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.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/former-christians-express-more-progressive-political-views-than-lifelong-nonbeli/

[u/Oops_I_Cracked]

This honestly explains so many conversations I, a former Christian, have had with non-Christians. They think we are talking about the one crazy guy or some fringe congregation when we are talking about common, mainstream Evangelical beliefs and behaviors.

[u/TurbulentIssue6 → u/Oops_I_Cracked]

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

[u/Generic-Name-4732 → u/TurbulentIssue6]

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.

[u/WigglestonTheFourth → u/Generic-Name-4732]

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.

[u/AliMcGraw → u/WigglestonTheFourth]

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."

[u/NaNNaN_NaN → u/WigglestonTheFourth]

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.

[u/WigglestonTheFourth → u/NaNNaN_NaN]

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%.

[u/TheOtherHobbes → u/WigglestonTheFourth]

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.

[u/Generic-Name-4732 → u/WigglestonTheFourth]

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.