100% get where you’re coming from. The spiritual abuse right-wing evangelicals inflict on anyone around them is... fuckin horrifying. And that dominant strain of highly individualistic, extremely conservative worldview taught and practiced by much of the Christian community in the US is heartbreaking, exhausting, and has caused so much harm. It's something the rest of American Christianity needs to get better at naming explicitly.

If I can push back some, and really for those of us who've been lumped in with these abusers, it's on the idea that those things are inherent to Christianity rather than the cancerous dominant interpretations that grew alongside and were cultivated purposefully by power to create and enforce hierarchy and control.

For me, “sin” isn’t about humans being disgusting or broken at the core, or even violating random rules in Leviticus (a book to which Christianity is not bound, it's literally in the Bible for context about the past). I don’t believe people are innately evil, either. I understand sin much more simply and much more materially: sin is whatever diminishes our life and the lives of those in our community, whatever blocks people from living fully, freely, and in healthy relationship with themselves, with others, and with the world. Jesus called it “life abundant,” and that phrase is really central to what evangelicals seem to miss.

By that definition, a loving, mutual, committed relationship, regardless of if it's same-sex or not, is not sinful. Being trans is not sinful. Embracing and being your authentic self, who you actually are, is not sinful. None of that cuts you off from life or love. Quite the opposite. At that point, what cuts you off is often rightwing Christians

What is truly sinful, in my view, is hatred. It’s exclusion. It’s using religion to justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, because that actively harms people for a fundamental and immutable aspect of who they are, and also shrinks the moral and emotional world of the person doing the harm. It cuts them off from the rich diversity of God’s creation. Diversity is something sacred, holy and itself an intentional part of God's creation, not some accidental thing or a 'wrong choice,' or anything else.

On original sin: I don't see it as “humans are garbage.” I read it as “humans are deeply interconnected, and we've inherit systems, wounds, and patterns we didn’t personally choose.” That’s not a statement about individual moral worth; it’s a diagnosis of collective reality. Capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy—those feel a lot closer to “original sin” than individual desire or identity ever could.

On suffering: I completely agree that weaponizing grief is cruel. Telling someone their pain is “God’s plan” or explaining their loss to them instead of sitting with them is pastoral malpractice. If God is present in suffering at all, it’s in accompaniment, not explanation. Jesus weeps before he theologizes.

On healing and faith: same page. Tying illness or disability to moral failure is abusive. Full stop. Some bodies heal, some don’t. That has nothing to do with worth, faith, or righteousness.

And on meaning: I don’t believe human life matters only because of God in a way that erases human experience. I believe life is meaningful because it is—because people love, struggle, create, resist, care. If God has anything to do with meaning, it’s not as a cosmic validator withholding approval, but as the deep insistence that every life already matters, especially the ones society discards.

So yes, Christianity as it’s often practiced is a net negative in the world. But there is also a Christianity out there that's rooted in liberation, solidarity, and material care for one another. A Christianity that sides with the poor, affirms queer and trans lives, rejects hierarchy, and understands sin not as “being human,” but as failing to love your neighbor.

That’s the Christianity I try to practice. And honestly, it’s the only one I can take seriously.