1. Who Speaks For The Christians?
I have been a visitor at a number of websites created by Christians, who expressed varying degrees of puzzlement, exasperation, grief or anger over the way that Christians are percieved amongst many citizens of North America today.
It is true that there exists among some, an intense and somewhat irrational dislike of Christianity, that many Christians do not deserve to be the targets of.
If you are a Christian, and feel that Christians are the targets of irrational and undeserved contempt, you may have been led to believe that the origin of these anti-Christian sentiments has something to do with a "liberal media conspiracy" or "the influence of Satan" or some other similar concept.
However, the real origin of these feelings is quite simple, and I will spell it out here, now. The reason that some persons in North America harbor an intense dislike of Christianity and Christians, is that there are a small number of very vocal persons, calling themselves Christians, who go out of their way to garner media attention, and who are blatantly frauds and con-artists, like Mike Warnke and Jim Bakker, or who are exploiting religion to accumulate wealth and political power in order to advance a specific political agenda, such as Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Pat Robertson.
Now, you may be saying; "Hey! Those people don't represent me! It's not fair to lump us all in the same boat", which is very true. However, these people, and especially Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson, publicly claim, on a daily basis, to represent ALL Christians in North America. They deliberately do and say outrageous things that they know will result in lots of publicity, and then they claim, once again, to represent YOU! So, you can hardly blame people, especially non-Christians, for coming to believe that these people do in fact represent ALL Christians in North America.
If you don't like this, it is up to you and others like you, to go out of your way to create/generate some media attention upon yourselves, and then state very bluntly - these people do not represent us! Otherwise, how is anyone to know?
The tremendous lack of response from Christians who don't want to be associated with these three persons leads others to believe that their claims are true!
So, what can you do about that? Well, the best thing I can think of, would be some kind of mass protest, by Churches and their members who don't want these people to get away with claiming to represent all of Christianity, outside their headquarters. I guarantee that would draw media attention in a big way.
But I offer you today, a smaller step. At the bottom of this page, there is a small plaque that you can affix to your website, to let all your visitors know that these three people do not represent you. It is, at least, a step in reclaiming your own identity and the right to define Christianity in your own terms.
Who speaks for the Christians?
