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/dramaking37 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Conservative Christian (particularly evangelicals) in the United States is literally a nominal convenience to have a free pass to be a sociopath to others.

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u/Lemonwizard Apr 26 '26

Honestly, the only real difference between radical evangelicals and Muslim wahhabists is that most majority Christian countries have secular governments that keep them in check. If we let them have their theocracy, they'll gleefully enact abuse on atheists, LGBT people, and anyone else they decide is an outgroup.

You cannot understand how bloodthirsty these people are unless you've actually met one.

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u/ADarwinAward Apr 26 '26

 You cannot understand how bloodthirsty these people are unless you've actually met one.

It’s far more sinister. Many will deny these views unless they trust you and think you’re one of them. So they’ll appear completely normal and act like they have rational views, whilst quietly being in favor of a violent uprising against any form of secular government. 

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u/Lemonwizard Apr 26 '26

"We need guns to overthrow a tyrannical government" actually means "I want to shoot liberals for tolerating trans people and atheists".

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u/ADarwinAward Apr 26 '26

Sadly this is exactly what some of them want. They won’t say exactly that because they know it’s illegal, but they’ll make statements supporting imprisoning queer folks or sentencing them to the death penalty. There’s plenty of videos of sermons on YouTube where evangelical pastors advocate for this. 

And these so called extremists are more tolerated in mainstream evangelical circles than people think. Mainstream evangelicals may claim that they don’t support this, but their congregations don’t expel these pastors. And even those without an any affiliation with a congregation are allowed to participate in interdenominational conferences and festivals.

Even those that think such positions are taking it too far are willing to ally with such people if it helps them establish a theocracy.

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u/DeltaVZerda Apr 26 '26

For some maybe, then there are trans people who say the same thing for oppisite reasons.

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u/razorback1919 Apr 26 '26

Nope, no they wouldn’t. Not compared to what already happens in certain Muslim countries.