Godless Dave

Actually Phelps and Falwell don't follow all the rules of the Bible - they eat pork and seafood and shave their beards for example. My take is that the more tolerant Christians think Jesus's "11th Commandment" to do unto others as you would have others do unto you supersedes the laws of the Old Testament. Intolerant, hateful Christians only think the laws they don't like are superseded, and the ones they do like (homosexuality is an abomination, women should be submissive, etc.) are still valid.

All Christians take the cafeteria approach, but they differ on what they choose off the menu.

HelenM

Maybe you were just looking in the wrong religion

love
Helen

ohwilleke

I would disagree. This definition of Christian is pretty much restricted to fundamentalist American Protestants. The world norm is that Christianity is something that comes from baptism as an infant into the Christian community, and remains at least until it is renounced. There is also certainly a "they will know we are Christians by our love", strain out there (quoting from the Chicago Folk Service), competing with the "believe or go to hell" crowd. Many, indeed, probably most Christians outside the Southern United States, believe that while compassion, charity, non-violence and non-materialism may not be elements of salvation, that they are central to Christian life; and that proof of a personal connection to God is most visible in how a person acts in response to that relationship (i.e. a person who really had a personal relationship with God couldn't act like a tele-evangalist). Also, many Christians would argue sincerely, that the coming of Jesus transformed the meaning of the Old Testament, and provided an intepretive guide to it that renders approaches like God Hates Fags, heretical in light of this new revelation. The wrathful read of Christianity's resurgence is relatively new.

Now, St. Paul, a leading Gospel writer, certainly has a great similarity to many TV preachers, but there is more to the Christian tradition than St. Paul and the hateful parts of the OT.

Bree

If Christianity is then only about Christ, then why do they even bring St. Paul into it at all? Why does the Old Testament exist for Christians?

ohwilleke

Christians are not monolithic. Many, I would argue a majority, place a heavy emphasis on Christ, and would argue that the Old Testament is a history of God's covenant with the Jews, while the New Testament reflects a new covenant open to all humanity and not merely the Jews. They would cite instances in the NT in which Jesus ignores Jewish law even after it is brought to his attention as evidence that this new covenant supercedes rather than simply supplementing the old deal between God and the Jews, at least as to Christians. These same Christians would also be willing to admit that the Bible is not inerrant and reflects the prejudices of ordinary men trying to reconcile the needs to a divine reality.

To be crude, the sending of Jesus to Earth, in the minds of many Christians, represented a policy change from God after the first few batches didn't work out as planned.

To these Christians, St. Paul is a man who is telling the story of the early Christian community from a particular perspective. His writings are valuable, as they are the earliest available Christian writings, but are also to be compared with other early Christian writers so that his personal biases can be filtered from the Christ phenomena that his immediate predeceassors experienced (St. Paul being in the first generation of Christians to have not been part of the pre-Easter ministery of Jesus as set forth in the New Testament). These Christians also tend to look to the modern Jewish tradition to provide context for the world early Christianity was dealing with in addition to the Bible, an intepretive tradition that adds some humanity to what are on their face harsh pronouncements from God and his servants.

Certainly there are Christians who take other positions about the role of the Old Testament and of St. Paul. But, this vocal part of the Christian community that wants to return to the dark ages and who sees Christianity as they do, does not fairly represent the views of the majority of the church going people in the U.S. or even the world. The hellfire and brimstone version of Christianity did not really take root until two or three hundred years after the reformation in any significant numbers.

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Bree

I find this a very interested subject. In my opinion, the majority of church goers are fence-sitters. They haven't done much reading of the Bible (except when pressed by their pastors to do so), they really don't know much about Biblical history, and they go to church every Sunday to be spoon-fed what the pastor says and come out feeling good.

However, if you were to sit them down and actually ask them about certain things (homosexuality, abortion, freedom for women, sex before marriage et cetera) you'd get a bunch of barn-busting, rednecked Falwell-like answers. Of course, these people don't often tout their opinions for the pure and simple fact that they don't have to even think about them on an everyday basis. It gives the illusion that people really don't feel "that way" at all, when, if pressed, you'd probably be surprised.

ohwilleke

Certainly some do, but many, such as ELCA Lutherans in Wisconsin whom I've had that kind of discussion with, don't. Asked about homosexuality, your as likely to get references to the Good Samaritan, as you are to Lot and Sodom. Asked about abortion, you would probably get a mixed response . . . God so loved the little children, and ye who is without guilt throw the first stone. On freedom for women you might be told that got created both man and woman in his image, and that Christ has removed the blot of original sin, along with mention of the roles played by the two Mary's in the Bible. On pre-marital sex, they might note that Jesus conserted with prostitutes, that Mary mother of Jesus was a teen mother whom we are appalled was denied a room at the inn in Bethlehem, that the parable of the prodigal son is guidance for how we should treat those who don't follow the straight and narrow path, and the real message of the first miracle of Jesus being at the wedding at Canna was to show that a couple's love is a good and proper thing which should be celebrated if it is real.

Does the laity necessarily jump to those statements, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I don't think that there is a rush to condemn others. I certainly have certainly attended many churches where that isn't the case.

Indeed, I'll go further than that. I think it is fair to say that while modern humanist values are not exclusively or predominantly biblical in origin, that the development of the more liberal, Christ oriented approach to the moral commandments of Christianity went hand in hand with the development of modern humanistic values. The largest strain of secular humanistic thought grew out of a a value system developed in the context of an initially Christian, albiet skeptical, theologically liberal, Unitarian Christian church, which in turn grew out of New England Congregationalism, which is in turn the result of a century of new world moderation from the Puritan movement.

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Mageth

I thought this thread was about a new Xian witnessing strategy. Send in the Bad Xian, have him hammer the sinner about how God's going to judge them, how they're corrupt and going to hell to suffer for eternity, and nothing they can do can save them.

Just when the sinner is scared out of their wits, send in the Good Xian to offer them coffee and a cigarette, sing Jeebus Loves You, quote John 3:16 and such.

Bree

The ELCA is a bad example, in my opinion. Asking them their opinions would be like asking a UU person their opinion - you're more likely to get a more liberal response. I concur with your statement from another thread:

Ask the mainline Christians and you're more likely to get a much different (and much more on-par) answer. The typical Baptist, Presby, Methy, Catholic Christian answer is going to differ from the more liberal flavours of Christianity.

ohwilleke

As I see it the religious landscape of the U.S. is broken into several discrete segments: (1) Left of Catholic, (2) Orthodox Christians, (3) Catholic (itself split into internal factions), (4) Right of Catholic Christians, (5) African American Christian Denominations, and (6) Non-Christians (Jews, Muslims, UnitarianUniveralist, Wiccans, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, non-religious, etc.).

The Catholic Church in the U.S. claims about 62 million members, although only about 50 million Americans identify as Catholic.

Orthodox Christians (Orthodox Church in American and various Greek, Russian, etc. immigrant Orthodox denominations) report 3.3 million members, but surveys show only about 145,000 members.

African American denominations, with something on the order of 10 million members, are predominantly Baptist (e.g. National Baptist Convention), Methodist (e.g. African Methodist Episcopal Church) and Pentecostal (e.g. several Churches of God). Almost all have a very different take on Christian theology than any of the predominantly white denominations. Often these churches take socially liberal (e.g. on abortion) and theologically conservative (e.g. on salvation through personal acceptance of Jesus Christ in your life as an adult) stances within evangelical protestantism, and thus aren't easy classified on the liberal or conservative divide.

Predominantly white left of Catholic and right of Catholic denominations are about equal in membership by church membership reporting, but left of Catholic denominations generally have more people who identify as members than the churches report, while right of Catholic denominations routinely overreport their memberships. (American Religious ID Survey compared to National Council of Churches figures).

In my mind left of Catholic consists mostly of:

• ELCA Lutherans
• United Church of Christ
• Reformed Churches (generally historically ethnic dutch)
• Presbyterian (USA)
• American Baptist Convention Baptists
• Episcopalians
• United Methodist Church
• Mennonite/Quaker
• Disciples of Christ

On a day to day basis only modest differences in worship practice (as opposed to beliefs) distinguish any of the above from each other except for Mennonite/Quaker which is far to the left of the others on most issues. An ELCA Lutheran, Presbyterian (USA), Episcopalian, United Church of Christ and United Methodist are all very similar in doctrine.

In my mind right of Catholic consists mostly of:

• Baptist (other than ABC and African American denominations -- mostly those with national in the name)
• Predominantly white Pentecostal denominations (such as Assemblies of God)
• Wesleyians
• Presbyterian Church in America
• Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans
• Churches of Christ
• Jehovah's Witnesses
• Mormons
• 7th Day Adventists
• Church of the Nazarene
• Christian Missionary Churches (Holiness).

Naturally, there will be liberals in conservative denominations (Jimmy Carter was until just recently a Southern Baptist), and conservatives in liberal denominations (such as GWB in the generally liberal United Methodist Church), but I think it is fair to say that the denominatiional numbers are a good measure of how many people are on each side.

I base my "majority" guess, on the number of left of Catholic Christians in the country, plus the number of Orthodox Christians, and my guess of how beliefs within those who are within a broad definition of Catholic feel. These people outnumber Right of Catholic Christians. Also, on the sorts of social issues we've been discussing, many African Americans, who are often lumped in with the Assembly of God or Southern Baptists, because their denominations are "Pentecostal" or "Baptist" often read the Bible very differently than their putative co-denominationalists.

I would consider most of the left of Catholic churches to be the "mainline" or "liberal" Christians (basically the same thing), while those who are right of Catholic to be "fundamentalists" or "evangelicals" or "conservative Christians", who make the big headlines.

[Edited to clean up sloppy writing about numbers and give more examples and get prettier lists]

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>