What do you think?
Personally I’d say they’d need to know the teachings of Christ, have faith that he existed and was God’s son and be making a real commitment to follow his teachings and be loving and caring to people.
To be Christian they would also have to discard large portions, if not all, of the Old Testament.

There are also many different sects within Christianity, many of which claim that they are the only true Christians. And you have also to remember that the religion has changed vastly over time. A Nazarean, would not recognize the followers of Paul as Christian, who in turn would not understand the views of post Constantine Christians, while a couple of hundred years later the split between Rome and Greece made it into different churches, the Reformation and post Reformation non conformism, all change it again. And who knows what happened in the muddles of the first two centuries before any original written records.

That fact is that you just have to accept that a Christian is anyone who self identifies, with what is basically an almost meaningless term, some don't even believe in a physical Jesus. The only common thread is that each are trying to give their quite different views a little extra (fake) authority, by linking them in name with a tradition.

My guess is that the next incarnation of the name, will be as a rebranding of fascism. That is what you get when you set up the god fallacy, and/or, give god like authority to tradition. Anyone can manipulate god and tradition, (who have no voice or opinion of their own), to support whatever views they like, they are therefore, 'gods gift' (sic) to the criminal exploiter, and always fall into the criminals hands in the end.

I reserve the right to define myself.
Honestly I’m profoundly boring anyway.
I must be into monogamy because I’ve only been with one partner since 1993, and we divorced in 2007.
I’ve known holy rollers that cheated while on their honeymoon.

What makes a foolish person a foolish person? They got fooled.....
Christians got fooled by the belief in a foolhardy way...

Good question , some are self proclaimed , some church goers

You do. It's a fairly simple three-step process.

1. Admit you're a sinner and can only be sanctified by the blood of the lamb
2. Accept the sacrifice of Jesus that he died for your sins over a weekend during the Bronze Age so you could get into Heaven
3. Ask Jesus to come into your heart and make you worthy of Salvation

Congratulations, you're a Xian!

It's more difficult and takes longer to renew your license at the DMV than it does to become a Xian and get saved.

It’s entirely a matter for those who profess to being Christian to define, and not something I get too excited about. Whether they be good or bad Christians, devout or merely paying lip-service, hypocritical or sincere...it’s all really their business, and I’m indifferent to it as long as they don’t try to convert me or tell me I’m wrong not to believe in their god.

And for those who suspect there was no such person as ‘christ,’ there’s no such thing as ‘a christian’

i don't worry about it much. i have never been christian and don't intend to become one. the people i know who are christian are either nominally christian, maybe go to church for the community, but keep it to themselves unless asked, don't proelytize, don't judge others according to religious belief or nonbelief, and are normal people, or they are rabid evangelicals who believe that the beach boys sat down with the devil and signed a contract. i avoid the latter. i don't worry about the religious beliefs of the former. if they all want to call themselves christian it doesn't offend me. how they do or do not behave does or does not offend me. i am a good culturally jewish atheist, myself.

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All you have to do is believe in jesus and pray for forgiveness of your sins. I guess they would need to try and follow the golden rule and not judge people.

Why do you worry about it? What difference does it make to your life? I think you could be a lot happier if you just minded your own business.......

A Christian is one who believes that Jesus is the son of God and that God sent Jesus to Earth to be offered as a human sacrifice so that people did not have to keep making animal sacrifices to keep God happy. You do not have to attend or join a church, but you do have to "accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior" and be baptized to wash away your sins. Pretty much if you get baptized, you are a Christian, though most protestant churches do not think infant baptism is valid because babies cannot say they accept Christ as their savior. Good works and following the teaching of Jesus does not make you a Christian if you do not believe Jesus is God. You can be a bad person and be a Christian because "Jesus paid it all." If you ask God or Jesus for forgiveness before you die, you can go to Heaven after committing any evil, even murder--or if you are Roman Catholic, perhaps you can only go to Purgatory. You decide for yourself if you are a Christian, the same as you decide you are agnostic or atheist, but to be accepted by other Christians, baptism is necessary.

Christianity is a human construct, redefined countless times. So anyone who wants to gets to define it but also gets to have their definition rejected by others. If you find it confusing, it is because, unlike science, it is entirely made up.

What I was taught as a Pentacostal kid was the Judeo God was real, and that Jesus was an aspect of God himself whom he sent to earth to live as a human, so that God could better discover compassion for his hapless humans. (Apparently, God didn't know everything, after all!) To be a Christian you were supposed to believe Jesus was the son of God(whoops, the rest of humanity was suddenly demoted to something vaguely less than "children of God" ), then believe that you will go to heaven if you "accept him as your personal Lord and Savior," and strive genuinely to follow his teachings. That last bit is where the countles self-declared spokespersons of God get to con you by telling you what to believe his teaching were and what the Bible "really means." Ha Ha! That's rich!

Jesus may or may not have been an actual living, breathing man. We likely will never know for sure. What is certain is that those who wrote about him never met him and surely employed plenty of ...ehem... Poetic license in narrating his stories.

In short, Jesus was as real as Robin Hood.

If someone says they are a Christian...

All it takes is a dictionary, look up the word. Anyone who claims to be a follower of GGEEZZUSS.
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That means the clown in the White House, and all the clowns who follow him for the most part. Ha ha, and you can take "him" either way you want to . . .

fwiw "Jesus of Nazareth" is likely a rabbi's way of saying "John Doe, from Nowhere"