I've encountered quite a few people who have said that they no longer identify as a Christian, but as a Jesus follower instead. They do so because people typically associate the term, Christian, with hypocrite, homophobic, bigot, dogmatic, or many other things of the like. They prefer calling themselves something else, such as a Christ-like, Jesus-follower, or Christ-follower. There is nothing essentially wrong with doing that. However, do we really want to surrender that name to the hypocrites?
Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, and many others identified as Christian. When we surrender our name to Fundamentalists, we're also surrendering their religious identity as well, along with the religious identity of people like Saint Francis of Assisi and Hildegard von Bingen. When we surrender the name to Fundamentalists, we're giving these Fundamentalists more power. We're letting them have complete control over the religion.
Something similar going on at the moment is that a terrorist group that used to be known as ISIS has given that name a negative meaning. Isis was originally the name of an Ancient Egyptian deity. She was a venerable figure, a loving mother and wife, as well as a symbol of women's empowerment. Before this terrorist organization existed, there were groups and people who were named Isis. People have named their daughters Isis, there's a store that has Isis in it's name, and there are other stories that could be given. Some of them have been dealing with hard times, and have been worried about needing to change their name.
Many have been telling them not to surrender the name of this positive figure to terrorists. We should do the same concerning the Christian name.
I will confess that I frequently refer to myself as a Progressive Christian rather than a Christian. However, a major word in that title is Christian. We can add different things in, but we should make sure that we don't surrender the Christian name to Fundamentalists.
Shalom!
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