Richard Beck on the new "Traditionalists":

https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2025/10/those-who-love-christianity-more-than.html

Beck says:

> Here’s my hot take. I think many of these loud and aggressive converts are more in love with Christianity than they are with Christ. They love the creeds, the church fathers, the liturgy, the saints, the history, the culture of Christendom, the doctrine, the dogma, the theology, the Tradition. What they don’t seem to love very much is Jesus, as evidenced in their becoming belligerent social media trolls.

Something akin to this has been bouncing around in my head as I’ve been going through Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth (https://toddgrotenhuis.blot.im/against-the-machine).

#🔗 #🕊️

@todd Many may not know that I used to be very involved in the evangelical Promise Keepers movement and devoutly Christian.

When folks ask me what caused me to leave all that I tell them I desired to love Jesus and that desire led me to learn and love all I could about him and his teachings. This led me to believe one very important thing…

Jesus would have had nothing to do with any of that.

@todd Coincidentally, I am also reading that Kingsnorth book right now. So many thoughts.

@patrickrhone Wow thanks for sharing that. My current path has me in the Episcopal church after 40 years deep in fundamentalist evangelicalism. Trying to follow Jesus, and he wasn’t back there.

@cjhubbs I’ve got lots of thoughts on the matter. Most of them unpopular.

Basically, it boils down to this. If he were to come back today, he’d likely say, “Look, son, the instructions were simple. I gave you two things to do. Are you doing them?”

@patrickrhone Hear, hear.

@joshuapsteele Don’t get me started on what he’d do with the Bible.

@patrickrhone Yup! And the evangelicals would say yes, but it turns out they’ve redefined those terms so much that their “love of neighbor” is all judgment and control, with fear their great motivator.

So glad to be out of that game.

@cjhubbs Same.

@annahavron very good point