Reply #39: For me it depends on who's wielding it and why.

[saltpoint]

It's in the caption beneath the picture of Francis of Assissi but also in the news report on Pat Robertson. When it's used across that vast a distance, it is so generic as to be meaningless. From what I can tell, the Francis model is more humane in every single component of the definition.

In day-to-day speech I may call Bill Moyers a Christian minister, which he is, among many other things, in a tone and context suggesting that he's earned the certificate with hard work and genuine intellectual inquiry.

Also in day-to-day speech I may refer to Jim Dobson as "a fundie nutbag," bypassing "Christian" altogether to get at the essence of his twisted agenda.