How RW Homophobia is driving young ppl away from Xtianity in droves.

[daaron]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/155462/how_the_christian_right%27s_homophobia_scares_away_religious_young_people/

In response to the latest gay-bashing vote in North Carolina, evangelical writer and speaker Rachel Held Evans wrote an impassioned plea to her fellow Christians to just cut it out. She points to statistics showing how much damage the church has sustained because of its anti-gay crusade. Research conducted by the pro-Christian Barna Group in 2007 on Americans age 16-29 found that “anti-homosexual” was the dominant perception of modern Christians. Ninety-one percent of non-Christians and 80 percent of Christians in this group used this word to describe Christians.

She also points to research documented in the book You Lost Me by David Kinnaman showing that 59 percent of teenagers who grow up as church-going Christians abandon their faith in adulthood. One of the major reasons is the gay rights issue. Overall, the perception--a largely correct one, I’d add--is that modern conservative Christianity is dominated by sex-phobic bigots who use God as a cudgel to beat all sorts of people, but especially gays and lesbians. No wonder many in the younger generation want out.

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For where two or three gather in my name...

[qb]

1. Dinosaurs. Unfortunately RW Xianity is not becoming extinct nearly fast enough.

[Viva_Daddy]

2. Thank God!!

[cbayer]

3. Good article and I think it is on the money.

The question here is whether the young people leaving the fundamentalist and RW churches will seek out other alternatives.

I think that many of them will, and that, in the end, may be the death knell of the christian right.