I’m a millennial Christian, and to be completely honest the modern American church is doing to to themselves, mainly through the willing marriage with right-wing politics.

I know this is probably obvious to a lot of people on here, but you’d be surprised how many “Christians” in the USA don’t see it. The Bible even literally has tons of stuff to say about false prophets and wolfs in sheeps clothing leading people astray, and it’s been happening for decades and most Christian’s can’t even see it happening.

I had to leave my church back in late 2019 because they went full QAnon, like Jews-control-the-world-and-Bill-Gates-depopulation crazy. Got in touch with the pastor to be like what the heck is this and they just hard blocked me, removed me from the church newsletter, everything.

This is not a unique story. The American church has been taken over by moneyed interests seeking to drive Republican votes. I can’t even talk about this stuff with (most of) my other Christian friends because they’re too deep in the ideology to know what’s Bible and what’s politics at this point.

Christians used to be intellectuals, scientists, philosophers - people whose Christian mental framework gave them an appreciation for the natural world and a proper separation of the Why of religion/philosophy from the How of science.

It just makes me sad. American Christians as a group are numerous and control a lot of wealth. If we followed the example of Jesus collectively we could do a lot of good, and be a force for change at the polls, but for some reason when I try to draw a connection between expanding food stamps and jesus feeding the five thousand, or universal healthcare and the early church examples of sharing with all who had needs, it just falls on deaf ears - or worse, get indignant or angry.

I used to think American Christianity would die out or be reborn with a younger generation that grew up with Christian parents but stayed out of the older churches and away from most of the politicking, but when I look back at my own life I realize I only made it out of the thought bubble by chance and the grace of God. If not for some key influences in my life I would probably be right next to all of them voting hard right right now. Most aren’t as lucky as I am.

The best we can hope for now is that “American Christianity” as we know if dies and is replaced with something better, closer to the early church of small groups meeting wherever informally and just being a force for good in their community. Unfortunately I’m starting to think that ship has sailed and we will only see harder pushes into hard-right theocracy, fueled mainly by the massive political money machine to get out the red vote.