When I have said hateful regarding Christians it is usually a comment about the specific Christians who don’t want to give gay people equal rights, who do violent acts towards others, like burning down a mosque, or declaring America should only be a white Christian land. Christians associated with extreme behavior like setting fire to or directly threatening someone or a mosque is incredibly rare, a very small number, and I never think of them as representing Christians at large, but rather just extremist hateful crazy people. But, in the US an incredible, hard to ignore, amount of Christians are horrible towards gay people just by how they vote, let alone what they say. I completely agree there are some hateful people in almost all religions. There are religious Jews who also speak of marriage only being for a man or woman, but the number is so very small it is typically ignored, and does not influence any public policy. The vast majority of Jews support gay rights.
When I think of Christians who actively believe I need to be converted, or tell me I won’t make it into heaven I generally just think it is offensive or just part of their Christian tenets, I don’t think of it as hateful.
@Nullo So you get to decide which is Christian enough? How about who is Jewish enough? All the athiest Jews here on fluther, are they really not Jewish? Even the Theist Jews who don’t follow kosher laws, are they not Jewish? The Muslims who took down the towers, can we declare them not Muslim? Because most Muslims are peaceful? What is ironic is the very Christians you would probably say are the true Christians are the very ones many of us would say are hateful.
@filmfann @Judi I really like your answers, because as Christians you are willing to acknowledge that it is kind of difficult to ignore there are a number of Christian people who behave in a hateful way, while at the same time you both seem to understand that people who use hateful are only talking about those who are hateful, which neither of you are. I do agree with @augustlan that we, especially we who are not Christian, should be careful to say we are only speaking about some Christians when we generalize.