What the hell happened? Where did we go wrong? How was Christianity co-opted by a political party? Why are Christians supporting laws that force others to live by their standards? The answers to these questions are integral to the survival of Christianity. While the current state of Christianity might seem normal and business-as-usual to some, most see through the judgment and hypocrisy that has permeated the church for so long. People witness this and say to themselves, "Why would I want to be a part of that?" They are turned off by Christians and eventually, to Christianity altogether. We can't even count the number of times someone has given us a weird stare or completely brushed us off when they discover we work for a church.
It's nice to see some people get it. [ I fall into that category of "turned off" by the whole business. I went to church for my entire childhood. Read the bible, sang in the choir, played handbells, even did plays for the church. It was a substantial part of my life, but one that didn't ever seem like it dominated my existence as it does for some people. Nonetheless, I had a genuine and comfortable relationship with the faith Starting in college and then accelerating tremendously since then, I began to feel embarrassed to self-identify as a Christian, because of what the zealots and the media have made of it. In some sense you could call that giving up or giving in to the extremists. People of strong faith defend their religion as fervently from the poisons within it as from the enemies wihout... even more so, I would hope. As it turns out, I was never a particularly strong believer, really, and I guess I'd call myself more of an agnostic humanist at this point. That is to say, I believe in morality independent of any reward/punishment experiment that may or may not be in progress by one or more higher powers. That opinion earns me cold shoulders from both rigid atheists and rigid believers because they both see it as a kind of cowardly hedging of my metaphysical bets. Truth be told though, I just have a normal, unsophisticated feeling that i don't know one way or the other and neither blind faith nor logical analysis in this realm have ever held much appeal. I'm not waffling, I just don't know, but I do know that there are things that are right and things that are wrong and the rest seems pretty irrelevant to me. Anyway, I try to treat religious people no differently than others, but I have to catch myself sometimes, because with all of the unconcionable things being carried out by powerful people who claim to espouse the teachings of Christ, well, my gut reaction generally ranges from distrust to outright disdain. It sucks, but there it is. -k] Bakker, Brown: What the hell happened to Christianity? - CNN.com | 
