In the last few days I've seen a lot of diaries defending Christianity and deploring those who point out that the killer of Tiller came out of a Christian environment saturated with hate, fanaticism, and violence. The standard argument against these observations runs that Christians are being painted with a "broad brush" and that Christians just aren't like that. Often the argument runs that these people are not Christians at all. Of course, how are these people to be referred to if not by the name and cause they evoke for themselves? The problem with this line of argument is that it silences the possibility of any criticism or change at all by making reference to "Christian" off limits.
While sharing many of the same values of my leftist Christians, it is difficult for me to feel sympathetic to their rejoinders when they do not organize and fight these things. Why is it that leftist Christians have not formed a very large and strong coalition similar to the Christian Coalition to take back their religion on the public stage? We are told that these reactionary groups are a small but very vocal minority and that leftist Christianity is actually the majority, but I just don't see it. On the right we have a very vocal, very powerful, and very well funded Christian movement. Why haven't we seen anything similar in scope among the Christian Left? Perhaps because their views aren't representative?
We are told that the media just won't report the views of moderate and liberal Christians, that it is a conspiracy against them. However, this is nonsense. Getting reported and represented takes, as we at Dailykos saw during the last two elections, organization and effort. You have to organize, you have to work, you have to get out there and you have to make yourself heard.
You have the tools at your disposal. We are told that there are millions of you. You have the internet. You have successful models of how to organize and get the ear of the media such as Dailykos. If there are so many of you, then you should be able to raise money and organize protests and conferences and events to get the ear of legislators and media. Why aren't you doing this? The Christian Coalition did this way back in the 80s. There's no reason you cannot do this as well.
It's difficult not to hear the claim that "All Christians are not like that!", while true, as anything but self-congratulatory narcissism in the absence of this sort of boots on the ground activist work. It is not changing the fact that the dominant voice of Christianity in the United States is a highly oppressive and reactionary system that has the ear of our politicians. In the mean time, women and homosexuals are suffering, our kids are having more children and catching more diseases as a result of abstinence only sex education, our climate continues to grow worse due to a large segment of the population that arrogantly believes it knows how things will end, and our science is under assault.
Rather than wasting your time here defending the good name of Christians against the so-called wicked atheists and secularists, a constructive use of your time would be to organize a nationwide candlelight prayer vigil among Christians for Tiller and his family. With the internet you have all the resources to do this. This would certainly get reported by the media and would present a very different picture of Christianity in the United States. It would also start the groundwork for building a broad based Christian activist network that could grow in power over time. This would certainly go a long way towards persuading skeptical people like me that, indeed, Christians are not "like that".