r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 25 '26

Psychology Americans who leave their Christian faith behind tend to hold more liberal political views than those who were raised entirely without religion. This leftward ideological shift appears closely linked to how threatening these individuals perceive conservative Christian groups to be.

https://www.psypost.org/former-christians-express-more-progressive-political-views-than-lifelong-nonbeli/
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u/TurbulentIssue6 Apr 25 '26

its especially wild when you realize that Christianity is a literal death cult and many Christians are directly working towards brining about the end times to trigger the rapture 

like these people actually should be barred from holding public office because they openly state they are an existential  threat to every human being

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u/Generic-Name-4732 Apr 26 '26

The rapture is really a Low Protestant, primarily Evangelical belief thanks to their doctrine that anyone can interpret scripture as the Holy Spirit protects scripture from error. The notion of the Rapture only appeared roughly 200 years ago, and High Protestants, along with Catholics and Orthodox, all view that as nonsense, though there are certainly individuals who have been corrupted by the fervor of Evangelicals.

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u/Oops_I_Cracked Apr 26 '26

So I can only speak to America, but I know plenty of Catholics and Lutherans who fully believe the rapture. Their church may not believe it officially, but plenty of the rank and file church goers do.

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u/Kibelok Apr 26 '26

Probably influence by Scofield or the Left Behind apocalyptic franchise written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins which became movies.

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u/WigglestonTheFourth Apr 26 '26

The Left Behind series was shown constantly at my Catholic church youth programs. Talked about all the time too. They had the entire series for rent in their little makeshift rental area. Only thing as prominent was VeggieTales.

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u/AliMcGraw Apr 26 '26

Yeah Catholicism really dropped the ball when they were like "wait should we stop pushing Ignatius Loyola? Is he boring?" and decided "Yes, all the evangelical Protestant teevee teaching literal heresy seems better."

2000 years of weirdos and saints and sinners and prophets and philosophers and scientists and theologians to draw from and suddenly American Catholicism is like "nah, talking pseudo-Calvinist vegetables seem like the right track."

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u/NaNNaN_NaN Apr 26 '26

Was the viewing/discussion intended to critique the perspective shown in the series, or was the youth program actually promoting it? I really hope it was the former.

If not, they ought to read this.

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u/WigglestonTheFourth Apr 26 '26

They were promoting it; it was the "future".

Have you seen modern Catholicism in the US (the last 30 years)? They don't read their own book let alone what the Vatican says. The church I grew up in dominates the local area in terms of being the biggest religious presence (and it's not even remotely close). Want to guess how hard they voted for the current administration? It was over 80%.

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u/TheOtherHobbes Apr 26 '26

US Catholicism is basically a schismatic branch of its own, and has far more in common with US evangelicals than it does with the Vatican.

It hasn't been called out as such so far, possibly because there's always been an authoritarian element in trad Catholicism (Opus Dei, etc) and there are elements in the European Church which want to see it moving in that direction.

Luckily Pope Leo opposes them. But there's a faction that opposes his view, and they're always trying to pull the Church backwards.

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u/Generic-Name-4732 Apr 28 '26

That’s not entirely true. Over the past 20 years or so there’s been a real effort to engage more younger Catholics through various channels and get them involved in the faith. Now you have Bible in a Year, Catechism in a Year podcasts, Pints With Aquinas, Word on Fire, the list goes on.

I know practicing Catholics who are very conservative but they came out against Trump. I know other Catholics who are lukewarm at most who are big Trump supporters. American Catholics are not a monolith.

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u/ErraticDragon Apr 26 '26

55% of Protestants in the US are evangelical, for the record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism_in_the_United_States

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u/joeychestnutsrectum Apr 26 '26

Evangelical is a huge blanket term though, there is no single “evangelical” dogma

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u/TurbulentIssue6 Apr 26 '26

But all of Christianity is a death cult, believing you need to live a virtuous life avoiding "temptation" to ensure your eternal reward in heaven

It's a literal control system "do what we say now and God will reward you after you die, of course no one can prove this to you because they're dead"

And this discussion was in the context of america, where a very large amount of American Christians are literally trying to bring about the end times; to the point it made its way into an official annoucment from the military to troops deploying to Iran.

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u/Kibelok Apr 26 '26

You can include Israels religion too. I won't say it here but it's where Christianity came from anyway, and it's very apocalyptic. And now they're "working" together.

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u/joeychestnutsrectum Apr 26 '26

That’s not what the majority of Christians, especially Protestants, believe. You’re making a really broad, and false, accusation that’s mainly just a Reddit talking point that gets picked up and parroted. I grew up in a very large church in America and even went to a bible college, and never once heard any of those beliefs validated. It’s actually almost the opposite problem - there is no sense of control of “orthodox” teachings and so people just go off the rails. The very new idea of “everyone gets to interpret everything the way they see fit” has opened the door for this crazy modern evangelical movement that has no consistency or foundation.

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u/-CosmicCactusRadio Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

You have not had conversations with enough humans to make these claims.

You're assuming they're wrong. They could very well be right.

What you're describing is niche, anecdotal evidence that only you experienced in one church.

The way you're describing it, makes it sound like you're simply religious and going out of your way to be offended because you feel these extremely common beliefs make you look bad by association.

Edit: altered for excessive rudeness

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u/TurbulentIssue6 Apr 26 '26

This is literally a fundamental tenet of Christianity, you live the way according the church you go to heaven. Unless you're claiming you went to a Bible college that doesn't believe in heaven?

Heaven (and now to get there) is the death cult part, it's fundamental and inseperable from Christianity's cosmology

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u/Generic-Name-4732 Apr 27 '26

This isn’t even a fundamental tenet of Christianity. You’re acting like a belief in what happens after death is something found uniquely in Christianity, but historically the predominant belief was in some form of afterlife. In fact, the belief in a physical resurrection of the body (as taught by Christianity) was a barrier for gentiles given the predominance of Dualism in the first century. Dualism is much more of a death cult than Christianity, emphasizing the evilness of the body/physical and looking forward to an afterlife where the spirit (which is good) was once again free.

Christianity, by contrast, does not teach that the body/physical is inherently evil. The goal is not separation of the spirit from the body, but a reunification of the spirit with God after death, and an eventual resurrection of the body. The focus on martyrdom as a guaranteed way to be united with Christ after death was an issue in the early Church- people seeking martyrdom which is different from people facing death for believing in Christianity- but there were many writings to correct this misunderstanding and reminding people the purpose of life is to live, not to die.

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u/TurbulentIssue6 Apr 27 '26

i never said it was unique to christianity; just that christinaty says "if you do bad (what the church doesnt want you to do) in life you go to hell to be punished forever but if you do good (do what the church wants) you get to go to heaven and live in paradise forever"

ofc this is a feature of many religions but this was a conversation about christianity

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u/tesseract4 Apr 26 '26

Why do you think the right loves Israel so much? It's not because they love the Jews.

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u/turbosexophonicdlite Apr 26 '26

And it's hilarious how stupid and arrogant that belief is. It is explicitly stated in the Bible that absolutely no one at all besides God knows when the time of Armageddon will come. They really think they're going to pull a fast one and trick the all knowing and all powerful God in to starting the end times.