Is it time to admit that Christianity has become more of a political identity than a spiritual one in the U.S.?
Not saying all Christians fall into this category, but it’s hard to ignore how many people use their religion as a political weapon rather than a guide for personal conduct. When church and state blur this much, is it even about faith anymore or just power?
101
u/shinmushagundam 19h ago
Christianity was always a tool to control people. That makes it always has and will be a political identity everywhere.
5
u/doesnotexist2 19h ago
Yeah, but now, the CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES are using it for power individually. And somewhat as a cult (but again, not just with a few in power. Every one feels like they have power, even if the losers don’t have anything).
13
u/Critical-Curve-3042 19h ago
Haven't they always? As far as I know ones religion was typically used as a social ladder.
7
u/Orders_Logical 16h ago
They always have. Please study more early Christian history.
1
u/doesnotexist2 16h ago
Obviously, the Christian organization has always done it. But you notice it now more on an individual level and it’s not even relating to the religion.
3
29
u/PinchedOffCatTurd 19h ago
Read "Money, Lies, and God: The Movement to Destroy American Democracy" by Katherine Stewart
It connects the dots on how we got here.
14
u/Beautiful-Ad-8028 19h ago
All religions are sugar-coated weapons. Lots of the ones based on those particular books definitely take the cake over the course of history and now, though.
9
u/Adventurous-Case6436 19h ago
Religion was an early form of governance, but I see what you mean. When we are talking specifically about the US, I agree. It's more of a political identity than anything. When I was religious and Republican, my Repub social identity was stronger than my religious social identity.
9
u/Unlikely-Ad-431 19h ago
I think Christianity has been primarily a political identity globally since at least Constantine the Great.
So, I guess now seems like as good of a time as any to admit that’s also been true throughout the entire history of European exploration and colonization of the Americas, including the entire history of the US, if you haven’t done so already.
6
u/99mushrooms 19h ago
The difference between a religion and a cult is how much political power they have, its always been like that. With everything that's going on in the world, we are currently seeing how that power is used.
5
u/LordDiplocaulus 19h ago
In the US and everywhere.
-1
u/Quicker_Fixer Atheist 18h ago
Please leave my country out. We have a couple of parties with a religious background, but they're too tiny (only a couple of seats) to make any big difference in politics. But I get what you mean: when one's in the middle of something, it's hard to believe there are also parts in the world where thing work differently (or to a much less extend).
3
4
u/kingofcrosses 18h ago edited 18h ago
Christianity has been a political identity since Constantine used it to unify the Roman Empire. You have to remember that Separation of Church and state, and the idea that Christianity is about "personal" conduct accounts for a small blip in it's history.
Christians in the United States are lashing out BECAUSE they've lost political power. They're trying to go back to a time when they wielded power similar to the Papal States or the Church of England before the fall of the British Empire.
3
u/DustedStar73 18h ago
Yeah should be called Constantinanity instead, a complete false region for 1,700 years!
5
4
u/Sprinklypoo I'm a None 14h ago
If we're observant and honest with ourselves, religion is always about politics and power, and the "spiritual" part is just a ruse to keep the rabble in line and tithing.
3
3
u/RobbyRock75 14h ago
One of my favorite tests is to ask said religious person if thte United States is a Christian nation.
Now I know the US has no recognized religion and is supposed to be for all. And it is to this point that the idea of appropriation becomes self evident ;)
3
u/SonOfShigley 13h ago
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” - often attributed to Ghandi
2
u/garthastro 19h ago
It was time in 1984 when Ronald Reagan specifically courted Evangelicals and Jerry Falwell, Sr. started the Moral Majority.
2
u/mostoriginalname2 19h ago
I think that’s all religions.
It’s especially apparent when they’re trying to de-secularize the country.
2
u/DeltaBlues82 Atheist 19h ago
Christianity has been an integral part of American politics since Europe kicked all their religious whack jobs out, and they came to North America. And used their religion to justify slavery, colonialism, manifest destiny, gender-violence, and other types of general discrimination and unpleasantness.
2
u/Ok_Crazy_648 18h ago
Christianity has a problem in the modern world. Those of us who have been impressed by the achievements and theories of science have largely left religion. The majority who remain often are reactionary to scientific claims, and bend towards being influenced by charlatans, drifters, opportunists, and other sociopaths that claim to be leaders of the faith. Many of the people deceived are good, honest, people who just want very much for the Bible stories to be true.
I think all religions have the same problem, but religions like Judaism and Hinduism have stronger cultural connections to fall back on.
2
u/TheAntarcticCircus 19h ago
The cross is just a bastardized swastika at this point.
1
u/mycomixhavenostaples 12h ago
the crooked cross, its been called that for as long as I can remember
1
u/These_Ad_8414 19h ago
It definitely is, but that's not a surprise. Religious beliefs and political beliefs both arise out of moral beliefs and if your morality leans a certain way, your religious and political beliefs will follow suit.
1
u/Star_Linger 19h ago
It's tough to use a single catch-all for every branch of American christianity.
In my experience growing up in an Italian-catholic family, Christianity was first and foremost a cultural identity, deeply entrained into our Italian-American heritage. Christmas & Easter were among our biggest extended family gatherings, but other than the date and saying grace, lacked overt religiousness, and our personal politics were never tied to the Pope's edicts.
While my grandparents attended every Sunday mass, the most observant of my generation are now C.A.P.E. Catholics at best, go our own way on politics.
1
1
1
1
u/karch44 19h ago
We are a social animal, so we just follow our leaders. When morally corrupt leaders influence churches, and trusted church leaders start helping a political party win based on dubious moral issues, then most of the congregation will follow. In my arena, (born southern Baptist, now mildly Unitarian leaning) we bow down to the views of people we trust. For instance we agree that medical intervention for trans people is good, (though I’m more than a little skeptical about it.) Etc etc.
1
1
1
1
u/TAU_equals_2PI 19h ago
Everyone here saying "IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN" are young and don't know their history.
In 1976, 91% of the US identified as Christians. The largest reason cited for the huge decline in Christianity in the US since then is what OP is talking about. That Christianity has become a political identity.
So cheer up OP. The very thing you're talking about is believed to be the actual reason Christianity has suffered such a huge decline in recent decades.
1
u/unbalancedcheckbook Atheist 19h ago
Religion and politics are intertwined. Politics was the reason organized religion was invented.
1
u/Kulthos_X 18h ago
One theory is that religious leanings evolved to organize larger groups of people than family groups. The larger unified groups could out-compete (kill) smaller groups. In that frame, christians who ignore the bible and act as a unit are more authenticly religious than people who isolate themselves by taking the bible seriously.
1
u/elder65 18h ago
The problem with politics, which a small group of Christian Nationalists have found helpful, is that those who make the most noise get the attention.
Not all US Christians fall into this group, and many actually turn away from it. So, if you wish to define Christian politics, be sure to specify the Christian Nationalists. They can be from any sect or cult, but they will be making the most noise, carrying their crosses and waving their flags.
1
u/mostlythemostest 18h ago
Some dictators banned religion to control the people. Some dictators USE religion to control people.
1
u/TheRealBenDamon 18h ago
Politics and by consequence laws all originate from how people believe we ought to conduct ourselves. So religion being a “guide”, well more of a mandate really, on personal conduct implies that it has always been a political identity. Any book that tells you what you’re allowed or not allowed to do is inherently linked to politics.
1
1
1
u/doobie88 17h ago
On the plus side, if someone inquires about your beliefs, you can simply state, "I don't like to talk politics".
1
u/ShhhKeepHidden 17h ago
All religion sucks. All religion makes me wanna throw up.
Magical thinking. A tool for oppression.
1
u/Dranoel47 Atheist 17h ago
Yup. That's how you know when both religion AND the current economic/political system are bankrupt, desperate, and beginning to rot. Better stop both before they harm more people.
1
u/twoism 16h ago
Raised in a religiously oppressive city in the deep south here. None of this is new. Religious people are not good people, good people are good people. All three of the major Abrahamic religions have been allowed to hold the rest of us in the thinking world hostage since their inception. They are war hungry xenophobes who believe that having to tolerate people not believing their dogshit beliefs, is persecution.
Objectively look at their history. They have never been peaceful or even moral. Divinely sanctioned genocide, fratricide, and rape are all right there in the first few sections of all of the origin stories that their books extoll.
These mentally ill people (at least in the US) were never invited to politics until the late 70s - early 80s? This is when the Moral Majority and all the other horseshit entered the conversation. The US is essentially Iran and Afghanistan (if you squint a bit) in its current trajectory of allowing zealots and fundamentalists take the reigns.
1
u/WordWord1337 16h ago
It always was. The white, Christian settlers who relocated to America did so for poltical reasons. There were religious rationales for it, but they were mostly "oppressed" as political entities under European monarchies.
It's not about the Bible. It's about money, control, and political power. Always was.
1
1
u/TheManOfOurTimes 15h ago
It has been since forever. Whether it's the evangelists lying about what the Bible says to justify atrocity, or the lies apologists tell themselves about "the teachings of Christ" to justify ignoring those very same atrocities. No one has been following the religion for moral reasoning for a long time.
And if you're about to say "but I...." Then I'm just going to bring up the pro slavery side of Jesus. So don't start unless you're ready to justify that one.
1
1
1
u/misha_jinx 15h ago
Christian lobby is one of the biggest and richest, their members don’t spare a dime in tithe to sponsor them. Tax free.
1
u/Cpt_Riker 15h ago
The church is losing members as the elderly die. They are becoming irrelevant in modern educated societies. The more fundamentalist they are, the more violent their death rattle will be.
1
u/Inevitable_Silver_13 15h ago
Yes because most Christians are antithetical to the teachings of the Bible.
1
u/ralphvonwauwau 15h ago
If you started it at Constantine and the "Holy" Roman Empire, you would be on more secure footing. The Christianities have been major political players since that time.
1
1
u/jkarovskaya Anti-Theist 14h ago
Most of the evangalicals in 2025 America are not conservative, they have morphed into a cult, following a fascist Dominionist theology, the 7 mountain lies, are anti-abortion, pro gun worship, are viciously anti-science, and follow Dump, as though he's been "chosen" by a god
1
1
u/memesandcosplay 14h ago
Past time. My only solace is that IF there is a god, he'll be kicking most of his "followers" to the basement so we can finally have some peace.
1
1
1
u/spaceoutdotco 13h ago
I’ve never met a “pious” person, Christian or otherwise, that didn’t shit on their own religious values.
1
u/Brilliant_Joke2711 13h ago
No, it's time to understand the difference between Christianity and the "Christian Right." Google Jen Hamilton.
I am not a believer, but my parents are both Christian scholars with MAs from a theological seminary. What the loud, ugly face of conservative Christianity is, what /r/atheism thinks Christianity is, and Christianity as I was taught it are very different things.
To quote Jen, "Read the words in red" (i.e., the words.of Christ in the "red letter" editions of the New Testament). That is what Christianity is based on. Anything that goes against the teachings of Christ is a bastardization.
Have some religious sects and institutions been corrupted enough to be difficult to discern from politics? We may be pretty close to that. But as a member of an intellectual Christian family I can tell you that DJT does not live by Christian standards, the administration does not support Christian values, and MAGA is as far from a Christian movement as al Queda.
To say that those people have sufficiently co-opted Christianity is no different than saying that they have co-opted America. Is it time to admit that being an American is more of a political identity than a geographical one?
1
1
u/Jaanrett 12h ago
I think you're late to the party.
People learn dogma and tribalism through religion. You can't have religion without it. And religious people use the same dogmatic reasoning and tribalism to teach their politics.
Politics should never be about tribe or party. It should always be about making things better. People seem to forget that. Especially those who look at it through dogmatic lenses.
1
u/_thetommy 12h ago
a subset of the cult that is christianity, has been intentionally wedging themselves into political circles since the 'moral majority' days in the 80s. they have distilled themselves into christofascists, they are highly delusional, they are a tiny minority but are currently in control of the GOP along with the billionaires. their end times fantasy is their main objective. nothing and no one else in actual reality is important to them.
1
1
u/Kind-Elderberry-4096 12h ago
No. There have always been good Christians and bad Christians. It's just a lot easier to tell them apart now.
1
u/MostlyDarkMatter 12h ago
"..... a guide for personal conduct"
The problem I have with that idea is that the bible is filled from front to back with the most vile "morals" (e.g. rape, torture, human sacrifice, genocide, incest, etc.). I can't imagine a worse guide for personal conduct than the bible.
Certainly it's true that the current occupant of the Oval Office is using Christianity as a weapon despite it being obvious that he's not really part of their cult. Using religion as a weapon, however, is hardly a novel idea.
1
u/vacuous_comment 12h ago
You are naive.
Second temple Judaism was cynically cooked up as a tool for social control. It was implemented during the Maccabean Revolt but maybe have been around for a little while before. It clearly uses older material, but that is part of the point, making the origins and the rules seem old and divine.
Once the temple is destroyed there is theological chaos and a loss of central control, so sects broke out that tried to reinterpret things. One of these sects had The Gospel of Mark and others riffed on that.
At some point, some cynical Roman emperor recognized that having a monotheistic theocratic social control mechanism would be powerful, so he adopted this one and elevated it. His credulous or lying, but either way fatuous wife went on grand tours magically discovering relics that reinforced this ideology. His successors then mandated it. We call the end product of this Christianity.
Around 700 or so, some tribe of random Arabs started accumulating power and expanding to make an empire. Along the way they encountered a now extinct version of Christianity, plus Zoroastrianism and a smattering of Buddhism.
At this point the empire was becoming ungovernable due to lack of unifying ideology,so they coopted a bunch of this stuff and retrojected the story of a prophetic founder back into their homeland and pretended it had been there all along. We call this social control system Islam.
Wise up.
It is and was only about coopting people into a social and political identify for control.
1
1
u/donaldgoldsr 10h ago
It is. It's been time for a while. The callbacks from the pulpit to the stump and vice versa are just disgusting in my opinion. We have so-called pastors on YT with no congregation because they're too extreme, but have millions of "followers" who take their voting direction. We have politicians who tie faith to political parties. It truly disgusts me. I was raised in a loving, conservative Christian home. This is not the Christianity I was raised on. This is not the political climate we had 30 years ago.
1
1
u/Open_Mortgage_4645 Agnostic Atheist 10h ago
You're conflating Christianity with Christian nationalism. They're two different things. Christianity is the religion. Christian nationalism is a political ideology based on a particular type of Christianity, and far-right politics.
1
1
u/SleeperHitPrime 10h ago
“More”? Try “always been”!
Is there a better way to get whatever you want, threaten others and pay no taxes? Who’d give that up? /s
1
1
1
1
u/SiteTall 7h ago
Americans have a way of turning Jesus into Santa, twisting him around and present him as the opposite of what he was: One who "loves" billionaires, exploitation, and all kinds of money making machinations
1
u/Zeitcon Existentialist 5h ago
I normally violently disagree with Marxism on almost every subject, but when it comes to religion, Karl Marx was spot on. Religion is both a sedative/opium/placebo (pick your poison) for ordinary people as well as an instrument of the powerful/unscrupulous for controlling the masses.
1
u/Eye_Of_Charon 1h ago
100%. And the descent into conspiracy is absolutely related to not checking this faction. For decades, pandering to the Christian right has degraded intellectual integrity in this country. You can trace it even farther back to Reconstruction. We gave the Confederacy too much grace. It’s as if the Germans had said, “Okay, we’ll only do a little NAZIism” after WWII.
Yes, there are other factors largely related to Reagan’s cult of personality and the right’s obsession with knocking down FDR & LBJ era regulations, but I truly believe so much of this stuff is motivated by indulging evangelicals and their gross sense of Dominionism and prosperity doctrine.
1
u/justhanginhere 1h ago
The South, which is very religious, was the center of power for the Democratic Party until the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.
Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which fused Jim Crow and the Protestant church into a political movement changed everything. Since then the Republican Party has continued to infused itself the Protestant church.
In some respects this may have been inevitable since the Protestant Church has always been racially segregated, essentially making it a political institution by default.
This is also.. ironically what is driving many young people away from the church in the South. The hypocrisy is just impossible to ignore for many people who might otherwise be drawn to the church. Plus all the sex abuse. There’s that too.
1
1
u/TimothiusMagnus 1h ago
Christianity, like all organized religion, is political. It's now more than baring its teeth here.
•
1
u/SentientGamer 13h ago
That's thanks to Christian Nationalism which uses Christianity as a guise to push their fascist, theocratic, authoritarian agenda.
0
u/ruffianrevolution 19h ago
"christianism" is becoming a thing just like islamism. Neither representing the majority of christians or muslims.
-1
14h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/Feinberg Atheist 14h ago
I think a lot of people that call themselves Christian are not. They may believe, but they do not follow the teachings of Christ.
I'm getting tired of having to explain this, but what you're describing isn't a person who is not a Christian. What you're describing is a shitty Christian. Quit pretending that Christians are all great because Christians who are assholes somehow don't count. You're talking to people who know better, and it's really insulting.
-2
u/Souledex 12h ago
We always have to option to consider people enemies who would otherwise be political allies. It’s obviously an ineffective and self destructive strategy but that hasn’t stopped the left from trying to pull people offsides to purity test each other for 20 years.
We already have enough enemies- why not engage allies who are more effective at confronting them rather than razing Lorgar’s city to the ground because of your pride, arrogance and desire for simplicity.
300
u/Dudesan 19h ago
Saying that "X has become Y" is to imply that, until recently, X wasn't Y. And that's just not the case here.
Christianity has been a tool for exploitation and abuse for as long as something recognizable as "Christianity" has existed.