The Christianity Poker Bluff Has Been Called

A common theme among atheists when they discuss Christianity is that Christianity is a thought pattern based on control. The seed is planted that each person is born a sinner, headed on a path to an afterlife of misery. The afterlife for each person is a fiery hell. There is but one, and only one, way to avoid this hell, buy into an odd and peculiar faith filled with fairy tales. It has a monopoly. It controls the market. In business, there are laws against creating absolute monopolies. The industry called religion is allowed a pass on such laws.

As long as Christianity could maintain these myths all went well. Now, however, people are calling its bluff. When it has to show its cards, there are no straights or aces. A Mormon writer is now telling Mormon officials they should lighten up on its marketing strategy of fear. He was writing specifically about telling Brigham Young students and faculty they must fear sin and its consequences. Instead, he says, officials should see students and faculty as trustworthy participants. They are as capable at figuring out how to live and how to interpret the Mormon faith as those old white men sitting in Salt Lake City. 

Use of the fear monopoly remains popular in the Southern Baptist Convention as well. A retired big wig today published a hand wringing column about polls which show evangelicals are slipping out of the theological noose his denomination has so carefully tied. Polls show, he observed, fewer and fewer evangelicals are allowing fear of the evangelical monopoly to run their lives. They are calling the bluff.

Branches of the faith that rely on the Bible for their entire schtick are short-term thinkers. It doesn't occur to them they are using a source easily torpedoed. A better strategy would avoid be called to show cards and holding a handful of nothing.

While the pagans were mostly wiped out, they held onto the public for much longer than have the Christians. Atheists go back even further than pagans. Neither of these used a book to tout their wares. Pagans had local gods. This worked until a dictator converted and an entire nation left it behind. 

Today, people all over the world are growing in their confidence to find their own path in religion. Where this will end, if it ever lands anywhere, no one knows. We can be certain it will not land where it has been before.