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There are hypocrites and crazies within the Church that he likes to hyper-focus on and claim that they are somehow representative of the entire Body of Christ. Particularly the more rural sort of Christian conservative.
He claims he is performing a necessary service with his politically and culturally focused criticism. He wants to serve as a bridge. Open up doors of understanding between members of Leftist coalitions that have somehow been injured by the Christians in service of their political goals or someone else's political goals.
Indeed, his goals are noble. In principle he is right in that the Church has erred in both word and deed. When this happens, prophetic voices ought to call Christians out. There is a fine line between self-criticism and self-hatred though.
Criticize too vehemently or too often, and you run the risk of serving Satan rather than Christ. Criticize from the same direction or in the same spirit as the enemies of Christ and you will, again be of more service to them.
What people like my friend fail to grasp (and I have told him this openly) is that there is no perfection this side of eternity. Being aligned with the righteous does not, in and of itself, require or guarantee perfection.
Ugggghh, I've drifted far from the original topic here. No, I am not saying that criticizing a political party or candidate is the same as criticizing fellow Christians. Suffice to say, some Christians are contrarian by nature and will go after what the majority of other Christians in their locality believe (usually in a cultural and political sense). There isn't anything mean-spirited about it and sometimes they are right.
That there are some on this site who claim to dislike the conservative and liberal political ideology, but focus most of their fire on conservative ideology or parties does not surprise me. On a site like this, we Christian conservatives are the majority. As such there is a larger target on our backs.
