, but the struggle is now and the outcome uncertain.

Christianity is eminently about social justice, a concern for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed.
_

They must have started doing that after the Crusades. Or was that after the Spanish Inquisition? Maybe it was after Salem. Maybe they started doing that after the genocide of native people was complete. Maybe they'll start now that they put Trump in the White House.

The world is waiting for Christianity to start doing something about social justice, a concern for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed.

...

Unitarians don't buy the Trinity and Universalist don't believe in Hell.

Humanist and Ethical Society are very interesting.

...unlike all remaining christian sects UU's don't have a creed. They, as a class, are not properly (i.e. no longer) identified as 'christian'.

While UU's likely have many members who label themselves as 'christian', UU as a religion has moved beyond unity/trinity, heaven/hell.

I'm not aware of remaining, after the merger in 1961, single case "Unitarians" or "Universalists" large enough for a general discussion of christian classes.

I pulled that quote from the OP, thus my biting remarks.

...my apologies for my fog. I'll try to wake up or not...

Who cares?

pointing out why the Christian Right is the Christian Wrong. It's not really that difficult to find proof texts you can use to attack the bigotry, misogyny, anti-immigrant, anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ positions of the Christian Right. Use them, you Christian Leftists.

Call out the crap and tell people why it's crap. Then, once you get their attention, maybe you can sell your brand. Right now, the Christian brand is far, far right. You won't get far unless you start by calling out the bullshit.

Good luck with that. You're going to have to get over that "Judge Not" stuff and that "They're Christians, too" stuff.

"They're not xians." Unfortunately, after that dismissal, they've got nowhere else to go.

Their single most glaring flaw is their refusal to attack other Christians who do horrible things. They'll attack politicians, but not on the basis of religion.

I understand it, given the warning not to judge in their scriptures, but that reticence to call out evil that ties itself to Christianity limits their effectiveness.

It has been a source of dispute between me and those Christians I know who are progressives for years. They will tell you what they are for, but will not go after other Christians who do the opposite of what they are for and who claim Christianity in support of their ugly positions.

That attitude weakens their influence, I believe.

But look at all of those who simply cannot grasp that their religion is involved with evil, let alone at least partially responsible for it.

If you have a conversation with them about LGBT and/or women's rights you sometimes find at best they have a hard time criticizing those who use religion to marginalize those groups and at worst they still hold on to some of those ideas themselves because that's what the bible tells them.

The left ignores the stuff about following Jesus or burning in hell.

The right ignores the stuff about loving their enemies.

Each group *knows* there are parts of the bible they don't believe in, but they have perfectly valid (in their minds) reasons to reject those parts. And so the stalemate continues, thanks to how religion works. You have "faith," you don't need evidence or reason.

That never changes. If a religion's scriptures don't have an answer for every question, the solution is to create more scripture. that's why the Bible is such a long book.

I think it was during the Clinton era. A supposed rise in evangelicals starting to adopt otherwise "lefty" causes as a rejection of the hate of the religious right. They were suppose to be friendlier to environmental causes, social causes for the poor, and supportive of anti-discrimination positions. I never really saw them materialize.

There's no reason to suspect any sort of "religious left" movement is going to be successful and more reason to believe it will just throw red meat to the fundies. But let's pretend for a moment such a movement were actually successful, would we really want it? Anytime you let religion in the door they will start to demand power in exchange for their support. An entity with political influence that demands morality based on a work of fiction written thousands of years ago is never a good idea. There's still no shortage of even left leaning religion that still teaches hate from the pulpit. Even if you could manage to move them forward off of so many bad ideas, you are still left with a group that will look for advice from mythical entities before they ever compromise on anything.

It would be one thing if doing good was the foundation, but it's not.

Look at right here on DU with certain people who promote the "religious left" criticizing atheists for speaking their opinions lest we "scare away" potential Democratic voters. In other words, they want power over our voices in exchange for support of the progressive agenda.

It doesn't really matter how well meaning they are. The fact is they will always be looking backward for ideas and they will always defend hocus pocus notions as a sacred cow (pardon the pun) which can only be criticized by other believers. Both of those things are counterproductive to progressivism.

...UU's? Do they fall into your generalization or are they a possible exception?

https://www.uua.org/

I was around his church all the time growing up. I even remember avowed atheist members of the congregation providing guest sermons occassionally.

I'm quite familiar with what they are and while they are certainly some of the most open minded of all denominations in the US, I still don't think they are an exception. They still base their core philosophy on scripture and they still tend to look backward rather than forward for answers.

...and I bow to your greater experience on this subject.

Every time this discussion comes up the UU are brought up as a sort of gotcha line. Best response is like you said "did I stutter?" Only with more tact and explaination.