••

That would range into the realms of self-promotion, which is discouraged here. (With one obvious exception, of course!)

~~~~~~~

Everyone is that true are we a community?

••

Years ago, Paul Kupperberg came up with what I consider one of the best descriptions. When he was working as an editor at DC, and living in Stamford, CT, Paul would take the train into and out of New York every weekday. Same train, same hour, so, naturally, same people. And social groups began to form among those people. "Chat rooms" and "Forums", if you will, but in the real world. But a very specific slice of the real world. Sometimes the associations that developed on the train extended beyond the train, but mostly not.

That sounds very much like what happens online.

••

It does, however, perfectly illustrate how far too many Christians view themselves. Consider the whining we have to put up with every year over the "War on Christmas". The suggestion that "Seasons Greetings" might be a more appropriate salutation, for instance, since the time of year is shared by other religious festivals, is cause for Christian outrage -- staggeringly ironic, when we consider that the Christians appropriated that time of year from some of those other religions! Or the howls from Christian quarters when anyone uses "Xmas" -- "They're taking the Christ out of Christmas!!" -- coming from people so ill-informed about their own "faith" they don't even know "Xmas" is a Christian abbreviation!

Being ill-informed is what most Christians do best, it seems. From the Pope on down, thru all the cults and subcults, there is so much nonsense ballyhooed as "Christian Tradition" while actually having little or nothing to do with what's actually in the Bible. (Again, Christmas is a good example. No specific date is given for the birth of the Christian "messiah", but surrounding events make it clear it was NOT the end of December.)

Even pointing any of this out to a Christian, tho, is likely to unleash cries of "persecution". Poor babies. It must be tough to belong to the dominant faith on the planet. For one thing, it makes it so HARD to claim to be a persecuted minority!

Hey, Christians! You want to talk persecution? Go have a chat with your Jewish friends --- if you have any!

++

They DO still teach in school what quotation marks mean, right?

******

They identify the beginning and end of a word for word citing of another party. I'd be confused by your confusion, if I didn't recognize the question as just routine insta-snark.

••

I'm not "confused" -- to use quotation marks as you define them -- but you clearly are. I wasn't using them to reflect a quotation, since I wasn't quoting anyone with my use of the phrase "beleaguered minority".

Quotation marks are also used to indicate when words or phrases are being used that do not really mean or represent what some who might use them think they do. Such as those who would try to present Christians as belonging to a "beleaguered minority" when clearly they are anything but. This secondary usage is the whole point of "air quotes" (see what I did, there?).

To borrow a line from THE PRINCESS BRIDE, quotation marks are sometimes a way of saying "I do not think that means what you think it means".

I'm a Christian and I take no more offense at comments made about it than I do at someone making comments about not liking current comics. Everyone is allowed to think what they want to think and the last time I checked this forum doesn't have the rule that you have to think like everyone else.