Thank you, Rusty. On the whole, I agree with you on this, except when you overgeneralize, lumping ALL religions into the category of “my way or no way” religious totalitarianism. (See my other comment here)
But I don’t think denouncing Christianity will do anything other than make them more defensive, fanatical, and hateful. They will then redouble their efforts to silence us or simply “disappear” us. Instead we can play a kind of intellectual aikido. For example, when a Christian ideologue asks me whether I am a Christian, I can ask “What do you mean?” Rather than saying yes or no. That question opens up a path of dialogue, rather than playing into their ideological programming. If the conversation continues, I tell them that I consider myself a disciple of Jesus who strives to follow his teachings, but I “take the Fifth Amendment” on whether I “believe” Paul’s claptrap about the doctrine of the atonement, justification by faith, and all that. In this way we can converse with compromising my own free thinking, Gaian Buddhist Unitarian values…