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At National Prayer Breakfast, Hegseth Says US Soldiers Gain Salvation by Dying for ‘Christian Nation’
(publicwitness.wordandway.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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The PS is an incredibly ignorant and unnuanced take. I'm not a Christian or a Muslim, but you're projecting an image that you have of religion most likely based on conservative and institutional Christianity and Islam. There's so much diversity within these groups that dismissing everyone who associates with Christianity or Islam as idiots is ridiculous. While many of them are backwards, science-denying, homophobic, transphobic, racist, nationalist bigots who absolutely deserve all the criticism, and there are churches which induce trauma and hurt on vulnerable people, there are also plenty of people for whom religion is not about belief in supernatural beings or the authority of a book written around two thousand years ago.
For many people, it's all about being part of a community, and religion is an effective way of bringing people together across social boundaries. They enjoy the music, the rituals, the eating together and the charitable events, and they find the myths and stories of the religion to be more of a convenient excuse for all of that without needing to believe that a god really exists or that their book should be taken as some kind of moral authority. This is especially true for people born into the tradition without any choice about their religious affiliation until they were independent from their family. Now, if you were arguing that the world would be better off without Christianity or Islam, that would be a much more understandable position, but I think calling anyone who identifies as a Christian or Muslim an idiot is just plain ignorant.
You are right in that “idiot” is the wrong word, but I am too much of an idiot to know the correct term for individuals who can be the masters of all knowledge and science, yet bring harm to others based on groupthink because they just want to play with others in their small part of the world. They destroy countless better futures.
While you make great points, I believe the previous poster was probably complaining that those people who are in it just for the community are still (by and large) voting and supporting keeping their community on a local and national stage. If you vote in Christian nationalists or support "Christian" laws because your church is advocating for them, it doesn't matter if you personally just like the music and church picnics. The same goes for tacit upholding of Sharia Law by social Muslims.
It is incredibly hard to be a social Christian or Muslim without a belief that even if they aren't 100% convinced about God, their book is better than the alternatives. They are (again slightly generalizing) in support of the good aspects like "love thy neighbor" and subconsciously give weight to their book overall.
Those who have fully deconstructed or were only ever religious by outward appearance or for protection from a Christian or Muslim society shouldn't really be lumped in as a Christian or Muslim.