A Response to the Use of "Christian" as an Adjective

Don’t Use ‘Christian’ as an Adjective Around Me Anymore

The person who wrote this article is not a Christian. Based upon this piece she appears to not have a very deep understanding of the Christian Faith. Here she is criticizing the use of “Christian” as an adjective (and as a noun) because it is used by Christians (and others) as a synonym for decent, humane, caring behavior. This suggests to her that the users are either consciously or unconsciously continuing the stereotype that other religions are not caring. The reason people tend to use that term as an adjective is because it points back to Jesus the Christ  as the gauge by which the Christian life should be measured. Jesus was decent, humane, and caring. But this is only her surface complaint. Delve deeper and her real complaint is that Christians make the extraordinary claim that the one creator God is saving the world exclusively through the figure of Jesus the Christ and that any faith that does not acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior is illegitimate. The surface use of “Christian” as an adjective for caring is just an outgrowth of this deeper claim.


Not that the author is completely for the use of Christian as a noun either. She appears to endorse the idea that “labeling all Protestants and Catholics as Christians was and is used politically to combat Roe vs Wade.” This claim is so laughably ignorant that it should remove all her credibility that she has anything either insightful or relevant to say about the term “Christian”. It’s like saying that labeling all Sunnis and Shias as Muslim was used politically to combat the oil crisis of the 1970s. Even a cursory understanding of Christianity could tell one that the first use of the label Christian comes from Antioch nearly 2000 years ago (Acts 11:26) and predates the Roman Catholic-Protestant divide by some 1500 years. But, again, this is only her surface complaint. Delve deeper and her real complaint is that Christianity (including both Protestant and Roman Catholic) makes extraordinary claims about the dignity and worth of humanity based upon it having been made in the image of God.


On a side note: I hope her use of “humane” isn’t being used to suggest that animals (dogs, monkeys, dolphins, etc.) cannot be caring. Of course there is a long tradition of abusing animals and treating them as something not deserving the proper stewardship for which they were created.

This author needs to think a little harder about her subject matter before she types again.