Since most Christians dislike Gays and Bush believes torture is A, OK.

[sarcasmo]

I am in on way painting a broad brush, so no need to post that statement. Wasn't Jesus a loving free thinker who hung out with the Whores and destitute. With all of the Christian TV personalities preaching their own forms of hate. Does this thought make the whole Religious based community hypocritical?. You have Fred God hates fags Phelps. James Dobson, Falwell, Robertson all of the front and center media types preaching HATE, HATE, HATE.
When did your Religion get hijacked?, was it in 2000 when the Decider claimed he was a Christan. In no way can the Decider be a Christian if he claims Torture is acceptable.
Being an Atheist, I have a really hard time understanding how faith can preach hate.

[driver8]

1. Sarcasmo, I'm with you.

These so-called "Christians" have hijacked faith and made it their own. They mold it and shape it to fit what they believe in, no matter how hypocritical or hateful their ideas are.

WWJT -- Who Would Jesus Torture??

Someone should ask lord pissy pants that question.

[John Gauger]

2. Not all of the Christian community is hypocritical

There is a formal Episcopal Bishop in New Jersey named John Shelby Spong. He beleives in love and acceptence of all people. He is a big proponent of changing Christian dogma with the times. He studied scripture and found that it is all fabricated; and being 5000-2000 years old he feels it is okay to eliminate things that are obsolete. He's quite a guy.

[sarcasmo]

3. You can name one guy out of the whole community.

[kestrel91316]

9. Spong ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

And there are a whole lot more people who think just like him. I'm one of them.

[JerseygirlCT]

13. Most of the Episcopal church believes in acceptance

and tolerance. Thus the consecration of Gene Robinson several years ago.

It's just that the others make big noise. Big ugly noise.

Most of us just carry on, welcoming our gay and lesbian friends -- along with everyone else.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Yes, most Episcopal churches are very gay friendly

and have been (under the radar) for a very long time. I met my first "out" gay people at an Episcopal church 30 years ago. The loudmouths who are talking about leaving are a distinct minority.

[BOSSHOG]

4. They believe the cherry pickers shall inherit the earth

They just pick and choose in the bible the passages which justify their hate and ignore those which would make it uncomfortable for them to live in the life they have become accustomed.

I was baptized into the the church of pedophilia (Catholic) but no longer attend. I found it odd that hardly a sunday would go by that the priest would rale against the evils of sodomy and out of wedlock fornication.

All those people you mentioned are "successful" because of the ignorant masses who have no intellectual curiousity, have no desire to know anything and are satisfied being told what to believe.

Oh, and ain't it a great gig to hate in the name of Jesus Christ and in a tax exempt status?

[sarcasmo]

5. Is the news media partly to blame?

[BOSSHOG]

8. I have a degree in Journalism

albeit I haven't practiced the trade in several years, but the religious right and their antics provide legitimate journalistic headlines on a daily basis. The gop congress provides no oversight of the white house and our media, with very few exceptions, provides no oversight to what I consider the number one domestic enemy of our constitution, the radical christian right. Hell, listen to American Family Radio every day (if you can stand it.) Legitimate news stories out the ying yang.

[okasha]

6. The hijacking started in Jimmy Carter's presidency,

when Jerry Falwell quoted Carter as defending the inclusion of gay people in his administration by saying "I'm the homosexuals' President, too." The statement was not true, and Falwell admitted it wasn't true, but he was never publicly held to account for his lie. (I'm kind of sorry Carter didn't say it. He would say it today.)

Unfortunately, broad-brush statements like yours actually support the hijacking by repeating and giving credence to the fundamentalist lie that all Christians share the fundamentalist constellation of beliefs. If you don't like Messers. Falwell et alia, don't get into bed with them.

[bobbieinok]

21. it was at least publicly hijacked with the start of the Moral Majority

and the Christian Coalition (in the late 70s, I think).

I can remember friends saying in the 80s that the 700 Club gave/gives real Christians a bad name.

[TheWraith]

7. One of the deep ironies of "Christian" culture...

While it was carried out by the Romans, the movers and shakers behind Jesus' execution were the high-ranking priests and the religious establishment, because of his preaching about salvation coming from grace and love, rather than from adherence to the religious laws. Nowadays, it's the same attitude in a different package.

[OneBlueSky]

10. from "Cry of a Tiny Babe" . . . by Bruce Cockburn . . .

There are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums

[More Than A Feeling]

11. First off, I'm don't think you get to claim Jesus as a free-thinker.

He did believe in God, after all, and he belonged to the organized religion of Judaism.

If you define the hijacking of Christianity as preaching hate, then there have been very few times in history when Christianity wasn't hijacked. The poisonous relations between Christians and Jews date to the very beginning of Christianity and its claims of supersessionism over Judaism. Some of the anti-Jewish sermons of St. John Chrysostom would probably make your ears bleed if they were preached today.

My source for this, and an excellent book that I recommend highly, is CONSTANTINE'S SWORD by James Carroll, who is, for all his indictment of the Catholic Church over its treatment of the Jews, still a practicing member of the Church.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

17. The teachings of Jesus were hijacked by bureaucrats.

The early church was not created by Jesus. It was created by Paul, John and the other early evangelists. Their writings are biased in favor of their view of what the new church should be and, in the case of John and Paul, biased by their desire to be the leader of it.

That was the initial corruption of the teachings of Jesus.

Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire in 313. Constantine called the Council of Nicea, 325 AD, where the bishops sorted out a lot of what is now the bible, decided that Jesus was actually a Deity, not just a sage, etc. At this point the Christian bureaucracy was firmly established. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

The Christian church was supposedly based on the teachings of Jesus, but it was not a particularly good reflection of him.

Jesus of Nazareth could give two shits about starting a church. He was a wandering sage who would hang out with whores and toll takers, the lowest of the low in his day. He liked going to weddings and drinking the free wine. His taught that being wealthy did not mean you were spiritually superior to the poor, as was a common belief in his time.

Jesus made fun of the priesthood on a regular basis and was probably executed more because he was a threat to the power structure than any other reason.

Gandhi though the core of Jesus' message was revealed in the Sermon on the Mount, where he said the meek shall inherit the earth.

If you read The Five Gospels by the Jesus Seminar and Gandhi on Christianity, you may come to believe that Jesus was a radical free thinker.

[Ron Green]

19. There have been few times when ANY human institutions weren't hijacked,

including governments and markets. The Church is no different - doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a church, there MUST be one to deal with the questions the church deals with. The important thing is to resist the hijacking, and this must be done now as in the past.

[JerseygirlCT]

12. This is what leads those (and I don't believe it's even a majority)

Christians with a real hate-on for gays to claim that while they hate the sin, they do love the sinner.

Which always makes me nervous lest they start loving me. If that's love, I'll pass, thanks.

It's hate born of ignorance and fear. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

[Danger Mouse]

14. Love the sinner hate the sin is bunk.

That's what we call 'denial.' And I have known several people who trot out that garbage.

[JerseygirlCT]

15. It's quite common, unfortunately

Just a dodge to allow them to continue to consider themselves loving Christians while indulging their irrational hatred of an entire group of people they most likely don't even know.

Giving the rest of us a bad name in the bargain. It really pisses me off.

[Danger Mouse]

20. Yeah...

For example, I dated this girl for a few months, who I knew to be fairly religious, but we never talked about religion. Ever. It just never came up. We loved to talk about politics, though. We were a weird couple, what can I say? Anyway, after our relationship ended, a year or so later, we were still friends. This was while I was in college btw. I would post my nutty opinions on the DailyJolt politics board. In one case, someone posted a story about some teacher lady that turned out to be a lesbian...or maybe it was a man? Either way, they were gay. And parents throughout the school district were frothing at the mouth, demanding she resign or be fired. I think this was somewhere in Utah.
Anyway, I posted an expression of disgust about the small minded hatefulness of these people.
I went to visit the ex-girlfriend later and got absolutely BERATED about my post. She said that it was wrong to imply that these people were hateful. She trotted out her 'love the sinner hate the sin' line.
It made my head hurt.

[trotsky]

16. It's been that way from the beginning.

Paul was one of the first Christians, and he hated homosexuals with a passion. He also despised women, etc. So I don't think you can say Christianity was "hijacked" - it's ALWAYS had those elements within it.