On another journal recently, I read a quote that really struck home for me about how ‘off’ I consider fundamentalist/conservative christians to be…
“Jesus died for being a liberal.”
Which, in a way, if you believe that Jesus of Nazareth did live and die (regardless of miraculous rebirth, and I would point out that I’m skeptical about any of it) then he did in fact die for being a liberal. For associating (and offering status to) slaves, members of non-traditional religions, and women (including whores). For tossing the moneylenders out of church, etc. etc.
But most conservative/fundamentalist christians these days (and evangelicals) seem completely disconnected from the reality of what the Bible said Jesus actually taught. The popular book “The Prayer of Jabez” says that jesus wants you to be wealthy. Jesus actually taught that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.”
They say that Jesus and God want you to treat people who do not believe the same poorly, and that people who don’t follow god’s rules (well, those of YHVH’s rules that they like, that is) are to be punished. Jesus said “Love God above all, and love your fellow man as I have loved you, that is the whole of the law.” as well as “Judge not, lest you yourself be judged.”
Fundies say that you must wear your faith all the time and constantly try to convert others, and make a show of prayer and spirituality. Jesus said that the man who prays publically is praying only for himself.
I think part of what’s going on is this. My theory of religion is that once you get past faith and the sharing of it, and you get into organized religion, it’s about controlling people. The priesthood claims that God says you can’t do /any/ of the good things in life (many foods, sex, often things like dancing, etc) unless you do it in the way allowed by the church (i.e. sex only within the bonds of ‘holy matrimony’, and then only during certain times of the year, in certain ways, etc). Or, you will only get to do these things once you go to heaven, and they control who goes to heaven.
The problem is when you live in a diverse society,the followers of the religion then get to see other people living happy lives while doing the same things that their priesthood says will destroy them. Ooops. Hard to claim that monogamy and heterosexuality is the one true way to happiness when the triad down the street just got a new car and attends PTA meetings and seem content. Hard to claim that dancing and drinking are against God’s law and he’s going to come down hard on rulebreakers when you attend a coworkers wedding and everyone is having a lovely time after the champagne toast with nary a scarlet letter on ‘em.
So what do you do? Well, there’s two tracks for the priesthood to take. I call it good cop/bad cop. The good cop path is telling your congregation that these sinners are still all going to hell. They’re good people, they just don’t understand and it’s a christian’s charitable duty to try and ’save’ them. This is annoying, but it is at least good-hearted and well meaning.
Bad cop is of course. “these people are defying God’s law, and God will strike his followers down for not stopping them.” a la Pat Robertson’s “9/11 was caused by the lesbians and the liberals” crap. If single lives clearly aren’t being destroyed because the person is breaking god’s law, it becomes imperative to teach followers that these people are a threat to /everyone/, not just themselves. Which is what this newest strain of conservatism is all about.
And I have now written a reply longer than your original post. Smack me if you wanna.

Hee, no need to smack you. You expanded on what I wanted to say and said it a lot better. Time an again I hear scripture quoted to me, sometimes even by well meaning folks who are trying to convince the Jew that the only way to be saved is to love Christ. But time and again I quote Talmud right back to them. There is only one law. It’s much simpler than they say it is and yet somehow they all still manage to screw it up.