Here’s why people don’t take right-wing Evangelicals so seriously anymore
Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity.
Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised.
Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms.
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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/heres-why-people-dont-take-right-wing-evangelicals-so-seriously-anymore/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Cats are very spiritual. 
During Mom's Transcendental Meditation phase, Elizabeth would come right next to us and assume the feline version of the position.
However, if you are referring to the period and geographic name, it was Yeshua and the pronounciation was roughly esho (hard "e"
.
Like many other languages, Hebrew and Aramiac are often difficult to translate into English.
There are good churches out there. Lots if you live in a liberal area. (I live in Barbara Lee's district
longest time, even as a Fourth of July symbol, because I wouldn't have it mistaken for support of all the nastiness the far right made it associated wit. Now I can, and we went out and bought one for special occasions because, peculiarly enough, it's now rarely flown and differentiates us from them.
. . . give the people free will but drown them for acting on it. 
Evangelicals are shrinking sure BUT with two problems
They are far far away the largest group of Christians in the US (DU apologists who pretend most Christians are the kind gentle tea-sipping garden-party kumbaya type are either suffering from huge confirmation bias and/or confusing "mainline" with "mainstream". Evangelicals are darn close to twice the numbers of mainline denominations.)
They are shrinking way way more slowly than other Christian subsets. Even worse, the only rapidly growing religious subset, that of "unaffiliateds" is roughly equally split between wishy washy new age atheists who are scared to assert that much demonized and misused term, and evangelical fundamentalists so virulent they fall outside even the accepted norms of evangelical denominations; folks to whom the SBC are godless communist backsliders. It's quite likely the whole of wjhat normal people would call fundy Christianity is either growing slightly or staying stable.
The last thing evangelicals are doing is becoming less prominent and powerful. They are actively working to follow the Republican Party path of the last generation - to rebuild the brand, in their case Christianity, into a somewhat smaller but vastly more monolithic, committed and doctrinaire force without thought for compromise or nuance. They are more than willing to see the nation move from 83% as it was when I first started reading these polls to 71% as it is now to 60% as it will likely become Christian in self identification as long as they speak for that crystallized reactionary militant remainder. It's what they want. Just about every fundy I've ever come across will spout John 3:16 on command but lives loves and promulgates Rev 3:16 much more enthusiastically.
thanks for the post 
that the miracle water I saw advertised on tv by Peter Popoff is fake? I so wanted to get some so I would start getting $5000 checks in the mail every week like the people promoting it. Darn.
with their PTL Christian Network ( which they secretly called P ass T he L oot) . He got caught up in a sex scandal and the house of cards fell with disclosures of air-conditioned dog houses, gold plated bathroom fixtures, sex parties, etc.
The one I like was one of those Christian groups selling little pebbles of rock enclosed in a glass trinket - the rock was from the hill where Jesus was supposedly crucified.
that PTL stood for Pay The Lady.
The expression implies a legitimate, treatable and forgivable ailment (and on the sly, suggests the poor fellow is a veritable Sultan of Squirt).
