Klingon Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Morgan Guyton has proposed "Klingon Christians" as a better designation for the Gospel Coalition's brand of conservative Christianity than other\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/klingon-christians.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Klingon Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Morgan Guyton has proposed "Klingon Christians" as a better designation for the Gospel Coalition's brand of conservative Christianity than other\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/klingon-christians.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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{"id":23918,"date":"2014-05-25T19:25:03","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T23:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=23918"},"modified":"2014-05-25T19:25:03","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T23:25:03","slug":"klingon-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/klingon-christians.html","title":{"rendered":"Klingon Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ Morgan Guyton has proposed \u201cKlingon Christians\u201d<\/a> as a better designation for the Gospel Coalition's<\/a> brand of conservative Christianity than other labels.<\/p>\n

I think that the association is deeply offensive\u2026to Klingons.<\/p>\n

Guyton's point, building on observations by Pete Enns, is that this is a brand of warrior Christianity. And that is an unimportant point to make, as one of the appealing aspects of conservative born-again Christianity<\/a> is the notion that everyday life is a battlefield of the forces between good and evil, and that one can play one's own heroic part in it.<\/p>\n

But Klingons also value honor, while I cannot say that that is consistently a characteristic of what Guyton calls \u201cKlingon Christians.\u201d Hence my statement that his label \u2013 or rather, his comparison between the Gospel Coalition brand of conservative Christianity and Klingons \u2013 is offensive to Klingons.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we should instead call this something I came up with in this post accidentally via a type: \u201cborn-against Christianity.\u201d That could refer nicely to the kind of Christianity which seems to have a biologically hard-wired tendency to be opposed to things. Except that conservative Christians' opposition is notoriously selective.<\/p>\n

Any other suggestions for a better label? Bonus points if it is drawn from science fiction!<\/p>\n

A search to see what had been written previously about Klingon Christians turned up many<\/a> interesting<\/a> articles<\/a> and websites<\/a>, as well as a number of amusing images<\/a>, some of which I include for your enjoyment below.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"