In Robin Meyers’ book “The Underground Church”, he poses much the same thing: somewhere along the line, we ceased to be people of The Way, and became people of The Beliefs. IOW, we stopped seeing “how we lived” as the principle expression of Christ’s teachings, and started to codify them into “what we believed” as the principle expression of Christ’s teachings. They became doctrines which people had to accept or they were barred from membership in the church. We lost The Spirit, and created The Rules. It created a lot of conflict.

(I am grossly over-simplifying Rev.Meyers book, of course. My apologies to him if I'm getting it wrong.)

Kevin McGrane

We become mean when we decide that Jesus is more about who is excluded from the table than an open invitation. Up, down; in, out; near; far -- is the way of the world. The way of Christ is either all are in or all of us are out.

I think it comes from fear. I would answer it by saying "because they're afraid". Then, to the extent this is valid, the question becomes "why are Christians so fearful?" and "what are they afraid of?"

As I commented on Hyatt's blog, she is reading Tertullian selectively if she thinks he was never "mean". He was vehemently opposed to homosexuality or any sexual "deviations" calling monstrous. In De Spectaculis he revels at the thought of being in heaven watching the sinful actors and athletes of ancient Rome screaming in torture in the flames of hell. His description is rapturous. He looks forward to watching sinners burn with great relish. With Tertullian as an example, we have to conclude that early Christians were just as mean as Christians today.

Kevin, interesting take... but I think that you can't blame it all on the development of Doctrine -- forgetting the true Gospel and losing the humility it gives is at the heart of the problem, IMHO.

It happens when you lose the Gospel where the story is about what God did for you, and embrace the modern false gospel that it's about what you're doing for God. If you believe that Christianity is just a long process of sanctification and obedience that earns you "brownie points" with God, then you can fancy yourself further along that vector to heaven than others. That means you can look down your nose at someone else, call them less "spiritual" than you for their lifestyle or political stand or what have you. This means they are further behind you on the journey to heaven, and you can be mean and judgmental and still think yourself righteous. After all, you're the holy one who figured it all out, right? You're the one who is "obedient" to God, no?

But if you can remember that the Gospel is a story of totally free grace, then you can remember that we all stand equal before God.

lhayley - please sign your name when you comment at Episcopal Café -- thanks ~ed.

Ed- will do!! Ya'all maybe should disable the Facebook sign-in option. For some reason it defaults to the beginning of the email address your Facebook account uses, which isn't a great option for either of us. :) It doesn't show that until after you comment, either. Thanks!

I think it's all BS. Painting Christians and Christianity as a whole as "mean" and then looking for reasons why that's so (reasons that the good folks here at the Cafe are exempt from, and therefor conveniently not mean at all) is no more legitimate than painting any other religious groups with the broad brush of stereotyping.

Neither are the numbers of a Google search all that revealing. People ask Google "Why are Christians so mean?" a lot so it must mean that Christians are mean? What do the number of hits on queries like "Why are Jews so greedy?" (11,000) and "Why are Hindus so stupid?" (2,790) reveal, I wonder? The answer, of course, is that they reveal nothing more than the prejudice of the people doing the asking.

I'm not even sure that it's the case that we were always so very nice, open, and accepting until recently, no matter what Tertullian or Aristides said (they were Christians themselves, not outside observers, anyway). Certainly the sort of attitude evidenced in St Stephen's last sermon - the one that got him stoned - doesn't sound so very "all of us are in or all of us are out." Ditto Ss Paul and Peter. If anything sets Christians apart from the rest of humanity, it doesn't seem to be niceness - or meanness.

After many years, I finally figured it out. All religion is fraud perpetrated for power and control. All the fraud perpetrators are competing for the same power and they move to "mean" to try to intimidate and win the competition.

Gary Young