Well, as this is really diverging from the topic, I’ll keep it short, and not be responding further to this sidebar, which would really belong in the General Religion section….
Nonsense. either the label Christian is an utterly meaningless string of letters uttered randomly or it refers to a defined construct that can be accurately and inaccurately applied, no different than the label "dog", or "rock". All meaning of words arises from its defining properties that determine to whom/what the word truely applies and to whom it doesn't.
My, my you seem to be a fundamentalist…
No, I am a rationalist literate in the use of human language and who understands the conceptual underpinnings that make language and concepts useful tools for cognition. Unlike yourself, I don't spew out words and then deny their meaning if some soft minded post-modern effort to avoid logical thought that contradicts my faith, since logical thought required defined concepts on which to operate.
Anywho, sure the word “Christian” has a definition, actually probably a few. Just as words like “conservative”, “liberal”, “libertarian” have definitions. The problem is in trying to fit people into such little boxes.
I am defining "true Chistians" as…
Now here’s the rub…which English dictionary have you published again?
Which argument are you relying upon that says dictionaries contain the "objective" definitions of words?
The way human language and concepts work is that they are most aptly applied when they denote the propertied tied to that label are central defining features of that thing and distinguish it from other things that don't belong to that category. The word root is "Christ" who is a character in the Bible who professed a particular sort of God and other ideas, including endorsing every idea and ethic in the OT as true and accurate word of that God. Thus, the word Christian implies that the unique aspects of this book and the character of Christ are actually core and defining aspects of the person. Books are ideas and thus, "Christian" implies that their psychology can be accurately captured by relation to the Bible and the character of Christ who endorsed all its contents as the truth and the source of goodness. Their are billions of books and trillions of characters and no one defines themselves or others in terms of those characters, no matter how great a book and how much they like the character and their ideas. That is unique to religious texts, and thus it means that Christian is a rather silly useless label unless it goes way beyond how anyone thinks or feel about any other books in human history. It is at best meaningless, and more likely misrepresenting to apply the label of Christian to any person for whom Christ and entire Bible (again, Christ endorsed it all), as definition of themselves and how they think the world should be, and are devoted to those ideas to a level that is almost unheard of for any non doctrinal religious text.
And again, the thread is about the impact of religious ideas, not ideas shared by the religious and non-religious alike, which are in fact most of the ideas held by all the liberal, non-fundie "Christians" you are referring to. They don't support war and violence because their ideas and ethics are in no sense tied to the Bible or the Character of Christ, no matter how much they utter the phrase "I am Christian". If you want to make the word "Christian" devoid of all semantic meaning and as useful in conversation as a string of random nonsense characters, then that is fine, we can use your definition of "anyone who utters the phrase "I am Christian". But then the word is useless for the current question, so it is a red herring to bring it up.
In my 2 decades of being part of several liberal protestant churches and also several evangelical churches, I would have a hard time claiming one group was better read on the Bible.
There is plenty of research showing that liberal "Christians" know much less about the Bible, but the core issue isn't just awareness but belief in and adherence to and actually using the Bible's words to determine and justify one's actions on a daily basis. They are the one's who most reveal what the impact of Biblical and defining "Christian" beliefs are because they allow the Bible to have a primary influence on their life and are actually deeply convinced in those beliefs.
I see you have joined the fundamentalists here as well in assuming the Bible (you do know that there are actually 5 or 6 different Christian Cannons) is a coherent non-conflicting package.
Nothing I have said presumes it is a non conflicting package. In fact, liberal "Christians" recognition that the Bible is incoherent is among the many reason why most of them make almost no use of the Bible to make any ethical or factual decisions and why their ethics and ideas clearly come from the larger secular culture they live in. That's the point. However, despite local incoherence their are more fundamental ideas inherent to anything that could be claimed to have any meaningful basis in those texts, namely the inherent authoritarian intolerance of a creator God from whose will is the source of all things good. The Bible is rather coherent and consistent in this regard. In addition, nothing in the Bible actually counters God's intolerance for non-believers and calls for their torture and death. An ethical and tolerant being doesn't do or say what God did in countless parts of the Bible, even if they more rarely say vague "nicey" sorts of things that within context don't actually apply to all persons anyway, only the inner circles. Thus, even the local contradictions still portray a generally violent and evil being that is incompatible with modern tolerance and decency, despite occassionally uttering things that decent being say all the time.
This is one case where comparisons to Hitler are quite apt, because if anything, it is an insult to Hitler to claim he ever said or did as many evil and violent things as God. Even at his worst, Hitler did and said kind things. These do not confuse any sensible person into thinking that his evil things were just misunderstood. He was an evil and violent prick with bad ideas, who of course sometime said positive things. The occasional nice word does nothing to reduce the extreme evil, whereas the extreme evil completely disqualifies him from being anything remotely good or to be honored. So, again, the Christians who endorse aggression and violence are in line with the kind of overall character that the Bible, with all its local contradictions, portrays. The notion of a loving and tolerant being held by "liberal" Christians is incompatible with the Bible overall and in its context. IT is as absurd as concluding that Hitler was kind, loving, and tolerant, by examining a few love letters he wrote some girl and ignoring the rest.
If the Bible was so Zeus clear, then one would think that the fundagelicals would all be in one big happy catholic church.
That does not follow at all. Look at the Theory of Evolution as expressed in modern science. There are plenty of things about which it is quite clear and coherent, and yet there are people with various conflicting notions of the theory who selectively quote and misrepresent the ideas. People with other ideas or biases they did not get from the stated theory, inject those notions into the theory. Almost all of those alternative notions are objectively wrong and deliberate distortions, not merely "equally plausible or reasonable interpretations" of the modern theory. Same is true for the Bible. There is no getting around the inherent intolerant authoritarianism of the God of Abraham. It is inherent to the notion of a singular creator who is also the source of morality. Only highly dishonest deliberate ignorance of the clear meaning of most of the Bible could support any notion of God other than an intolerant authoritarian. The fundagelicals are the only Christians willing to accept this clear meaning. Other people, again, impacted by ideas and ethics outside of the Bible, want a different view, yet they want to try and steal the cache that the Bible and the label "Christian" have, so they dishonestly ignore almost all of it (doesn't mean they can't quote it, just that they don't apply it and ignore its logical implications). In addition, sectarianism is not mostly about different Biblical interpretations. Much of it is just about particular individuals with an ego complex wanting power, so they invent an excuse to form their own offshoot. Also, many Protestant sects in the US were born out of the power/authority vaccuum when the Church of England no longer was a viable option in the New World seeking to give a big fuck you to the motherland.
Before the second great awakening, only about 10% of Americans belonged to a church, despite being religious in their views. Thus, local pastors began competing for followers, inventing and making hay of minor discrepancies for the sake of being able to say their way was best. The reason that aggressive fundamentalism is bigger in the US is precisely because these new sects had no established authority so they turned to the Bible and its actual words as the authority of God's will, rejecting the Catholic Church and its rather non-Biblical (being equally silly) nonsense it created to empower itself and to make Chrisitianity more sellable to heathens, such as by deifying Mary and inventing a bunch of Saints to make it seem more pantheistic.
