When you're eating at a restaurant, which do you notice? The small children who are quiet and well-behaved, or the ones who are crying loudly, screaming, and running around underfoot?
The problem is that it's not the people who try to live by the ideals of Christianity that everyone else notices, it's the people who try to make everyone else live by what they believe are the ideals of Christianity. It's the same with any group -- it's the nutcases and extremists who are constantly in people's faces that get taken as exemplar of the group as a whole.
Pretty much. I only get annoyed by the stereotype because it's used to make Christianity "socially unacceptable" while other, more politically correct causes wanting to impose their will through legislation
*cough*contraceptionmandate*cough* are lauded as caring for others.
But this wavers way too far into politics, now, for which I apologize.
The only scary person there was the fundamentalist Christian who basically went off on one (well several actually) about how D&D involved a chaotic evil which would take people over and make you murder your parents (slight exaggeration, but only slight). It had clear associations with Satanism (which amused several of us as we knew a couple of the Viking re-enacters were card carrying Satanists) and ...
He refused all invitations to actually sit in on a D&D session and see what it really involved.
This is not a direct response to your post, Minotaur, but your post reminded me of it: If anybody ever wants a laugh riot over a real out-there (and by no means mainstream, but probably trying to cash in on the stereotype) "christian" view of D&D, look up the Chick Tract "Dark Dungeons."
(Chick Tracts are so-bad-they're-hillarious comic strips by one Jack Chick that supposedly reveal how evil everything that is not his very narrow, extremely stereotyped brand of christianity is.)