Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
How Evangelicals Stole the Word 'Christian'
“Behold, in the nostrils of the nations, they have caused the name of the LORD to stink.”
Once upon a time, the Mainstream churches assumed—and maybe at the time they were right—that most of America was Christian.
In such a cultural environment, what mattered most, then, was not that you were Christian—which was largely taken for granted—but rather what kind of Christian you were.
So the Mainstreamers pretty much stopped using the C-word in public. To call yourself a “Lutheran Christian,” after all, smacks of the redundant.
Then along came the Evangelicals, who picked up the disused term and ran with it.
The media—which mostly, generously, calls people by their preferred name—unthinkingly acquiesced.
Shame be upon them, the media still parrots conservative Christians when, in effect, they claim proprietary rights to a name that is not theirs alone. In plain words, the media—not, let us admit, particularly well-versed on matters religious—not only let them get away with it, but abetted the theft.
That's how the nazzes stole “Christian.”
Christian and non-Christian alike, there's a lesson here for us all.
Let us be wise enough to heed it.
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