And the closest parallel I can see is whiteness, and the refusal to grapple with our history and the way everyone who's white still benefits, whether we want to or not, from white supremacy. Western Christians, whether they want to or not, benefit from Christian hegemony.

And Christians don't get to pawn off dealing with their religion's history on "fake Christians" any more than white people get to pawn off our white privilege on slaveholders. (Especially since the two are deeply entwined.)

Christians want to hold up a nebulous ideal ("just be NICE to people" basically) as the only "real" Christianity, which is inside baseball. If you're not Christian, if you don't already believe, Christianity is what people who call themselves Christian, in aggregate, do.

And whenever you say this, Christians immediately get their backs up and claim you want to define Christianity by what the worst people calling themselves Christian do.

And, like, no. I am defining it by what ALL of you do.

And if, on aggregate, that definition ends up being really negative, the ethical solution isn't to attack anyone who's not Christian and is side-eyeing the behavior of the majority of people calling themselves Christian.

Like, if your house is dusty, the solution is to clean it, not attack any visitor who sneezes.

I also think that when Christians are citing all the good Christianity has supposedly done for the world, they need to grapple with how much of that "good" was done to further colonial aims.

And yes, I am aware that non-Western Christians exist, but given that they don't have hegemonic power over my society, they're not really relevant here.