Why is there a c/Christianity?

Christianity as an organization of political power is a horrible stain on humanity and likely always will be.
Christianity as a personal or small community religion is actually a really beautiful and hopeful thing. Christianity does not start and end with the old testament, it ends with an overcoming of many of the regressive messages within the old testament and strong recurring themes of hope based around community. The bible is a pretty important world text and has a lot of great messages in it.
Basically, attack systemic issues and organizations rather than individual beliefs.
- i've had more luck in my personal life pushing left curious Christians further left using this methodology. i don't belitte their beliefs just reinforce the good stuff, focus on the institutions, etc. there are legions of seemingly "socially conservative Christians" out there that are actually just nascent christian socialists but just don't know that's an option because all they see on TV is demonic Prosperity Theory grifters and psychotic fire and brimstone shit

I do often feel like we overcorrected after New Atheism, and also Catholicism gets too much of free pass on the anglo internet, which irks when you live somewhere where Catholic orgs are literally funding the hard right, BUT secularism is vitally important imo, and that means freedom of worship for everyone
- Yeah, it's not fun sitting in Poland and anglo socs doing apologetics for cath establishment
- And they'll use that freedom to worship as freedom to oppress. Would you give a Nazi the time of day in debating their beliefs?

Because most people on this site aren't Marxists. It's as simple as that. They want to believe that religions that have been oppressing people for thousands of years can be reformed somehow. It's kinda baffling for a website with such a large LGBT+ userbase.
- Mate, Islam paved the way for me to embrace Communism. Saying this as an atheist, it's silly to alienate people from our cause because they were raised culturally to believe in some religion or another.
  Astrology is goofy, not materialist in any way, and really bothers me, but I don't go telling radical comrades I've been out doing direct actions with that they aren't real Marxists because they make that thinking error.
  
  "Our cause?" Hexbear doesn't have a cause, it doesn't do anything. It has the least revolutionary potential of any leftist website I've ever used. I'm here because it's fun to shitpost sometimes.
  IRL, yeah, there are better uses of your time than trying to convince people that astrology is bullshit. But having a materialist worldview and believing in astrology (or religion, for that matter) are contradictory, and getting rid of those brainworms via self-crit is something any communist should be trying to do.
  I should mention that I'm not trying to portray myself as the perfect commie here, I still have my own brainworms. It's just the kind of thing that we should all be striving to get rid of.
- Hey I'm fine with that viewpoint on religion as a whole but this part:
  most people on this site aren't Marxists
  is completely unnecessary. Good comrades can disagree on things like this and still be materialists.
  
  I don't mean it in the sense that "everyone that disagrees with me isn't a real Marxist," I genuinely don't think the majority of people on this website read theory. Hexbear leans much more into shitposting than other leftist forums I use, and I don't see nuanced materialist analysis here very often.
- I like how easily we can answer the reform or revolution question in relation to literally everything else.

First rule of politics: learn to count.
Socialism needs power, not purity. Power comes from the size of the support base.
Socialism has historically been helped by religious support same way as it's been helped by nationalist support.
- I'm curious, which socialist causes would you say have been helped in a major way by religion? I know liberation theology exists but that's about the extent of my knowledge, and my baseline knowledge says that of the current and former AES projects, while there might be some religious base supporting the cause in latin america, I am unfamiliar with the specifics.
  On a separate note, I would argue that the relationship between religion and support for left-wing causes is unlikely to be the same in the imperial core as in formerly colonized countries. As you say, the creation of a nationalist, anti-colonial movement has been useful historically in countries like China, Vietnam, and Cuba, but obviously we wouldn't expect an American communist movement to seriously attempt to rally around the flag. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a revolution in the US to attempt to ally with the domestic bourgeoisie as they did in China.
  
  Well one example would be that many Quakers have been active radicals for a variety of causes over hundreds of years, including but not limited to; opressive Christian church structures, monastic heirarchies, slavery abolition, pacifism, democratic representation for all manner of people (women, minorities, non-landowners) over the years, factory workers rights, safe housing, fairer wages, prison reform, anti-poorhouse campaigning, environmental movements, LGBTQ+ rights, rights for refugees, and more.
  Even just personally over the last two decades (I'm not a Quaker, but have Quaker comrades) I've engaged direct action with a disproportionate amount of Quakers against US imperialist bases, against airport expansion, refugee defence and de-arrests, the campaign for nuclear disarmament in the 90s and the anti-war movement in the 2000s, as well as pro-Palestinian activism.
  And this month UK pigs raided a Quaker meeting house - a place of worship equivalent to them raiding a church - smashing down the doors and arresting people for merely providing a place for people to discuss a potential protest. The first time the state has done so in hundreds of years.
  There's lots of socialist Quakers, some communist Quakers, and far far more that are still fighting for radical causes. And that's just one small branch of Christianity.
  
  MLK jr was a minister
- Fair enough, I just saw some comments in the thread for the Pope's death that really rubbed me the wrong way...

Bit idea: Guy who calls the new testament the woke testament

This is gonna blow your mind, but you can be religious and a good socialist at the same time.
The church closest to my home is where I do some of my community gardening. They know full well that I'm a socialist, an atheist, and bisexual, and they don't care in the slightest. As far as they're concerned, actions trump beliefs—good works are God's work, they've told me. They're fundraising to build an affordable housing co-op for displaced First Nations folks in the community, and they broke ground on the first block last year!
Theory didn't stop in 1844 when Marx said we need to move beyond religion for the working class. We can do better.
- We can move beyond their garbage beliefs. The Bible is trash and should be treated as such. It promotes hate,removed, murder, genocide. Oh such good values to uphold.

Judaism also stems from the old testament, should we remove Jews for what is in their holy book?
The Catholic Church (And the Anglican Church, and many Lutheran Churches, and thousands of Baptist Churches) has committed great evils, but original sin is not a marxist doctrine and we cannot hold the average Christian responsible for the actions of everyone everywhere who professed the faith, and you are not likely to see support for such things amongst the Christians posting here. If a Christian is supporting the slave trade or the nazis on hexbear they are likely to be banned and find no support among other believers.

Cuz I’m Catholic
- Shit my bad I take it all back.

Surface-level interpretation.
Every religion gets swarmed and contorted by reactionaries because they see they can use it as a source of power, never mind how there is almost always pro-social, anti-oppression, and anti-stratification principles at the core.
the horrendous old testament
This kind of New Atheist position ends up having the same approach to the Bible that fundies do.
You mean the Jewish scriptures, right?
- So where is the billion plus movement of progressive religious people then?
  
  Liberation theologies have quite a bit of influence in Latin America, Palestine, Ireland, and among Black communities in the US.
- Ah... I didn't mean to dog whistle or anything like that, I see the issue but it's just frustrating to see people endorse these things that have CW (Suicide, SA etc) ::: spoiler spoiler lead to the suicide of one of my friends, and SA'd others that went to the Catholic schools nearby. :::
  
  We don't defend Pol Pot, Ceausescu, etc; and we don't give up on Communism because of a couple abuses of power, even if they caused lots of bloodshed.
  We prize the ability to distinguish between a movement itself and specific cases of institutions that spring up from it.

a) institution is not religion tho, beliefs are what you make of them
b) new testament is compatible with socialism in myriads of way (one might say suspiciously so :lunacharsky-shining:).
c) soviet crusade against religion was wildly unsuccessful, to put it mildly (both at home and especially abroad). you come at 2000 year old institution, you best not miss and things of that nature
d) ...last sigh of the oppressed implies until there is memory of oppression you can't jettison religion, not really, until people can control their fate, they'll always be religious in some shape or form somewhere
- new testament is compatible with socialism in myriads of way
  There's also a myriad of ways it is not. You won't find a less dialectical materialist analysis than the sermont on the mount
  
  i'm just saying, with the situation the left and the world is in, and adding historical experience, i think it's counterproductive to dismiss religion flat-out (or rather engage in pointless fighting around it, we don't have power to change it, and religions have some affinities we can draw on, depending on religion/means of production development/society safety nets as they are/depraved profit seeking stage)
- institution is not religion tho, beliefs are what you make of them
  If you claim that every major group that claims to be christian is not actually christian, then what claim do you have to be an actual christian instead of them?
  Also, if you consider every such group to not good, then why do you want to base your beliefs on their fiction that they consistently use for horrible stuff that ranges from abuse on a personal level to colonialism, slavery, and genocide?
  
  cause i'm more christian than they are, literally same claim they make. if your christianity consists of 15 minutes in sunday church and denial of benefits in your work time or making bombs, i do think you are not a christian, i don't give a flying fuck what your priest says about intentions. If your faith consists of hating people, as it's the lowest form of prayer to hope for misfortune of your enemies, i do think you are full of shit. (and i'm agnostic, cause i think christians are full of shit as a whole, but i do recognize that my morality was significantly influenced by christianity either by osmosis or bible)
  if you think colonialism, slavery or genocide wouldn't happen without christianity, i do suggest hitting some books one more time (or many more times). (i do think homophobia is very traceable though).

still stems from the horrendous old testament
No investigation, no right to speak.
- I have investigated the old testament. god supports horrendous things.
  
  What I meant was that the whole point of Jesus and the new Covenant was to fulfill the old one and liberate humanity with a new law of love.
  p.s. I don't know if it's super appropriate for me to participate in this thread though, I don't want to take a space away from people who have been victimized by religious bigotry from venting about that or voicing valid concerns. There's a time and a place to set the record straight wrt theology, I appreciate that it might not be this one.

i suppose there's gotta be somewhere for the 1% of christians who wouldn't lynch every gay person on the planet to chat amongst themselves
- 0.01%

I think religion is good.
Sorry I guess, but i've run the gamut in my life. I used to be a little edgelord preteen that delighted in shitting on belief. i had an earnest christian phase. i had a heresy and occult phase. i'm still in an "academic study of these matters is cool as hell" phase - I think if you're overly reductive, you get it in your head to only measure what religion does on a socio-political level, and this is a fucking trap. Anything tied to power structures can and will be abused, but that doesn't make these places the sole determiner of worth and value for anything, but for religion it's especially busted.
Religion and spirituality are like, really important elements of the human psyche. I can't tell you why that is, but I can tell you that even in instances of non-belief in an individual, the overwhelming tendency is that other structures replace it and act as a surrogate - something in our mind needs whatever religion provides. It can get it elsewhere of course, i can think of some large social projects that tried to redirect that impulse towards common, human-centered goals and sometimes, for some people, it works, but it's at least clear to me that being reductive about this and treating it as problematic or bad or somehow more trouble than it's worth, is coming from a place of disinterest and lack of understanding.
- Religion is the opiate of the masses. Perhaps in a less sick and damaged world their would be no need for such a medication to ease their suffering. Maybe we'd already be living in that world if they'd stop waiting for the afterlife and actually care about the world around them for once.

Because there are billions of Christians on planet earth and that's not changing anytime soon. We also have Islam and Judaism communities too. I'm also going to make a bold prediction that the youth are going to turn towards religion in the coming years and break the trend of rising non belief. Just look at the USA, Christianity was on a decline until 2019, but then numbers stabilised. I expect that the numbers will now rise.
And before anyone says anything about how I'm some religious person, I'm an atheist, but I'm calling it how I see it.
- I expect that the numbers will now rise.
  It's already rising.
  British church attendance has risen by 50% in the last 6 years. The two largest groups that attendance has grown for are 65+ and 18-24 year olds (Gen Z).
  https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival
- People seek community and safety. We shouldn't let the forces of reaction pollute their minds with idiocy and hatred.

over correcting into enthusiastic support for religion can also be problematic.
I don't generally see this happen around here, I feel hexbear users have pretty even-keeled views on religion as a whole, barring those with religious trauma who are completely justified in their negative views. I'd certainly never allow outright evangelism anywhere on the site. And as others have said, the christianity comm is barely alive, same with /c/judaism, and /c/islam has been locked forever due to lack of mods. This is not a site that's enthusiastic about religion.

No, I agree with you. State atheism and a significant reduction in the power of the church is only logical. Religion is extremely reactionary. Look who they support and promote time and time again. Many of them believe Trump was chosen by God.
Basing your laws and values off of a 2000 year old law book is complete nonsense. We don't look to ancient misconceptions for guidance in any other field. How could people who didn't even know about the solar system hold the secrets to the universe?
How can anyone here defend the beliefs that: Being gay is an abomination. Abortion is always wrong. Evolution is untrue. Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Etc, etc.
Why is masking there reaction by talking to an imaginary friend and getting his approval acceptable? The worst of them deserve the wall, the rest harsh reeducation.

I would recommend thinking about it this way: whenever a comrade is "wrong" about something, literally anything, how much do you make it your business to "correct" them?
When it comes to socialism and organizing, the answer must always be, "to the extent it improves the organization or helps them personally". A sign of a dysfunctional social space is that people are constantly getting in each others' business for no reason other than that they are "wrong" about something. Dysfunctional socialist spaces will even dress this up in left language and (ironically enough), for example, say it causes disunity for a member to be dating a liberal. Of course, the disunity comes from the org trying to control a member's romantic life.
In this scenario, what is the existence of socialist Christians here actually doing to disrupt you or others? Are there certain problematic posts that inspired your question or did you just see "Christian" and start attacking? Are there a bunch of Calvinists in there doing Calvinism to us? Do you think you might actually be the source of disruption in thus scenario?
- An odd amount of people went to bat for the Papacy as an institution in the various threads over the Pope's thread. Just made me think about this, but it wasn't exactly warranted outside of that.
  
  The only examples I've seen of this are people saying it's antisocial and counterproductive behavior to crab dance this pope's death. It definitely is antisocial, it's only something a small group would enjoy and most would be very alienated by it.
  This is just a fact of what it is. For some it makes sense to embrace the antisocial, often creating and preferring a new in-group. Unfortunately this tends to mean cloistering oneself and failing to actually build anything, and adopting habits that prevent it.
  This forum's name was originally from a podcast by not-particularly-funny white guys in New York. They have not actually built anything. They are not of an organization. They don't mobilize anyone to do anything. They make snarky jokes poking fun at the liberal political establishment and electoral politics and are increasingly irrelevant. That is the inevitable trajectory of seeking conflict and infighting and being eagerly disrespectful to your comrades.

its fine

Its clear to anyone paying attention that Jesus would be a communist.

- Because Christianity has consistently proven itself to be the most problematic of those 4? First time I've been called a fed though, don't know how to feel about that.
  
  The only reason you have this odd exception towards christianity is because you've personally grown up in it, and/ or because it's not tied to a particular ethnic or racial minority, so it leads to less dissonance from speaking in such sweeping ways
  Im the number 1 churchburner on this site and even i know this

Or maybe I'm just too negative?
I know everyone has their own relationship or lack thereof with religion, I've never really had an inclination for any of it, even that time in high school when I hung out with the goth kids who were into Wicca. While they're few and far between especially in the west where it's largely been subsumed with capitalist brainworms, I've still known a few people that try very hard to live by the precepts of caring about your fellow humans and if it gives them some solace I can't really get too upset about it.
- On a larger level would it not have caused more harm than good though? I get coalitioning when it makes sense, but active endorsement and banning criticism in c/Christianity feels farther than that.
  
  I mean that sub generally gets 2-3 posts a month, I know HB can enjoy their struggle sessions but I imagine people there aren't looking to invite debate perverts into the mix.

Pretty much all religions provide a basis for a social belief system/set of principals and morals by which a society should be and behave. They often also provide the meaning to life. Organised religions, e.g. Christianity, then provide a regular means of contact to teach this, e.g. via church services, for people. Many people who need structure and security, or the answer to why they exist, seek this out. Others engage with it as a point of ego boosting (e.g. social figurehead within the religion) or power (leader) or money (albeit moreso historically). In summary it provides individuals with a major part of their life, livelihood and welbeing.
So, when these people learn of all the horrendous crap associated with THEIR religion, they either cannot, or refuse to, accept it as their religion teaches the perfect way to be and therefore cannot possibly be fallible. Or they're culpable in the deceit, abuse and hypocrasy. Or they can't face the idea of loosing their religion (and therefore life as they know it/want it) so choose to lie that everything is ok and good. Everyone who disagrees or opposes is a heathen and must be shut down or worse, killed.
To add, as they replied as I was typing; Infamousblt makes the good point that there are still good people within these societies, which is true of pretty much all societal groups; there are good and bad people in all of them.

Probably because there are 1 or 2 christians here idk. It is time to not care about stuff like this and just enjoy the posting

I haven't really honed this line of thought, but something I've thought about recently is how churches could be, for lack of a better word, co-opted here in the US to fight for left-wing causes. There's a church out in San Francisco called GLIDE that was a part of the Methodist Church (I think they broke off) that essentially operates as a neighborhood resource center. Daily soup kitchen (3 meals every single day, no limits), harm-reduction kit distribution, childcare, DV resource center, and a lot more.
I guess all I've been thinking is just that if more churches could be politicized in this way, they could be potential allies in local struggles, because they're already organized, meet regularly, have physical spaces that can be used, and know how to handle a budget.