Toto

Comments from Christians?

God, Darwin and the Church

wordy

Toto, could you add that James Rowe Adams is the writer and maybe thename of the organization? church he represent. That would help readers who seldom follow links. And links have a tendency to change even on sites where the webmaster care about the readers of it. So such referents could get lost. If you say it is James Rowe Adams that is writing it then this thread gets more value in future when that text is no longer there. Then people could use google and find more texts by him.

If you do add it you could delete this suggestion post.

I think his suggestion is kind of too late. The Fundies has already won the cultural war as far as I know. The Liberal Christians doesn't seems to be effective in gaining supporters.

Don't get me wrong. I feel empathy for Liberals and I almost hate Fundies but I care about reality. In reality the fundies are better at getting attention of the masses. That doesn't makes the right but it shows that Liberals need to get their act going. They need to learn marketing.

Toto

James Rowe Adams is the founder of the Center for Progressive Christianity and was the pastor of St. Mark's in Washington. There is an interview with him on humaniststudies here.

He is the author of From Literal to Literary - The Essential Reference Book for Biblical Metaphors (on Amazon (or via: amazon.co.uk)), "So You Think You're Not Religious? A Thinking Person's Guide to the Church (or via: amazon.co.uk)" (Cowley, 1989) and "So You Can't Stand Evangelism? A Thinking Person's Guide to Church Growth (or via: amazon.co.uk)," among other books.

The fundies have the upper hand currently, but things tend to go through cycles.

wordy

We have had a "Liberal" or what to name it here in Sween too. He failed to make any impact on the christian life here. The Fundies reign still.

Such a person needs to be incredibly charismatic to have any influence. IMO.

A Nelson Mandela kind of person maybe. someone everybody respect even if one are on the opposite of him politically. Me Liberal him Communist.

Christians seems only to have Charismatic leaders on the fundy side. How come?

gurugeorge

I agree with this. I couldn't swear to it, but my impression is that the "fundie" movement is simply the other side of the coin from the Boomer generation, and has about the same shelf-life. IOW, scratch an adult fundie and you find someone who simply had a bad acid trip at a Grateful Dead concert back in '68 and overreacted. (Hehe, well it's a silly exaggeration, but you get the point.)

Somebody posted on another thread recently news that literalist interpretations are having difficulty sticking with younger generations of Christian families - the kids screw around and smoke weed just as much as their profane contemporaries, that kind of thing, and, more generally, liberal interpretations are having to creep back back into the pulpit to accommodate this shift.

In a generally liberal climate, where free exchange of opinions is possible, fundamentalism can't last long. It's a "liberal" trope that the Right is fond of scaremongering, and it has some truth; but "liberals" aren't averse to their own forms of scaremongering too - consider the dire prophecies in 2003, of everyone from hippies to one-legged blind lesbians being herded into concentrations camps if Bush got into power again. A wave of fundamentalist fascism would sweep the nation!!!11!!OMGWTFBBQ!!!11!!

Fortunately, the political institutions of liberal capitalist democracies, developed through several hundred years of blood, sweat and toil, are more robust than that.

On a more general note, I totally love Christian symbolism - who doesn't? The story is one of the most powerful ever told, it has deep value for anyone interested in religion, for almost anyone, even secularists, who have reverence or awe for this Whateveritis in which we find ourselves. It's totally possible to see in the Christian canon some valuable moral lessons, and even deep mystical truths (following an interpretation somewhat like Freke & Gandy's, for example) that are akin to those from some of the most profound, non-dual Eastern schools of mystical praxis.

The concept of the cross and the resurrection - of us being little chips of God's consciousness nailed to the cross of matter, and the possibility of "coming to" as God - is also incredibly profound and moving. What's not to like?

In fact, when you look at things this way, I feel, the literalist interpretation really is quite shallow and childish, and the only reasons it held the West captive for so long were 1) force of arms; 2) a bit of clever rhetorical persuasion from some excellent writers in the early days; and 3) because of the sheer bizareness of the idea that God was made flesh once, and once only, and "died for our sins" some time roundabout 30 CE. The idea is so fascinating, so insane, like some poisonous, rainbow-glittering tropical flower, it's no wonder it drove people - even artists - crazy for 2,000 years.

wordy

To find out why something works one need to test different approaches. yours is one such suggestion of why it worked.

The number of members a view has is very floating. The Pentecostal was once the biggest around here locally and not it is variation of "Words of Faith" from the Tulsa Bible Center??? not sure what they name themselves. The use Kenneth Hagin views. They teach most of the Pastors here.

The Pentecostals have problem surviving financely. Sometimes it looks like Christian believers are like fans of Rock and such pop music. They go from favoring one charismatic leader to another. The ideology seems less important than the hip factor. They go to the most popular person it seems.

But if we look more deeper or more seriously my personal experience as an atheist trying to really get to know the Christians and figure out what really makes them stay within.

I felt it myself. The attraction, the emotional feel good. I don't think it has much to do with ideology or theology. My three years of amateur field participation almost daily it is the hope of that good feeling of being cared for and loved and to belong and a life to be lived within a community.

Even now 20 years later my body still long for that feeling that I felt even as an atheist. The believers felt it much stronger. My feeling was a pale "mirror neuron" empathy mimic of their lived feeling of being in love.

gurugeorge

I'd agree that that is an important glue now; but in the early days of Christianity, being an integral, valued member of a community was the norm, so it sort of cancels out. Also, there are other ways of getting that feelgood factor, even in secular culture (anything from fans supporting sports teams, to sundry belief-groups; and for young people today things like going clubbing on drugs, going to festivals, etc., etc., etc.). Many other religions have "imaginary friends" who unconditionally love one, so that cancels out too.

Being an independent individual is no doubt painful at times, and it's reasonable to seek some balance from that in some kind of feeling of immersion in a greater whole that gives you a break from selfhood - it just depends on what belief requirements come with your chosen immersion package.

Also, why settle for anything less than feeling One with the Universe that you essentially are anyway?

Roger Pearse

It seems heavy with self-flattering adjectives; never a good sign.

Um. I want to worship. So I go to a Catholic church, and I ignore all that is being said? Why go, then?

Where is this obligation laid down, by whom, and for whom? Do we want to hear a speech which 'makes room' for the possibility that it is all nonsense? If we introduce the word 'equivocation', does it not describe this? Do we admire people who equivocate? If it's rubbish, let's go home and party! Surely?

Indeed; and also to other forms of literature, such as this article.

Note the misuse of the adjective 'thinking' to indicate approval of a position rather than convey meaning.

As far as I am aware all of us are going to die. The few hours that we possess on this planet need to be used wisely, for they are very few. Can anyone explain why we would spend half an hour in a sermon which we had predetermined was to be ignored? Half an hour that we would never see again?

There are books to be read that I shall never read; girls to chat up whom I will never get to; sights to be seen while I am stuck in the airport waiting for my connection. And this chap suggests that I give up yet more of the joys of living to sit in a sermon which I know to be bollocks? Weird.

The word that springs to mind for all this is 'rationalisation', tho. Why turn our minds off like this? Let's keep thinking, work out the facts, do what is rational, do what is right, do what is fun, and get on with it. Don't sit around flattering ourselves how much we are a 'thinking person' --such spiritual pride invariably belongs to people whose lives are determined by irrational convenience, who live comfortable lives and whose mouths are full of, well, equivocations.

Whatever we believe, let us be sincere, hey?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

lpetrich

This partially explain why creationism continues to persist. Many non-fundie churches' pastors do not make a serious effort to try to explain to their flocks that the first chapters of Genesis are allegorical rather than literal, thus their parishioners end up believing those chapters to be literally true.

William Edelen noted this tendency in The Sin of Silence:
He then describes how many pastors are not willing to discuss with their flocks what they learn in seminary, that much of the "history" in the Bible is not only mythological, but often resembles other mythologies. Instead, they present a fundamentalist-like picture of the Bible as a very reliable documentary:
That aside, the compartmentalization that that article described seems like the "double truth" of some medieval philosophers, in which the truths of reason coexist with the truths of religion, despite their differences. Thus, the compartmentalizers may believe in a double truth of nonsentient natural processes and divine intervention.

However, double truth is a rather awkward position; the medieval Church ended up preferring a single truth. And it must be conceded that both atheism and fundamentalism have the attraction of being single-truth positions. So why do some liberal Xians insist on saddling themselves with an awkward double-truth position?

Gamera

The fundies are in retreat. Fundamentalism is always a reaction to insecurity and fear by those who cannot embrace change or are bedeviled by ignorance and knownothingism.

There wouldn't even be a fundamentalists movement were it not for the complete victory of liberal theology, which buried the nonsensical views of the bible that existed prior to the 19th century.

So, while the fundies make a lot of noise and get a lot of press, in fact their view of Christianity is passing away and hopefully will soon be gone forever. In the meantime they find an audience among the insecure and ignorant (and I admit that's a big audience), but the future of Christianity clearly is in the liberal, postmodern camp. Fundamentalism is a laughingstock among thinking people, and the majority of Christians.