It always strikes me as a little odd when someone self identifies as “Christian”.
Really? Not Baptist or Lutheran or Episcopalian or Pentacostal or whatever?
I could understand an individual identifying only as “Christian” if that individual personally found truth in the teachings of Christ but came to reject flawed man-made organized religion. But when I hear someone identify as “Christian” it’s someone I either know or strongly suspect is a churchgoer.
I’m in GQ because I really am looking to fight my own ignorance on a GQ type question.
The question is not: why do people not identify based on their specific denomination?
The question is: Are there organized Christian churches that only identify as Christian- with no name for their specific interpretation of Christianity as in contrast to different denominations?
Non-denominational (duh) Christian ones exist. My family sought those out when they went to a town that didn’t have their particular sect. It was close enough.
I think that the differences between Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and even Mormon are less than between those as a group and Catholic or :eek: other churches.
Is there any way to field any kind of guess as to what a “Chirstian” church would be like? In the way that if a Lutheran moves to a new town they can generally have an idea what they’ll get from the local Lutheran church, or a Presbyterian who moves to a new town, etc.?
There may be less difference than you expect. I lived in a town where there were two Presbyterian churches, and I certainly couldn’t tell the difference, but one was a splinter group from the other, in my lifetime. So some people felt there was enough difference to start a new church from scratch and still be called Presbyterian.
In contrast, I was put in a Lutheran day school for 2 years (4-6 grade) even though my family was Presbyterian (the fundamental arm). Yet my family didn’t think the difference was enough to prevent that.
OTOH, some religions are more splintered than you might imagine. E.g., not all Lutherans in the US are the same. There is the Missouri Synod (one group, not limited to the state of Missouri) and there are others, not affiliated.
I have some other threads about my experience, but my wife started attending a non-denominational Christian church. That’s one of their self-descriptors. They also use Evangelical and, to a lesser extent, born-again.
Services range from 60-90 minutes. There are no readings, sacrements, or ceremonies. Maybe 20-30 minutes of “worship songs,” perhaps a 10 minute “testimony” from one of the members, and then a 20-40 minute sermon by the pastor based on biblical verses and usually following a “series.” A series is a 2-3 month lecture topic, essentially, put together by an outside company, that comes with PowerPoint slides, printed material, lecture topics, etc.
Oh-- to answer your question, no, there’s no way for an outsider to have any clue what this particular church believes in or what the service will be like. The church avoids taking an official stance on anything. They push a “personal relationship with Jesus.” So if you want to know something specific, like “Does this church think divorce is a sin and people who do it will go to hell,” they’ll give you some rough biblical guidance and tell you to go ask Jesus through prayer. As a former Catholic, I find it all very non-committal.
Non-denominational Protestant churches have to be a composite of many sects, and tend to not take a hard position on any. My experience is easily contradicted, but I think what defines them, broadly, is:[ul][]The belief in God as a supreme being, and the only true one, probably a Trinity: Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Ghost[]The Bible as a guideline, although maybe not to be taken literally[]The Pope has no reverance[]Mary, Mother of God, is given no special relevanceAccept the good parts of the Bible, ignore or downplay the bad ones[/ul]
How common are PowerPoint slides in churches? A friend of mine takes pictures every week and posts them on Facebook. I’ve only been to a handful of Christian churches, and then only for weddings and funerals. But I’ve never seen that before.
And back in my pre-atheist days as a young Jew, I never saw slides in temple.
-D/a
I attend a non-denominational Christian church, and based on my other church-going experiences, the services are a lot more “dynamic”, less traditional. The music is a more “rock star”. They use a lot of video, drama/theatre and invest more in the community (lots of outreach/charity).
I like it. I grew up going to a Southern Baptist church and also attended United, Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic and most of the others in my area. YMMV
ETA: you can download podcasts of the weekly message on the church’s website, and the lyrics are put up on the screens up front.
This is the only place I’ve seen them, but I’m a former Catholic turned atheist, so my experiences are limited. They don’t have pews, so they don’t have hymnals or bibles for the members. I think PowerPoint is a cheaper alternative for them. They put the lyrics up behind the, erm, stage, as well as bible verses and maybe some key points. They also do a podcast of every service, and I think you can download the slides as well.
A lot of these churches let dogma take a back seat to the charisma of the individual ministers. If the older minister who leads the main service and the youthful one who conducts the contemporary service on Saturday evenings happen to disagree about abortion or gay marriage, they try not to mention it in public.
And if one minister leaves and a new one comes in who happens to have a different view, some of the congregation may be surprised by the sudden change in direction of the sermons.
The church my wife grew up in now uses PowerPoint to illustrate the minister’s sermons and also for things like showing the list of the day’s hymns. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to insert into a traditional Lutheran service, rather like an 80-year old guy with a piercing.
I’ve been to several “non-denominational” churches in the last 20 years and have come to the conclusion that they could be split up into denominations if we just had names for them.
Many seem to have just as many, if not more, rules as other churches. The majority, IME, seem to have an evangelical bent to them. Some I call “feel good” churches because their primary goal seems to make you feel good about yourself. Others seem to go out of their way to make sure they don’t fit any existing mold.
As noted, there are lots of non-denomination Christian churches spread throughout the U.S. Some of them definitely have specific ‘flavor’ however. There are a lots of evangelical mega-churches throughout the South and especially in Texas that are more like entertainment resorts or country clubs than churches. I wouldn’t call those neutral or truly non-denominational however. They do have a denomination, it just isn’t a traditional one and more like a business model that they follow. Among the traditional denominations, Episcopalians (I am one) are pretty lax about specific doctrine although the services follow a specific pattern but anyone is welcome and we don’t try to push any specific beliefs on anyone.
If you want truly nondescript and free-form, there are always the Unitarians. Some of their churches are only nominally Christian if that and welcome people of all faiths, if any, to participate in widely varied services. There are atheists and non-Christian people that live in heavily Christian places that want a church themselves so they often pick Unitarianism.
FWIW, some (but by no means all) churches that have names of the form “______ Christian Church” are members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination.
There may be Churches that call themselves non-denominational, but its inevitably bullshit. If they do not belong to some larger denominational organization, they are a denomination unto themselves, following the (perhaps informal and unarticulated) theological views of their particular pastor (or whatever he or she calls himself).
Every flavor of Christianity thinks that it is the real Christianity, that it is preaching what Jesus would have wanted, and that everybody else is doing it at least slightly wrong.
This of course is not an issue unique to Christianity, it applies to any ideology, any system of ideas that deals with deep, important matters about how to live ones life, and how to order the world, and complex enough to allow of divergent interpretations: all well developed religions, plus ambitious ideological systems such as Marxism. Anybody who follows the ideology can hardly escape thinking that their interpretation is the right one, and any different ones are to some degree wrong.
Unfortunately, this cannot be escaped by building in to your version of the ideology that one should be tolerant of divergent versions. That only works until you run into someone - as you inevitably will - who holds that, given that the issues that the ideology addresses are so important, it is vital to have the right interpretation, and to vehemently reject all others, including yours with its tolerance clause.
To be certain. Lutheran “flavors” such as the Missouri Synod and (even moreso) Wisconsin Evangelical Synod are nearly always extremely conservative (Michele Bachmann, for example, is a Wisconsin Lutheran). ELCA Lutherans, OTOH, are more of a mixed bag, and most ELCA congregations tend to be more “mainstream” Protestant.