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True, but the problem here is that “being a good person” means very different things to serious Christians and to believers in modern morality.
Imagine that I am able to spend all of my time operating a Catholic soup kitchen. In my time running it, I have sourced donations, worked hundreds of long days, been a kind and welcoming source of support to many, and fed at least thousands of hungry people. Also, I adhere to Catholic doctrine that gay people are suffering from disordered desires and should not indulge those desires, and that gay marriages are definitely an invalid, sinful concept.
I would be willing to bet that locally, I would have some defenders, but what do you think the theme of any media coverage is going to be once they discover I’m actually attempting to be serious about the whole faith? Do you think anyone who doesn’t actually know me would walk away believing I am a “good person?” From the modern liberal point of view, can any of my good deeds wipe away my sin and create an opening for conversion?
I would argue no. Which is why, when presented with the opportunity of Constantine, Christianity didn’t say “No, no, the best way for us is to focus on do-gooding for conversions, we don’t need the backing of the state.” They understood in some fashion that if the state isn’t backing your morals and values, it will back someone else’s. And that having the state backing your morals and values is the optimal way to make them the sea the fish swim in, thus making it much easier to both “do good” and maintain and promote dogma.
This makes me seriously question your understanding of the faith and the situation in which it finds itself. The sole purpose of Christianity is to win souls away from death and to immortal life in Christ. That’s what all the do-gooding and theology and everything else is actually for. God, in his mercy, is willing to forgive everything we do against him, but people do have to understand that they need to repent and seek God’s mercy. Therefore, they need to know what is actually sinful and what isn’t. I can be a great giver of charity and beloved by all, but if I’m telling my hypothetical flock that God says it’s okay to shoplift, I’m going to have a lot of people unwittingly mired in sinful living when they die, at which point they’re in God’s hands.
On a related note, I don’t know if you’ve been in a United Methodist Church recently, but I have cause to be in a local one fairly often and they have more LGBT and Pride iconography than they do Christian at this point. And I live in a very not liberal part of the Western United States. This church has absolutely lost sight of the priority to save souls, by overemphasizing loving their neighbor. The thing you don’t buy is a real thing that is happening right now in broad swathes of the faith, at least in the West.
As an atheist I mostly stay out of these discussions, but I can corroborate this. We have a local Christian homeless shelter. I don't know about media coverage, but the randos on the city subreddit seem more interested in being mad that they proselytize than giving them any credit for running a homeless shelter in the first place.
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