I find the disconnect between faith and the status quo disconcerting, to say the least. Christianity evolved as a small, peaceful sect and then hundreds of years later it had become the largest organized religion that was hellbent on oppression (see Spanish Inquisition, Dark Ages, etc.).
The sheer volume of history behind the church is staggering. And I don't deny that dogma has been refined and perverted for centuries. But the specific case of Christianity and violent dogma is really no different from any other faith or belief system or religion.
Personally, I am an Episcopalian. My pa was raised Roman Catholic and endured 12 years of nuns in Catholic School. My mom was raised Southern Baptist. As a result, they raised me with very little religion. I only went to church when I went with friends from school. Through the years I've looked at various faiths and tried my hand at several dozen. When I had to drop out of grad school, I was literally struggling with hell (when I was horribly depressed, my fiance had been shipped off to Iraq, etc.), something crazy/miraculous happened. I had a personal visitation.
I'm not going to go into it, but lot of my friends derided it as shrinks fuck*ng with me, or my depression, or whatever. But I do know that I was a staunch athiest who was well beyond my wit's end. As they say, there are no athiests in foxholes. Life has not been easy or sweet since then (see the events leading up to my move to Alaska) but at least I feel like my life has purpose. Having faith doesn't immunize me from shitty things happening to me, but it gives me focus and meaning like nothing else has. Are other people focused and at the top of their game without faith? I don't know, because I can only speak from experience. My life has changed drastically since then.
And also, for the first time in my life, I've found something spiritual that I've stuck with. I chose to be baptized as an Episcopalian on January 6, 2003. We have a gay bishop and women leaders in the church. Personally, I refer to Jesus as "Baby Jesus" because it sounds a little more lighthearted and less "scary" than making a bold statment such as, "I love Jesus." I am not a saint. I'm not perfect, but I try to live a good life. I go out to the bars with my friends, and I cuss like a sailor and I sometimes repeat small town gossip. I've never been married. However, I volunteer about 10-20 hours per week doing Fire/EMS and caring for patients, and more time than that being involved with my community. I give money to progressive causes that I feel are worthy, such as women's organizations and Planned Parenthood. I volunteer on several boards, such as our local domestic violence shelter, our local library committee, and our local public broadcasting station. I feel like I am doing work for Baby Jesus when I try to help others. I go to church regularly and try to support our mission in Alaska and help our community. When disasters happen, like Hurricane Katrina, our church community dug into our own pockets to send some of our most experienced personnel to the Gulf coast for humanitarian work. Same thing for the mudslides in the Phillippenes and the earthquakes in Afghanistan and everything.
I am sure that there are righteous athiests who have also banded together to help in similar manners, but having an organized group like a church gives us focus to serve Christ's mission in the world, which is to help those less fortunate than us and to work for peace. Shit, your mileage may vary. You might not care about stuff like that. But I do, and my faith is a big part of it.
I'm not going to deny that weird arguments like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin are sheer folly. I don't care what other people think about the church or its history. There are lots of weird metaphors to describe the relationships between God and Humans. Such as God being the Father and we are his children but Christ is his only begotten Son; Christ being the Bridegroom and the Church his bride; or the Church being made up of the Body of Christ; the metaphor of Christ being the Good Shepherd and we are his flock; the trifecta nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, etc. There's a lot of them. They all illustrate the fact that God loves us despite our constant failures to uphold the covenant.
Still, the religion debate all boils down to one thing: Humans are fallible. Although we are supposed to maintain the church as the body of christ, it is still made up of individuals and organizations that are prone to human error, just like athiests, Hindus, Muslims, born-agains, Dan Savage, or burned ex-Catholics.
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