Questioning the conventional wisdom
I was brought up with the idea that God is love. This was the centerpiece of Christianity.
Judging by what some conservative Christians have been saying, this is now changed to “God is torture” (see this recent slacktivist post).
There doesn’t seem to be much Christianity remaining. Thankfully, Fred Clark’s “slacktivist” blog still makes a case for the “God is love” view.
As many anthropologists have said, there isn’t Christianity, but rather there are Christianities. There are thousands of variations of Christianity in the world with many differences, all resulting from missionology syncretizing Christianity with local cultural attributes to make it palatable by the local peoples, so trying to identify one particular brand as the archetype if you will is pointless in my opinion. You are correct in pointing out however, how many of those brands of Christianities have adopted even more detrimental ideological stances such as hatred, intense intolerance, etc., and they would do their delusional cause better if they maintained a theology with more love. They’ll never have a theology with all love, if those that don’t adopt the faith will be tortured for eternity (relevant to this post of yours).
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In other words, if they propose infinite torture for non-believers, should I be surprised that this mentality would “rub off” into other domains of their everyday lives? I don’t think so.
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