The first, unfortunately, is often painted with a hateful brush that only the latter deserve.
Interestingly, whenever anyone complains that "Christians are being bashed in the media," those complaints (usually more in the form of plaintive whines) emanate not from normal Christians, but from pseudo-Christiams. And the media is very properly critical of them for their extremist agendas. Or would "properly" be, except...
There's just one problem with that. The media (news, TV sitcoms, dramas, etc., and articles & commentaries in print) all too often come down on "Christians" in general. I'm not at all sure that the media even realizes that there's a huge difference between those whom they actually are targeting with derisiveness or criticism, and the vastly-larger number of professing Christians who don't deserve a bit of that treatment. Many of the mefia folks may actually believe that ALL professing Christians are extremists. (And boy, is it ever a good thing that they are very wrong if they make that assumption, for reasons you're about to see!)
In order for the unfairness to end, it is very important that society comes to the full realization that there's a dichotomy in professing Christians that has a day-and-night difference!
Normal Christians are everyone's sensible, fair-minded, pretty intelligent, usually tolerant, ordinary, unobtrusive, work-a-day next-door neighbors. Unlike their counterpart, they are quiet, low-profile, and friendly people who usually have a live-and-let-live attitude with respect to the personal affairs and behaviors of other people. Very few of them ever engage in any form of busybodyism or discrimination.
In America, 83% of the population professes Christianity. Only a mere 6% of those are the obnoxious and bigoted counterparts of the Normal Christians... a group that can very aptly be called the RRR Cult. The psueudo-Religious Radical Right. Which has an oligarchical leadership and about 15 million lemming-like adherents who follow their pronouncements and agendas in unquestioning lockstep. Like the good little cultists that they truly are.
The tenets of the RRR Cult are frequently unbiblical, but are presented to the lemmings so as to seem to be Biblical. One of the key objectives of the leadership is to cause their followers to believe that it is their duty to act as enforcers of the cult's agendas upon society in general -- as a whole. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Because there is one key passage in the Bible that prohibits anyone from doing that. 1 Cor. 5:12-13. A passage that the cult's leaders will never cite to their lemmings.
You see, there is only one way that the Bible authorizes peer pressure or enforcement of its precepts by a person or group of people, against anyone else, and that is church discipline. Which is non-violent "punishment" of a "sinning" person (or group of people) within a church's own congregation -- by fellow members of that congregation. As for society in general? Well -- if it gets out of line, then it is God's business to deal with that -- and no one else's. As the passage makes very clear, in the NIV Bible:1 Cor. 5:12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside.
Neither God nor the Bible appoints or authorizes a Gestapo. But that's what the RRR Cult is trying to emulate. A self-styled and self-appointed Gestapo.
It should be pointed out that not all of the RRR cultists are pseudo-Christians. Many of them are limited-mentality actual Christians (most of whom were already fundamentalists) who have been conned by their crafty leaders to believe that the cult's agendas are worthwhile. The cult's agendas are so extreme, however, and so ludicrous, that the leaders need to target the lower-IQ folks. Since people who are more astute would see through their nonsensical and hateful shams and lies in a heartbeat! False Teachers don't have to con everyone. To be successful, they need only to appear to be benign and Christian to those whom they delude -- and to deceive enough people to be powerfully influential within society.
For example, President GW Bush, who is Number One Toady to the cult, has probably destroyed the U.S. Supreme Court for the rest of all of our lifetimes, by appointing two anti-personal-liberties justices to it. Those are lifetime appointments, and both of them are fairly young! Up until now, that Court has had a pro-human-rights majority for the last 80 years... but many of those decisions that protected our rights did so by hair's-breadth 5-4 majorities. Almost no one alive today has ever experienced anything BUT a benevolent and egalitarian Supreme Court. But we have the opposite now -- and that may constitute the camel's nose under America's tent, leading ultimately to tyranny.
HOW dangerous is the RRR Cult? Consider this analogy --RRR : Society :: 5% arsenic solution : glass of drinking water
Until their loathsome agendas can be relegated to the boneyard of extinction, to join the equally-ignorant and hateful agendas of the segregationists of 50 years earlier, America is seriously threatened. Far more that the above-cited poisoning of the U.S. Supreme Court (as though that weren't more than enough, in its own right.)
Fortunately for America... and the infestation of the RRR is pretty much confined just to this country (lucky us! )... the RRR's False Teachers (they fit the prophecies of those perfectly!) and their lemmings are outnumbered almost 20-1 by tolerant, common-sense, and compassionate Normal Christians. Now if we can just get the media, and society in general (which listens to the media), to recognize the clear-cut dichotomy between the two groups! Most Normal Christians (who make up most of society) aren't even aware why they are being targeted and accused of hatefulness -- and most of them actually are unaware that they even are being painted with that brush. They're too busy pursuing their own, individual, work-a-day lives.
That other 94% of Christians -- the Normal Christians who are sensible and tolerant people -- make up about 250,000,000 of the USA's 300 million people. IF they were anything like the RRR cultists, America would already be a tyrannical theocracy that would make Iran look benign by comparison. So PLEASE -- keep these two completely opposite groups of people straight in your minds, and don't blame "Christians" when you see hatefulness and bigotry. We do not deserve to be wrongfully painted with the RRR Cult's brush. (And one more thing... the RRR loves to proclaim that "Christians oppose abortion." That's a major LIE. Fully 2/3 of Americans support the right to choose, and reliable polls have shown that to be consistently true for over 30 years. And 5/6 of Americans are Normal Christians. Do the math. Most of us are sensibly Pro-Choice! Ironically, when it comes to breaking that Commandment against lying, RRR cultists are experts at it. And their leaders are past masters of deception, propaganda, and the practice of cafeteria theology. When the Bible and the RRR's agendas conflict, that's ignored. And when the leaders think they can get some mileage out of a passage -- no matter how tenuous! -- they employ it.)
The RRR Cult can best be summed up as America's internal, sociopathic terrorists. They seek to deny or destroy vital personal liberties of tens of millions of girls, women, and gays for NO good reason. They would love to impose theocratic rule upon America, and that is their ultimate objective. They are the USA's very own home-grown version of the Taliban.
