I personally can't call myself a Christian today but I was raised and baptised a Christian. Through my life, study of other beliefs and experience I have grown beyond the need to restrict myself to a single belief structure. That doesn't mean I discount it or any other.
Please be aware that there are many liberal or progressive Christians that are not pleased with how the radical right and fundamenatlist crowd have usurped their religion and are beginning to fight back. Once such group is the Christian Alliance for Progress that started in Florida and is organizing the fight to reclaim their churches from the crazies. Below is part of their statement from there website and it wraps up their mission pretty well.
The success of the Religious Right in appropriating the language of Christianity has led many people to become generally wary of religion in the public sphere and of Christianity in particular. The Religious Right has used the language of Christianity to promote an extreme and divisive political agenda that has helped polarize our nation. But foundational Christian values like compassion, justice and peace are largely absent from our political discussion. And there are millions of Christian Americans who share progressive views, or, at a minimum, are increasingly turned off by the extreme rhetoric and political agenda of the Religious Right.
The Christian Alliance for Progress is a national movement that started in Jacksonville, Florida among ordinary Americans who want to reclaim Christianity and change this current political picture. Members in the movement want to restore core values of Christianity while honoring diverse views about religion and Christian life. Many Americans, especially people of faith, are ready to hear from Christians who are tolerant, and who understand the many ways that our faiths impact our views of public life. The Christian Alliance advances a renewed, progressive vision of Gospel values and seeks to help Americans express this moral vision in our lives and in our politics.
I wholly support these people and their efforts and wish them all success. The Christian Right is using their distorted religion to try and create a theocracy in this country that rejects all other beliefs and is violently intolerant. If you don't sing from their song book they want you dead. They are a poisonous and virulent infection on mankind and I want to see them relegated to where they belong and that is not part of the mainstream.
