meritocrat

Are there any liberal Christians here?

How did Liberal Christianity first arise? What are the primary tenets of Liberal Christianity?

I don't mean to offend or provoke anyone, but to me it seems that Liberal Christians 'pick and choose' what parts of the Bible are relevant. For example, some Liberal Christians feel that entry into heaven is depedent on how on lives their life, irrespective of whether they are Christian or not. Doesn't it say in the Bible that those who believe in Christ would be saved?

Rational BAC

Well you got here the prime (and probably only) cherry picker Christian on this forum.

HI---

Don't know anything about the history of liberal cherry picking Christianity. All I know is what I believe.

Pretty easy to define a cherry picker Christian for me. I do not believe the Bible is inerrant. I believe it is mostly hogwash-------at least the Old Testament is (although definitely beautiful literature in some places).

I believe that the Bible, even in the New Testament is NOT the word of God, but the word about God.

It is the best man could do to try and explain supernatural events that happened 2000 years ago. Didn't get it right, but what the hell------no man is perfect.

I waver back and forth on this part about some parts of the Bible-since some of it does seem to be divinely inspired, -but-------most of the time I believe God (in His infinite wisdom) decided to stay the hell out of interfering with or divinely inspiring the composition of any part of the Bible.

The Bible for me is a muliple choice test. At the pearly gates God will say to the Fundies "I can't believe you bought into ALL that crap." "It was a test--you were supposed to use your intelligence and your personal sense of morality to pick and choose what was correct and what was not -------and the Holy Ghost was right there to help you" "What the hell were you thinking believing ALL of it======you missed the whole point"

Any more questions? I admit I do not speak for all liberal cherry picking Christians. I just speak for myself in this.

Overgrowngoblin

So you were able to limit this to Liberal Christian? That’s interesting.

meritocrat

No I'm not limiting it.

I just want someone to explain the basis of Liberal Christianity.

Calzaer

My theory is that the Liberal Christians are the people who were raised so that the idea of NOT being Christian never crossed their radar, but also couldn't escape the atrocities and injustices inherent in the belief system. Thus, they ignore the more vicious implications of the theology in an attempt to reconcile their cultural indoctrination with their concience.

SoBeBuckeye

Calzaer, :notworthy

Rational BAC

Pretty close to the truth there.

However, I was an agnostic for over 10 years. I think the real reason for many is that those who were raised as Christian and "lost their faith" for lack of any proof but then regained their faith due to personal lifelong experiences--------and then had to make some kind of sense of the whole damned thing.

You find that you believe in an afterlife and it seems definitely Christian in nature. And you find that you have a personal relationship with Jesus.

And you have this silly and very obviously inaccurate thing (especially in the OT) called the Bible to fool with. And the NT can also be very puzzling.

So you do the best you can with what you got.

And that is about it.

Now as an extremely liberal Christian who only knows for sure that there is an afterlife and that there is a Supreme Being of some kind or other--------I admit I could be wrong about the Christian part. (But that is my story so far and I am sticking to it.)

If at the pearly gates I happen to run into Allah----I will just say "hey--I kind of thought it might be you." If I happen to run into Buddha with his big beer belly-----I will offer him a beer (maybe something better than Red Dog though) and hope he gives me a pass.

It is always good to be pragmatic.

Incoherent fool

I grew up a Lutheran, and I remember the emphasis of the church I went to was to help others and basically improve the world we live in. The pastor was always talking about donating stuff to charities and helping the poor (and no, our church in no way tried to win converts).

Sure, we did pick and choose what we wanted to believe. There were bibles in every pew but we never used them. I was actually pretty ignorant of what was in the bible, but I did flip through the pages every once in a while when the sermon was getting boring. I remember showing my sister the verse (I think it was in Levitecus) where it says that anyone who has sex with an animal should be killed. Anyway, like Rational BAC said, no one in our church really believed that the bible was the WORD OF GAWD.

Entropic_Gnosis

I know quite a few Liberal Christians myself, most of them subscribe to a belief system like that of Rational BAC here. A good friend of mine explained it as something akin to "That a god exists i have no doubt, and the religions of the world are the futile attempt to understand the nature of this deity. To me it makes more sense that there would be a signle god as opposed to many.(me: occham's razor?) I accept the mantle of christanity because it is what i know. I reject the more brutal doctrines and ideas off hand because they dont seem to be reconcialable with a benevolent god, or even an indifferent god, and i reject the idea of an evil god because, well its just not right dammit!" Or words to that effect. I often term people like my friend "Christian Deists"

Groovy Cosmic Monkey

I'm a somewhat liberal Christian - perhaps moderate would be a more appropriate label.

Not sure. My guess would be in reaction to fundamentalist Christianity. But then again, I've heard reports that fundamentalist Christianity is only a fairly recent development in the context of the two millennia Christianity has been around for.

I think this is pretty difficult to answer since there are so many facets of liberal Christianity, just like Christianity in general. The slope from Liberal Christianity to Fundamentalist Christianity is a sliding one, and there are varying points you can find yourself along the line, probably much like the political spectrum from left to right.

I'd certainly make this criticism as well. The problem is, I think it's fairly impossible not to pick and choose parts of the Bible you think are relevant. Not even the most entrenched fundamentalists will obey the purity code in Leviticus.

The criticism I'd make of liberal Christians is that they don't seem to really have any sort of method for picking which parts of the Bible are relevant except for their own personal theologising and philosophising.