Some Thoughts on Very Online Christians

**Note: I updated the headline of this piece to decrease the trolling and harassing emails from people proving the entire point of this essay.

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ,” Gandhi is often quoted as saying.

The quote is probably apocryphal, but it is cited with such frequency because it perfectly captures how so many people feel about the behavior of the people who most loudly identify as Christians. (The Internet believes the original quote is from the Indian philosopher Bara Dada who is reported to have said, “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians, you are not like him.”)

Whoever said it, they were on to something. Christians can be truly awful in a way that, in my experience, members of other faiths are not. And I’m not even talking about the Inquisition, Crusades or basic oppression of people who don’t share their beliefs. For the purposes of this piece, I am just talking about how white American Christians…