They are just being a royal pain, it's socially-engineered OVER-sensitivity-training by their teachers and leaders and pastors heaped onto the flock. The people you talked to are making too much of the word "religious" or "religion." They should be more gracious and simply say, "Yes, of course, I know what you mean, I am a Christian," or a Muslim, or whatever, instead of making a major production out of it.
Because in the "old days," "religion" simply meant you believed in God, Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, or whatever. It's the "trend" of the last 30 years or so to start bashing the word "religion" as if the word itself was demonized, thanks to the likes of Paul Crouch, Sr. (TBN) who is famous for saying, "I hate religion!" and he taught his 2 sons to act the same way. It's petty and shallow, since any reasonable person knows what you would mean if you used that word, ie, that you are not being disrespectful or making distinctions, etc.
It's all ridiculous, imo, the attitude that take over it.
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With all that said, lol, I no longer am part of a "heirarchal religion" (been through 2 of those already, finally learning, lol, ie, from the top down, human leaders down to the peons, with rules and regs that supposedly must be followed in order to "secure one's salvation") but simply am a Christian, period, with Jesus as my direct leader.But if you asked me about "religion," I would know what you meant, of course. No biggie.
OK, off my rant now.
In-fighting is one of the reasons I started my own Christian Denomination - it's quite non-productive and ridiculous -
it divides when Christians should be One
