Insider Michael Spencer looks at the evangelical culture in western society and writes why he thinks they are a hated group.

You know that feeling you get when a telemarketer interrupts your dinner? I get that feeling sometime when my Pentecostal/Charismatic friends are trying to persuade me into their camp. It’s not that I don’t know they are good, decent, law-abiding people who like me. I just want them to quit treating me as a target or a project and start treating me as a person who is free to be myself and different from them.

Spencer blows right through the usual excuses and explanations and gets down to some nitty gritty.

We seem consumed with establishing that we are somehow “better” than other people, when the opposite is very often true. Many evangelicals are bizarrely shallow and legalistic about minute matters. We are frequently psychologically unsound, psychiatrically tormented, filled with bitterness and anger, torn apart by conflicts and, frankly, unpleasant to have around.

Another left hook.

The fact is that most evangelicals are in deep denial about what depravity and sinfulness really means. The world may have similar denial problems, but I don’t think they can approach us for the spiritual veneer. The crowd at the local tavern may have issues, but they frequently beat Christians by miles in the realistic humanity department. Maybe they should pity us, but the fact is that, as the situation becomes more obvious, they don’t like us.

And another…

Evangelicals have yet to come to grips with their tendency to make God into a commodity. The world is far more savvy about how God is “used” to achieve personal or group ends than most evangelicals admit. Evangelicals may deny that they have made God into a political, financial, or cultural commodity, but the world knows better.

Good article if you want to understand a certain brand of Christian.

Evangelicals are largely annoyed at people who tell them to do the right thing if it doesn’t enhance their resumes, their wallets, their families or their emotions.

I found this RazorMouth article via MetaFilter. There were 89 comments under it.
Think I’ll wander in and see how many are outraged, scandalized, defensive or smarting.

Mark Bryon looks at bearing one anothers burdens (how it really should be, not the Lone Ranger mentality) while connexions (yeah, I linked in a circular fashion here) ponders the inability of young people to handle personal crisis.
Here is the NY Times article.