I don’t often share other’s articles, but this one by Fr. Dwight Longenecker is an exception. He and I have had, and do have a lot in common with our past and our hearing from those who want to badmouth Christianity, and often the Church specifically.
So here we go,
“On social media I seem to get an increasing number of links to blog posts, X-Twitter posts, articles and memes that rant and rage about the failures of Christians and the failure of the church. It could be hatchet jobs on famous Christians showing how they were secret Nazis, anti-Semites, white supremacists, homo or trans phobes, secret homosexuals, masturbators, misogynists, cat haters, alcoholics, teetotalers, people who once cut down a tree or hated their mother or loved their mother too much, frigid, sex obsessed, emotionally frozen and sexual abusers…
“You get the idea. Christians–and especially white Christian men–are blamed for being, well, human.
Now I get it. There are a large number of people who have been wounded by their experience of the church. They’ve been ostracized by narrow minded, hypocritical Christians. They’ve been scandalized by the ignorance, incompetence, hypocrisy and stupidity of clergy. They’ve been angry at what seems deliberate obscurantism, legalism and judgmental attitudes.
They’ve been angry at the corruption, sexual abuse, cover up and injustice shown by church leaders. They’ve been hurt by the greedy, fraudulent, scamming preachers. They’ve been disappointed by the hardness of heart, lack of compassion for the poor and the self serving church people and leaders.
‘So they not only leave the church, they go on a long, weary tirade and campaign against the church and Christians in general. I get that too. If one is wounded deeply, then it hurts and when one hurts, one howls in pain. I get all that…”
For the response and the rest of this short article, click here.