I thought this was an interesting list, so i pasted a shortened version here... there is more to each here: http://listverse.com/2010/02/23/10-people-who-give-christianity-a-bad-name/


1. Fred Phelps, Sr.

His “ministry” at the Westboro Baptist Church, which he founded, in Topeka, Kansas, is based almost entirely on anti-homosexuality, which is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, sin to denounce by means of quoting the Bible. God condemns homosexuality at least twice, in Leviticus, and from this principle, Phelps feels he can condemn the entire world, but especially the United States of America, the latter which he has described as a liberal hellhole that supports homosexuality. That’s a very, VERY cleaned-up paraphrase of his graphic, disgustingly profane diction.

2.Charles Coughlin

Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a priest who used the radio to acquire a large audience for his political and religious propaganda. He was born in 1891, and one of the first to use modern technology to mass communicate for such a purpose.

He started out innocently enough, using radio to decry the KKK for burning crosses on his church grounds, but ten years later, in 1936, he started praising and defending both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for their politics, and spewing some of the most despicable virulence against Jews to which the world had borne witness up to that point.

3. Jim Jones

n 1974, the Temple went to Guyana, with only 50 members. But Jones promised others back in the States a tropical paradise, and they flocked by the hundreds to “Jonestown.” Because he had always been an outspoken communist sympathizer, and intended Jonestown to be a socialist safe haven, he drew the attention of the U. S. Government.
he wound up killing 909 people, 276 were children.

4. Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jr.

He eventually recruited people from all 50 states, and settled in Rancho Santa Fe, California. His wife died of cancer in 1985, and sometime between then and 1997, he had a nurse surgically castrate him, for purification. He called his church “Heaven’s Gate.” His congregation worshiped him fervently.

On March 19, 1997, as the comet Hale-Bopp was passing Earth, Applewhite recorded himself preaching to his congregation that suicide “was the only way to evacuate this earth.” His congregation did not believe in suicide, but was so enamored with him, that 39 members took his word for it, and on March 24, 25, and 26, they killed themselves with mixtures of phenobarbitol and applesauce, followed by vodka. They also put plastic bags over their heads to be sure of asphyxiating, in case the poison didn’t work.

Applewhite’s idea was to die so his spirit would ascend to the UFO following Hale-Bopp, which would then take him and his followers to another plane, both physical and spiritual.

5. Paul Jennings Hill

Hill was a trained and ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church, but the church excommunicated him in 1993 for taking such a militant stand against abortion, and for becoming a member of the Army of God, a Christian terrorist, anti-abortion organization.

This ordained minister finally let his anger get the best of him when he traveled to Pensacola, Florida on July 29, 1994, to an abortion clinic, and murdered one of the doctors, and his bodyguard, point-blank with shotgun blasts. He wounded the bodyguard’s wife. Then he calmly put down the shotgun in the grass and sat and waited for the police.

He was executed. The law does not permit vigilante justice. And come to think of it, “Love thine enemies,” seems a fair argument against it also.

6.Michael Bray

Bray is not an ordained or college-educated minister, but he does preach a lot about abortion. He served 46 months of a 10 year sentence for conspiring to bomb 10 abortion clinics in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D. C. He and his wife stand firmly on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and that because it preaches so firmly against homosexuality and adultery, then upon being convicted of either in a court of law, the guilty party should be put to death. Even though American courts of law have no problem with either. They might be sins, but they aren’t felonies.

Bray didn’t exactly help the Christian cause of conversion by allowing Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world, to interview him for a show called “The Root of All Evil.” Bray was thoroughly outmatched, of course, and made Christianity look like…well, the root of all evil.

He is now out of prison and living in Wilmington, Ohio, officially labeled as a terrorist.

7.Matthew Hale

Hale is currently serving 40 years in prison for attempting to solicit the murder of Judge Joan Lefkow. Not a very model preacher. But actually, he calls himself the Pontifex Maximus of the Creativity Movement, which is just another offshoot from the Ku Klux Klan. The church is for whites only, and it has its own bible, in which one finds passages such as, “You have no alibi, no other way out, white man! Fight or die!”

His church calls for a worldwide, racial holy war, to exterminate the Jews and all black people, in order to establish “a white world.” His reasoning: God is white; God created the Jews and black people to test the faith and resolve of white people; thus, killing a Jew or black person is not a sin. After one of his followers, Benjamin N. Smith, committed a deadly shooting spree, targeting only minorities, Hale “defended” his actions on TV by saying, “We do urge hatred. If you love something, you must hate that which threatens it.” He is on audio tape laughing about the shootings and imitating the sounds of gunfire.

8. Pat Robertson
Most recently, he denounced Haiti after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, stating that Haiti deserved what it was getting because it swore a pact with the Devil back in 1791, in order to drive out the French. Whether that pact was sworn or not, his comments were obviously intended to inflame and hurt, and they did so. How Christian of him. He was roundly denounced by most Christian denominations, and still refuses to retract what he said.

9.David Koresh

By the time of the Waco Siege, he had, by his own admission, fathered at least 12 children, some by girls as young as 12. And the followers just kept coming. To be honest, the FBI seriously botched the siege, and used unnecessary force, but Koresh was the primary culprit of his followers’ deaths, 82 of them, by fire. Which side started the fire is hotly disputed and will never be known, but Koresh told his followers, “Don’t move until you see God.”

They didn’t see God before they burned alive, Koresh with them.

10. Sun Myung Moon

Moon has convinced anywhere from several hundred thousand to one million people to join his church and consider him “Jesus reincarnated.” Moon is vehemently opposed to homosexuality, and yet he makes the common mistake of hating them, spewing rage at them, instead of trying of forgiving and trying to convert them from the sin. Such hateful opposition does nothing but galvanize the offended party to continue as it is. Christians must be in the business of saving souls, not assisting their damnation.

i see what your saying, but when a religious person acts unreligious, it tends to wear down what people think of religion as a whole...

Just because someone claims a specific religion, does not make them religious. Or even knowledgeable of what that might truly mean. People are still people and will make decisions on their own. The reasons of this action is merely a scapegoat, cause nevertheless it is THAT person's choice and decision to make a certain action.

its easy to fall in the trap, I do it too

there are people who give homosexuality a bad name
there are people who give blacks a bad name
there are people who give americans a bad name

the list can go on and on


in reality, they give themself a bad name but because others(including myself at times) PERCEIVE them as specifically belonging to one group, we conclude they represent that group whenever they do whatever it is that 'gives' the group a bad nam

I thought this was an interesting list, so i pasted a shortened version here... there is more to each here: http://listverse.com/2010/02/23/10-people-who-give-christianity-a-bad-name/


1. Fred Phelps, Sr.

His “ministry” at the Westboro Baptist Church, which he founded, in Topeka, Kansas, is based almost entirely on anti-homosexuality, which is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, sin to denounce by means of quoting the Bible. God condemns homosexuality at least twice, in Leviticus, and from this principle, Phelps feels he can condemn the entire world, but especially the United States of America, the latter which he has described as a liberal hellhole that supports homosexuality. That’s a very, VERY cleaned-up paraphrase of his graphic, disgustingly profane diction.

2.Charles Coughlin

Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a priest who used the radio to acquire a large audience for his political and religious propaganda. He was born in 1891, and one of the first to use modern technology to mass communicate for such a purpose.

He started out innocently enough, using radio to decry the KKK for burning crosses on his church grounds, but ten years later, in 1936, he started praising and defending both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for their politics, and spewing some of the most despicable virulence against Jews to which the world had borne witness up to that point.

3. Jim Jones

n 1974, the Temple went to Guyana, with only 50 members. But Jones promised others back in the States a tropical paradise, and they flocked by the hundreds to “Jonestown.” Because he had always been an outspoken communist sympathizer, and intended Jonestown to be a socialist safe haven, he drew the attention of the U. S. Government.
he wound up killing 909 people, 276 were children.

4. Marshall Herff Applewhite, Jr.

He eventually recruited people from all 50 states, and settled in Rancho Santa Fe, California. His wife died of cancer in 1985, and sometime between then and 1997, he had a nurse surgically castrate him, for purification. He called his church “Heaven’s Gate.” His congregation worshiped him fervently.

On March 19, 1997, as the comet Hale-Bopp was passing Earth, Applewhite recorded himself preaching to his congregation that suicide “was the only way to evacuate this earth.” His congregation did not believe in suicide, but was so enamored with him, that 39 members took his word for it, and on March 24, 25, and 26, they killed themselves with mixtures of phenobarbitol and applesauce, followed by vodka. They also put plastic bags over their heads to be sure of asphyxiating, in case the poison didn’t work.

Applewhite’s idea was to die so his spirit would ascend to the UFO following Hale-Bopp, which would then take him and his followers to another plane, both physical and spiritual.

5. Paul Jennings Hill

Hill was a trained and ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church, but the church excommunicated him in 1993 for taking such a militant stand against abortion, and for becoming a member of the Army of God, a Christian terrorist, anti-abortion organization.

This ordained minister finally let his anger get the best of him when he traveled to Pensacola, Florida on July 29, 1994, to an abortion clinic, and murdered one of the doctors, and his bodyguard, point-blank with shotgun blasts. He wounded the bodyguard’s wife. Then he calmly put down the shotgun in the grass and sat and waited for the police.

He was executed. The law does not permit vigilante justice. And come to think of it, “Love thine enemies,” seems a fair argument against it also.

6.Michael Bray

Bray is not an ordained or college-educated minister, but he does preach a lot about abortion. He served 46 months of a 10 year sentence for conspiring to bomb 10 abortion clinics in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D. C. He and his wife stand firmly on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and that because it preaches so firmly against homosexuality and adultery, then upon being convicted of either in a court of law, the guilty party should be put to death. Even though American courts of law have no problem with either. They might be sins, but they aren’t felonies.

Bray didn’t exactly help the Christian cause of conversion by allowing Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world, to interview him for a show called “The Root of All Evil.” Bray was thoroughly outmatched, of course, and made Christianity look like…well, the root of all evil.

He is now out of prison and living in Wilmington, Ohio, officially labeled as a terrorist.

7.Matthew Hale

Hale is currently serving 40 years in prison for attempting to solicit the murder of Judge Joan Lefkow. Not a very model preacher. But actually, he calls himself the Pontifex Maximus of the Creativity Movement, which is just another offshoot from the Ku Klux Klan. The church is for whites only, and it has its own bible, in which one finds passages such as, “You have no alibi, no other way out, white man! Fight or die!”

His church calls for a worldwide, racial holy war, to exterminate the Jews and all black people, in order to establish “a white world.” His reasoning: God is white; God created the Jews and black people to test the faith and resolve of white people; thus, killing a Jew or black person is not a sin. After one of his followers, Benjamin N. Smith, committed a deadly shooting spree, targeting only minorities, Hale “defended” his actions on TV by saying, “We do urge hatred. If you love something, you must hate that which threatens it.” He is on audio tape laughing about the shootings and imitating the sounds of gunfire.

8. Pat Robertson
Most recently, he denounced Haiti after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, stating that Haiti deserved what it was getting because it swore a pact with the Devil back in 1791, in order to drive out the French. Whether that pact was sworn or not, his comments were obviously intended to inflame and hurt, and they did so. How Christian of him. He was roundly denounced by most Christian denominations, and still refuses to retract what he said.

9.David Koresh

By the time of the Waco Siege, he had, by his own admission, fathered at least 12 children, some by girls as young as 12. And the followers just kept coming. To be honest, the FBI seriously botched the siege, and used unnecessary force, but Koresh was the primary culprit of his followers’ deaths, 82 of them, by fire. Which side started the fire is hotly disputed and will never be known, but Koresh told his followers, “Don’t move until you see God.”

They didn’t see God before they burned alive, Koresh with them.

10. Sun Myung Moon

Moon has convinced anywhere from several hundred thousand to one million people to join his church and consider him “Jesus reincarnated.” Moon is vehemently opposed to homosexuality, and yet he makes the common mistake of hating them, spewing rage at them, instead of trying of forgiving and trying to convert them from the sin. Such hateful opposition does nothing but galvanize the offended party to continue as it is. Christians must be in the business of saving souls, not assisting their damnation.

Odddly enough, there's not one name from Mingle2, including yourself...

its easy to fall in the trap, I do it too

there are people who give homosexuality a bad name
there are people who give blacks a bad name
there are people who give americans a bad name

the list can go on and on


in reality, they give themself a bad name but because others(including myself at times) PERCEIVE them as specifically belonging to one group, we conclude they represent that group whenever they do whatever it is that 'gives' the group a bad nam

in most of these cases, it is not a perception because they say they are doing it for god, for the church, god says, because it is written...
that would seem to have religious meanings, no matter what god they are being stupid to...

10 People Who Give Christianity a Bad Name

Why did David Koresh cause many of his followers to die?

Answer: He wanted to keep up with the Joneses.

IF they say they are doing it for God, they may be giving christians a bad name

the same as IF a homosexual or minority SAYS they are doing it for their 'community', they may be giving those communities bad names

but the reality would still be that they can only represent themself well or represent themself poorly because each community is made of individuals who are far from IDENTICAL

It would be unrealistic to expect people to not judge a group by looking at some of the leaders of that group. Many Christian leaders are presenting their personal view and personal interpretation of Christianity and they are(were and still are) considered heretics by the Pope. The Pope wanted to establish his position as the only spokesperson for Christianity.

All protestants are heretics in the Pope's eyes. But if you want an example of the one who really gives Christianity a bad name... there you have it. Its the Pope.

The breaking up of Christianity will be an infinite process until every Christian creates his or her own personal religious interpretation of it.

Eventually every person, Christian or non-Christian will have their own unique perspective on God.

And that is the way it should be. People should think for themselves.

I would be curious what qualifies them as a christian 'leader', are they merely leaders who are christian? or fallible humans who lead christians?

the only christian LEADER I aknowledge is Christ,
my pastor is a TEACHER of the bible, I am not in his FLOCK but in Christs as is he, with a purpose of helping me to better understand Christs historical significance

Nationally, the Christian leaders are the ones who have fame and followers. They are the spokespersons for Christianity.

Locally the Christian leaders are the priests, preachers, pastors etc. Yes these 'leaders' sometimes let their egos get in the way of their humility of being a 'teacher.'


You said: "the only christian LEADER I aknowledge is Christ,"

Now since "Christ" (If that represents Jesus) is not here in the flesh, and no longer walks the earth etc... then one has to assume that it is the Christ within you that you acknowledge as your leader. Correct?

OR does Jesus the Christ appear to you in person in the flesh?

OR is it the Bible that you hold and interpret yourself that you are calling your Christ or your "leader?"