Not everyone who lives in Scotland is a Scotsman unless he wears a kilt and eats porrige (with salt on it) and has an enormous ginger beard…
Who gets to define whether a person is a Christian or not?
Careful with making the Trinity a basic Christian tenet. 16th century Unitarians[sup]1[/sup] would have argued strenously that they were Christians, in spite of having pitched the doctrine of the Trinity.
4th century Arianism also did not accept the trinity. Arianism was branded as heresy by the mainstream Christian church, but its practitioners still accepted Christ as devine, and worshipped him, making them “Christians” to my thinking.
[sup]1[/sup] - Whether modern UU’s are collectively Christian or not is another complete discussion which tends to rest on whether you are referring to doctrine or cultural history (an individual UU member can certainly be a professed Christian).
. Yeah, that’s the heart of the matter. Likewise for ‘Muslim.’
To me, as with any belief system, it seems obvious that YOU can be both if you choose to (a la Gandhi’s quote above, though I’d say that was more a metaphysical statement about brotherhood of man than a statement that he was truly an adherent of said belief systems). So, if you are able to satisfactorily resolve or accept any contradictions you perceive between the two, go for it, I say.
The real question here is if OTHERS will accept that you are both. I think you have a VERY TOUGH road on that one, particularly if your definition of who defines what a Christian or Muslim is involves sanction by an organized, mainstream sect of both/either.
Being a UU atheist, I’m not sure where the discussion is on this point. Modern UUs are not collectively Christian.
This line is a bit more to the point (yours deals more specifically with Jews than Christians):
Perhaps I worded that badly - the UU Association can still be construed as a “Christian” church in some regard, particularly if one is considering cultural/historical features rather than stated doctrine. From the UUA’s FAQ:
It serves to illustrate the point made elsewhere in this thread - defining what is / is not “Christian” leads you into very murky waters.
Thats the definition of Christian. The word might change in the future, but thats semantics. By definition, one cannot be Christian without believing in Jesus Christ. Its like saying you can be a Muslim without believing “that Mohammed Guy” was very important. Its the center of the faith.
What exactly do you mean by “believing in”, though?
Unfortunately, even Webster’s definition is sufficiently vague enough to result in a crusade.
That leaves a lot hanging (for starters, do we have to accept everything his apostles said, and things that Paul added later, or can we just stick to what words we believe came out of his own mouth? … however we determine THAT…) and is a far cry from what I think the more commonly accepted definition is in the West today, namely something like: “one who believes that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and died and was resurrected for the forgiveness of sins.”
Somebody wiser than me once said that being a Christian is just like being homosexual; if somebody says they are one, then that about wraps it up, I am neither qualified or able to reject such a claim.
Ghandi was neither Christian nor Muslim. His alleged opinion on this matter is completely invalid. And in any case, his alleged statement was more a matter of political posturing than a cogent doctrinal confession.
Christianity requires that one believe that Jesus Christ is God. Islam requires that one reject this doctrine. Thus, while they could be morally compatible, they are doctrinally contradictory.
I can’t think of a better way of saying it, though I might also add that to be a christian one must subscribe to the teachings of Jesus, including John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father (God) except through me.”
I would argue that this contradicts the statements made earlier in this thread that Unitarians (who are generally characterized as believing that there are many ways to God) can be considered christians.
As for Mangetout’s questions resulting from my previous post: I admit it, I committed a carnal sin of the SDMB - I don’t have a cite for you. Sorry. :smack:
I hate to break it to you, but there is a group of christian scholars (the Jesus Seminar) who get together every year or two to work on the very serious business of examining the New Testament to figure out what was likely said by Jesus and what was likely added by someone else. The result? only 18% of the New Testament can be directly attributed to something Jesus said. Some of these scholars have concluded that Jesus never said he was the son of God - at least not in the Bible.
Many of these scholars consider themselves Christians, and some are/were ministers,
Yet these scholars have claimed some of the following:
“Jesus did not ask us to believe that his death was a blood sacrifice, that he was going to die for our sins.”
“Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was the messiah. He certainly never suggested that he was the second person of the trinity. In fact, he rarely referred to himself at all.”
“Jesus did not call upon people to repent, or fast, or observe the sabbath. He did not threaten with hell or promise heaven.”
“Jesus did not ask us to believe that he would be raised from the dead.”
“Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was born of a virgin.”
“Jesus did not regard scripture as infallible or even inspired.”
So says Robert W. Funk, Architect and Founder of the Jesus Seminar, in a Keynote Address to the Jesus Seminar Fellows in the spring of 1994.(1) The Jesus Seminar has been receiving extensive coverage lately in such periodicals as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, as well as on network television.
The above quotes are from a site critical of the Jesus Seminar
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/jesussem.html
The Jesus seminar site itself:
http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar/
I just posted this to show, that there are all kinds of Christians with all kinds of interpretations of the Bible. Not all Christians believe everything literally.
The term “Christian” is an extremely equivocal one, given to a lot of definitions.
Mormons identify themselves as Christians, although many of their tenets would qualify them as pagans who respect Christ in the view of many other Christians.
Unitarians, as noted above, are divided as to whether they, personally, are Christians or not. To further complicate things, Unitarians I’ve known have disagreed as to whether their denomination as a whole was Christian or not.
Some Eavangelical Christians (a lot of them, actually) use the term “Christian” exclusively to describe adherants to their narrow range of beliefs. I’ve read that as a result of this some mainstream Protestant theologians now find it problematic or even embarassing to describe themselves as “Christian” without qualifying their statement.
I’ve known members of the Bahai International Faith who say they are Christians.
By and large, I’d say you can’t be Christian and Muslim; the Quran contains a Book of Jesus and a Book of Mary, and these attempt to place Christ in perspective so that Islam is seen as superseding Christianity.
Gandhi appears to have always been forthright about being a monotheistic Hindu. Mark Twain wrote about hearing the young Gandhi speak at an international conference on religion in which he explained the tenets of his faith.
My knowledge of his “claim” to be Muslim and Christian is limited to the Richard Attenborough film. There Ben Kingsley is talking about discrimination when he says he is a Muslim and a Christian. He starts out by saying that some people tell him that when the laws for an independent India are drawn up, it will be okay to discriminate against the Muslims, and other people say it will be okay to discriminate against the Christians, and still others say it will be okay to discriminate against some other group.
Gandhi argued that people who countenanced a “little” prejudice were on a slippery slope, as society will quickly become so divisive that no one is safe. In saying that he was a Muslim and a Chrisitian and a Jew, etc., he only meant that their concerns were his concerns, and that unfairness against them today would result in unfairness against him and his kind tomorrow.
Certainly that is one definition (it even happens to be the one I personally subscribe to), but it isn’t the only definition, as others have said.
Certainly I think you couldn’t be a fundamentalist Christian and Muslim simultaneously.
Your point? Whether Jesus was God is anbother arguement entirely. It is of absolutely no moment here. The standard accepted definition of Christian is one who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Otherwise the word has no meaning at all.
Sure, but we could argue back and forth all day about what exactly is meant by ‘believes in’ (agree with, or act upon?) and ‘the teachings of Jesus’ (what, all of them? How literally? Even the bit about cutting off your hands?) and how reliably we are informed of the true teachings of Jesus etc…
I’m afraid that much as it would be convenient for ‘Christian’ to be a cut-and-dried term, the fact is that it is rather a broad and varied definition upon which everybody would like to claim the monopoly, but nobody can.
Jomo Mojo:
:rolleyes: The only thing that “allows” their existence is a widespread ignorance amongst non-religious Jews of the tenets of Judaism.
If Christian missionaries wanted to start targeting Muslims, I have no doubt they can find ways to make Christianity sound compatible with Islam to folks who are muslim by birth and name and self-identity but aren’t devout enough to know the exact details of their faiths.