It isn't a non sequitur! The circularity you're responding to in what I said is implicit in all these "no true scotsman" issues. Maybe I'm not being explicit e

It isn't a non sequitur! The circularity you're responding to in what I said is implicit in all these "no true scotsman" issues. Maybe I'm not being explicit enough: It is not effective to just have principles, and then when it turns out that nobody is following them, keep saying "well if people would just follow the principles, it would work!". What is effective is to develop practices that reinforce the principles. So Christianity didn't just write down "love thy neighbor" as a principle, it developed a practice - going to church - to continuously reinforce that principle, and in practice that has worked out very imperfectly but also much better than most things (like the Atkins diet!). And indeed, I think a big part of the problem with contemporary political Christianity in the US / Christian nationalism, is that it doesn't emphasize this kind of praxis, but rather mere identity and sloganeering. And that doesn't work!