Christianity = loving Trump

Not a great look

More context:

The Billy Graham Center Research Institute surveyed 2,365 Gen Z adults, ages 18-28. The study was funded by the Lilly Endowment.

Missing entirely is what percentage of those people ever considered going to church in the first place. I think we all know why that data is missing lol

I’m not religious in any way, shape, or form, but if I got a loaded survey like this about a politician I didn’t like, I’d be counted in the people saying they’re less likely to attend church because of said politician.

Like everything else Trump gets involved in, he's toxic for the brand.

If young adults are anything like this older adult, they just don't want to have to hear positive things about Trump from anybody.

He's just such a transparently blatant villain and ignoramus.

The moment somebody says that they like Trump, I lose all respect for them. And I just feel sad that this is the state of humanity. I don't like feeling that way, so I avoid places where I might come into contact with people like that.

I'm not in the target demographic and I don't live in the US but i can confidently say that Trump didn't make me less likely to attend church. The probability was already 0% before he was ever a thing in politics.

The same "avoid people who have positive things to say about Trump" policy drove me right out of the country.

Welp it is just nonsense

So 52% of young adults did not come to that conclusion. Isn't that the real story here?

It's almost like he's antithetical to everything Christ ever preached or something.

Frankly I'm surprised more Christians don't reject him on that principle, but then, religion has never been based in logic.

I don’t like how they phrase these stars. 52% are then “not less likely.”

Were some of them not likely to attend anyway? Or whatever “likelihood” they were considering attending (regardless of how high or low that likelihood is) were not affected by trump support.

So I’m not really sure how useful that info really is.

What made me leave the church and ultimately Christianity was how they defended being pro-life.

Christians would have voted in Satan himself he would promise an end to abortion.

I've had countless Christians in 2016 say "Yeah, Trump is a bad guy but I know he'll end abortion."

They never realized that their desire for an end to abortion meant the election of the devil. And now they worship him at the alter of Trump and still call themselves Christians.

TIL at least 48% of Adults don't go to church.

THANK YOU. Sometimes the view from the Southern US down here has me thinking every dude is obsessed with JC and the Holy Ghost crew.

Still, tho, were I a Christian I'd go to church and denounce the shits for the frauds they are. "this shit ain't christlike!"

People are usually pretty receptive to positive feedback.

I was a "Christian" and that was good enough until these Christofascists showed their true colors, somewhere between Westboro and Tiki Torch Nazis. Now I want nothing to do with any religion but especially not Christianity.

48% is a disturbingly low.

Well lucky for them, Jesus never actually spoke negatively about slavery

"Thou shat have no other gods before me!", I forget who said that. Was that trump?

The first sign of the mental illness epidemic, was the beginning of neoliberal politics, several decades ago.

The 100th sign, was Trumps first term.

By the standards of the faithful, their support of Trump does make it painfully obvious that the majority of "Christian" churches in the US preach values which are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ.

Any genuine "follower of Christ" would not follow religious leaders or go to religious institutions who teach values such as "hate thy fellow man for not being born here", which are a lot closer to devil worship than to the values Christ preached.

Such "Christian" leaders and institutions having devil worshiping values also neatly explains their adoration of Mammom.

You don't need to be an Atheist to figure out that these "churches" aren't on the side of Good.

I can thank Trump for being what pushed me to becoming an atheist. Trump is the antithesis of the kindness the bible attempts to preach, and seeing christians blindly follow him is what made me rethink everything.

Lucky. Where'd you end up?

The US is probably one of the furthest nations from actual "christian values".

the one good thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he made it very easy to identify sociopaths, narcissists, the breathtakingly stupid, basically any morally repulsive or idiotic person you would not care to engage with long-term; before, you had to actually go and interact with these people for longer than five minutes to find out how awful they were, sometimes for a good long while before they'd show their hand. In the beginning, his first term, you didn't even have to get near these people let alone speak to them, the ubiquitous red hats gave it away from a hundred yards.

By now some of them have started to realize the hats give it away (and some, I'm sure, have started to second-guess their choice of candidate, even if they won't admit it), but they still don't take very long to open their mouth about how much they love the orange fuck.

A person's politics say more about them than just who they vote for, and supporting Trump tells you just about everything you'd need to know about a person and whether or not engaging with them is worth it. For that I am actually somewhat genuinely grateful, the hats everywhere during his first term made it really easy as an autistic person to avoid those people like the plague.

To be fair there are some actual christian churches that actually preach and try to do the things jesus preached. feed and cloth the poor and encourage the same in society. but then you have members who attend but are hypocrites sorta bringing them down. as an athiest I am actually a little more accepting of religion seeing the earnest ones who participate in protests.

this one guy from trumps first term stuff. when it was like only half evil. had a good write up on why he meets the description of the antichrist. If I believed in god in a bible christian type of way I would 100% think he was the antichrist.

Please don't forget that hypocrisy and lying to get your way is built into christianity from its foundations. Jesus was kind of a dick.

There are no actual christian values. It's all deadly bullshit.

Would Jesus heal the sick? Nope. Not unless they entertain his racism.

Would Jesus feed the poor? Not when he could waste valuable resources on himself in a useless, vain ceremony.

It is narcissism. The only consistent christian value I can discern is "I will do anything if I think it will please god (my own ego)."

The bible attempts to normalize or even glorify abuse all the way through. It is one of the worst sources anyone could get their morality from.

Any "genuine" follower of christ would do exactly what Jesus did: lie to get their way.

Please stop pretending there is value in superstition.

I mean, I wouldn't answer that as a primary reason either. That doesn't mean the other 52% see no issue or want to go to church because of Trump. There are so, so many other issues I have with mainstream Christianity that evangelical support of Trump wouldn't be in the top 10 reasons I wouldn't go to church.

According to the research, 48% of respondents said they agree with the statement “Christians’ support of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.”

Personally, if I wasn't planning on ever going in the first place, I wouldn't agree with that statement either.

But it is christlike. Christ lied to get his way. You can go to church and try to call out hypocrites, but it will likely just fuel their persecution fetish. They interpreted the vague and contradictory bible to paint a Jesus they can weaponize. Can you honestly prove them wrong? Can we call Jesus and ask what he meant?

This is why I get so agitated when anyone suggests that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Many beliefs are wrong and harmful and we really should not have tolerated them for so long.

Different perspective: if 48% of your house's foundation were leaning, you'd think that was disturbingly high.

True, but that's not any better!

jesus was not that bad as far as humans of the time go. If he existed.

https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/

Just because I don't believe in sky fairies, doesn't mean I can't reason within the internal logic of the fantasy universe of people who do believe in certain sky fairies.

Why should I excluded myself from navigating the internal logic of certain fantasy sets of rules (like religion) whilst being willing do do so for different fantasy sets of rules (like books)? That's just giving one set of fantasies more importance than another set of fantasies.

Guiding yourself by strict opposition to an external something is still using it as a reference, thus treating it as important.

Would you have tried to gate-keep me like that if I was making comments about the point of view of a character in the Lord Of The Rings universe?!

bingo.

I am not so sure about that. If you zoom out enough, then yeah he's a nice man saying we should love one another. However, digging into the text, Jesus in the Bible had a tendency to respond to a fairly basic question by going off on really smug rants that don't really answer the question. Imagine Jordan Peterson but he is explaining why slavery is good (which, in fairness, could be one of Peterson's videos but I'm not going to sift through them to find out).

yeah I think you are putting him on a pedestal. I don't believe he is divine and on human terms hes a guy where I would go to one of his talks.

Or, it is shockingly high for a poorly designed survey question. If you were already at a 0% chance of attending church then you could reasonably respond "strongly disagree" and that resolution is completely lost.

Evangelical / Prosperity Christianity is quite literally the creed of Mammon.

If there is a Hell (there's not), I'll be torturing them for eternity.

I missed the part where Jesus lied. Which part was that?

The other good thing you can say about Trump is that he's old & will be dead sooner rather than later.

He put himself on the pedestal. Would you enjoy hearing how you will not inherit the divine gifts he is promising to his people?

I would like more people to stop pretending he wasn't dangerously delusional. Modern humans can and should do better than following one guy whose main appeal is that he lived too long ago for us to actually know what he was like. He's an imaginary friend, but with a context of guilt, punishment, and blood sacrifice.

jesus was not that bad as far as humans of the time go. If he existed.

If he existed in the way you specifically are imagining him? Maybe so.

Based on all available evidence, it seems likely that the romans martyred someone popular. It seems unlikely that the bible provides an accurate account of that person's life and death. Even then, he is often described as a smug jerk.

I think he gets too much credit for the few good things he had to say, some of which was copied from others and all of which hinges on complete submission to his supposed godliness.

yeah I doubt your interpretation of the gospels. He was not that bad and the pedestal was other folks. That is the thing with religion. You can take something and say well this was meant this way or this was meant that way. People have their own takeaways.

Please consider the stark difference your false equivalence is attempting to obscure:

Is anyone pretending that Lord of the Rings is nonfiction? No, but adults in positions of power who should know better allow cowardice and vanity to guide them away from reality and we are all suffering for it.

Reminder: there is no god, there is no magic. Everything he said about being god's son, god's promises and punishments, our inherent sinfulness and more, all lies.

Here's a specific one from the bible, there are more:

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Number of people who were standing there and have not tasted death by now: 0

Number of times Jesus returned to Earth with angels: 0

That is it's fatal flaw, yes. People choose cowardly fantasy instead of courageously facing a reality, even though a reality without that abusive god is better. It means we are not the main characters, not under divine protection or supervision. We have the capacity to fix our own problems instead of wishing for the magic wizard to fix them.

Jesus may have had a few nice quotes, but he distracted people from their own real lives with baseless promises about divine rewards. Christianity is a death cult, yet too many people are still defending it. We need to unite around the one truth that defines us instead of splintering into endless interpretations of delusional fantasy.

Everyone is not entitled to believe what they want. Everyone is obliged to align their beliefs as closely with reality as possible.

I think you're ignoring parts of the gospels you don't like. John 10:

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.

You can hear him climbing onto the pedestal as he talks about how he is greater than all.