LGBT News Why does Christianity in America feel it needs to impose beliefs on others

Fanatic christians are here too in Europe, well alive and kicking. Some of them even go to the streets to ask for freedom of speech, naturally as long as it's about their religion, they don't give a damn about others.

 

I dunno if it's the area I'm in, but I honestly don't see much of this despite most people being Christian. I know maybe one person like this.

 

They want to set up a religious state whereby everyone will have to conform to their beliefs.

 

Not all Christians are like this. I would even bet that most aren't. Plus, you could say this about other major religions in the world where a certain religion is the majority. It's not exclusive to Christianity. I do come around some religious nuts who think their religion is so important that we should base our laws off of it, but it was not the case most of the time.

 

Most Christians aren't like that of course but the way it seems that way, especially here in the 'westernized world', because Christianity is such a dominant sect of religion.
The more popular a religion is the more bad apples it will have. Just the unfortunate way things work out I'm afraid.

And of course there's the bit many radicals focus on like the 'if you do this you get sent to a pit of fire and brimstone for all of eternity BLEEHHHH, convert, convert convert' and of course negative reinforcement like that always makes things easier but worse.

 

Not just in America. It's in the "blood" of xianity because it was designed for oppression.

 

The belief that the religion needs to be shoved down the throats of other people is a common feature of religions that are successful in terms of spreading. After all, religions which tend to impose themselves, often by parents indoctrinating their children, are the ones most likely to propagate and survive.

It's analogous to a self-replicating biological organism being selected by natural selection because it's better at replicating than other organisms. Those organisms with features that make their survival and replication more likely are the ones most likely to last long and be numerous, and religions with features that make their survival and replication more likely are the ones most likely to last long and be popular.

 

Same reason as every other religious extremist who has ever lived, they believe they have a mandate from their chosen deity.

 

But on the other side, I wish people would stop mocking me when I take part in such things like Lent. Lent and other Christian festivals mean something to me, and if you'd like me to treat you with respect then please treat me with it. I think the only rule that religion and society both impose on each other is "treat people how you wish to be treated" / "do onto others as you wish to receive". I'm not telling you you have to be Christian or any other religion, but please accept the fact that I am and stop making my religion seem like a joke, because to me, it isn't. If you don't want me imposing my beliefs on you, then please don't impose yours on me, please don't mistake me being strong with what I believe as me imposing it on you. I support rights of LGBT and complete equality for protected characteristics.

But yes, I hate it when any organization [religious, business, charity] knock on your door and ask for things, it's a bit rude. If someone wanted to convert/buy/give then they'd go up to the place themselves.

[Quoted Skaros]
" we should base our laws off of it, but it was not the case most of the time."

-- We do base our laws/respects off of it; ''do not steal'', "honor your mother and father", "keep the sabbath day holy"

Sorry if this sounds rudely written, I was writing in a respectful manner but when I talk fast sometimes it comes of as rude.

 

Every religion has its extremists and there are people in every religion that try to impose their beliefs on others not just christians. But in all honesty i think there is nothing wrong with someone sharing their religion and peacefully trying to get people interested in their religion. I mean if we are gonna be that offended by people simply sharing their beliefs to others than it changes who we are as a country. As long they are not trying to make their personal religious beliefs into law or harming/bullying others with their religion than I find no harm in people trying to share and spread their beliefs. My boyfriend who is now deceased was strong in his christian faith and would travel the country sharing it with others and again i don't think there is any harm in that.

 

What I don't understand is why Christianity, a religion that bases 75 percent of its belief system on Jewish texts takes three or four passages (maybe less than that) from the Torah and uses them to nullify everything Jesus says in the substantially smaller "New Testament." People will cry out "Oh, but what about Paul and his homophobic rant in First Corinthians?!" To that I say "Paul was a Jew, too." As far as I'm concerned, Judaism is the origin point of modern homophobia but everyone's too afraid to say it.

 

This reminds me of something I read on my phone in an RE class.
'Religion is like a penis. It's fine and perfectly normal to have one. Nothing wrong with having one, but whatever you do, don't shove it down people throats.'

 

My personal opinion is that your country gives it the chance to do it.

Why do many Christians in the United States push their beliefs down people's throat? Because they can get away with it. Do the same thing in other first world countries and you'll be met with stern disapproval. In the US, religion goes as far as entering politics.

Just look at what happened here, in Quebec. We let religion stomp on us for like 200 years and got tired of it. Now, 95% of people are atheists and religion has been completely taken out of schools and politics. If one tries to impose their religious view point here, no one takes them seriously.

If it wasn't tolerated anymore, it would be way less frequent. Anyway, my two cents.

 

People take "freedom of religion" to mean they can beat the crap out of everyone else with it and to wish for them to stop is unconstitutional. At the most fundamental level, they're right, up until they start trying to make laws based on their religious beliefs. But on the practical level, don't be a dick. X.X

 

Whether religiously motivated or not, I don't think I'll ever understand why some people are so worried about how other people live their lives, unless their choices are directly affecting them in some way.

Some flavors of Christianity push their members to 'testify' or otherwise try and spread the message of their church, recruit people to the faith, "save" people, etc. The behaviour is self-serving, in that it increases membership (unless they are so pushy they actively drive potential members away), which likely means more money and resources for the church.

For the most part though, I think it's just busybodies who think they should be able to tell everyone else how to live their lives using religion as an excuse to not mind their own business.

 

This is hardly just a Christian phenomenon. Islam is bigoted Christianity and Judaism on steroids. Hardline Hindus have street patrols enforcing religious rules and their religion is not even expansionist. Perhaps Buddhists are the only notable exception who more or less tend to mind their own business but then again Buddhism isn't really a religion in the traditional sense.

 

I think a lot of Christians in the USA are Christians in name only. It's part of their cultural identity, not really a life-changing experience. If they are more concerned about denying LGBT rights than about loving gays, more worried about being persecuted than about loving their enemies, etc. you know full well something is "off". Christ followers should be spreading the love of Christ around, not beating people over the head with Bible verses they don't even understand. If they are out to just convert you to add a feather in their cap rather than just be your friend and show you true caring, they shouldn't be surprised if you get turned off.

 

Christianity is build around the concept of the church built upon prosthletization. Without bringing in new members, the church ceases to be a thing.

 

Buddhism is most definitely a religion, as someone who lived at a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monastery for several months I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that they are, in the truest sense of the word, a full fledged (and rather hardcore) religion. While their rules restricting sexual among monks behavior are strict, there is little to indicate that the general Buddhist populace has anything to fear in the karmic sense if their orientation is not heterosexual. That said, their stances on homosexual behavior have been known to be shifty, at best.

That said, I must reiterate my earlier thought that Judaism (as friendly and pretty as they try to make themselves to the LBGTQ community these days) are the ones who made the "rules" about homosexuality in the Torah. They literally wrote the book of hate. I'm not antisemitic, I'm half-Jewish, myself so I know this for a fact. Christianity prides itself in its Jewish roots, yet the New Testament, which virtually renders everything in the Old Testament null and void seems to be of little interest to most firebrand Christians who dwell primarily on the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Torah. The rest of the Old Testament, and the oddness that comes with it are just collected Jewish texts organized by early Orthodox priests of what would eventually become the Catholic church.

I know it's a touchy subject that nobody wants to address, but the sad fact remains that Jewish people are fundamentally and historically responsible for modern homophobia. While that may not reflect Judaism, today, it stands like any stain on history, from the Christians' own Crusades to Hitler's holocaust. The question here seems to be "why are Christians so homophobic?" And the answer is because the founding structure of their faith is based on a caveman religion loosely based on oral tradition not written down for centuries, maybe millenia after its first telling.