*I first wrote this reflection in August 2025. I let it sit in my drafts for fear of alienating too many people. But what good is that? I offer this to you with humility and conviction.
I am also passing along your nonreligious blessing for making it through the week. Ramen Halloumi, everyone!
“Is there really a baby in this bathwater?”
Liberal Christians and others are constantly worrying about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I can’t find the baby.
My Tiktok feed, my podcast feed, my Substack feed, my Audible book list, my own intuitions are all telling me the same thing: Christianity is destructive, abusive, delusional.
James Dobson was an awful man. I see no reason for any caveats. He prescribed child abuse. He prescribed conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals. ChatGPT gave me this list of terrible things Dobson advocated. (I wrote this months ago, and have stopped using ChatGPT since)
Why did Christians listen to this awful man? Why do Christians support, even valorize, abusive men? After all that was uncovered about sexual abuse in the Catholic church, it’s incredible that men are still allowed to be priests. But of course it’s so much worse than that. Only men are allowed to be priests.
Why do we continue to make excuses for a religion that has brought us such awful men, such awful “morality”?
Can it really be true that all of this destruction, all of this abuse, all of these lies, all of this racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, supremacy, hierarchy, ignorance (about science, about history, about sexuality, about gender)—is it really true that all of this is a perversion of the Bible, of Christianity? Are you sure?
When have the majority of Christians in the United States been on the front lines of societal progress? When have the majority of American Christians stood up for a marginalized group?
Were the majority of Christians opposed to slavery? Did the majority of Christians support the women’s rights movement? Did the majority of Christians support the Civil Rights Movement?
Were Christians on the front lines with those who were caring for those suffering and dying from AIDS? The truth is that it was the lesbian community that stepped up to care for gay men dying of AIDS, just like Renee and Rebecca Good were doing for their marginalized neighbors in Minneapolis.
Did Christians stand up for workers when Ronald Reagan was destroying unions? When Bill and Hillary Clinton were trying to create universal health care in the United States, did the majority of Christians support that?
When the Bush administration was selling the war in Iraq, were the majority of Christians against the war? When we started torturing people, holding detainees in indefinite detention (some of them are still there), kidnapping men and taking them to unknown locations where they were tortured, were the majority of Christians against that?
When the Obama administration was trying to reform our health care system so that people could afford basic coverage, were the majority of Christians for that? As mass shootings increased, including the mass killing of elementary students in Newton, did the majority of Christians rise up to support restrictions on guns? Do you believe that a majority of Christians would give up their guns to protect our children from gun violence?
What about same-sex marriage? Did same-sex marriage become a right in the United States because the Christian community demanded it? Do you think that transgender individuals are safer in a Christian family or in an atheist family?
Do the majority of Christians support feminism? Do they want to live in a society where men and women share power? Do a majority of Christians believe that women are as capable of leadership as men are?
Somehow, in 2026, 64% of women and 55% of men said that abortion should be legal in all/most cases. And yet women lost their constitutional right to abortion. Who led the charge to strip women of this right?
Climate collapse is here. It’s happening before our very eyes. Do you think that greater church attendance leads to more understanding of humanity’s role in ruining the planet, or less understanding?
And now, as immigrants, and people who look like immigrants, and people who protest, are being terrorized, beaten, killed by the United States government, is this happening against the wishes of the majority of Christians? They literally voted for Trump because he promised to do this.
Israel has spent three years mass murdering, maiming, raping, torturing, and starving Palestinians. The Israeli Defense Force has reduced their homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, farms to rubble. American Christians had the power to stop all of this. They didn’t.
I could go on and on and on.
More Christianity (more Islam, more Judaism, more Hinduism, etc) can only bring us more delusion, more destruction, more oppression, more division. There is nothing here to salvage. It’s time to move on.
The question you're asking, did the majority of Christians . . . may be problem in this reasoning I think. Will a majority of Christians ever do anything? Chrisitanity doesn't work in majorities - it works at the margins, in solidarity - in people like: St. Teresa, William Wilberforce, MLK Jr, John L Lewis, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister and in educators, artists and writers too countless to mention. These people changed the world. I think there IS a baby in the bathwater, but I wouldn't look for it in the majority.
This is slightly off topic. Years ago, my husband and I had our bags packed for a trip to France when the phone rang that an older aunt of my husband’s was diagnosed with cancer. I had a few minutes and called Aunt Martha and said I heard the sad news and that I would visit when we got back, I asked if there was anything I could do, and she responded with, “just say prayers for me.” I said that while we were in France, whenever I saw a church or cathedral, I would go in, say a prayer and light a candle, and I did. I am baptized, but lapsed so it had been years since I went into a church. Holy moly - why don’t children run screaming from church? Crowns of thorns on bleeding heads, sons dying in their mother’s arms, Jesus crucified and bleeding with the aforementioned crown of thorns, and spears shoved through abdomens. Very violent. Graphically violent. The stained glass and the statues were actually disturbing. I do not mean to be disrespectful of Christianity, I am just talking about how the visuals struck me as a person who had not been in a church in decades. I am also not so impressed with what so many Christians say about their fellow man while purporting to be a Christian. Live-streaming a firing squad for a death penalty is the latest atrocity.