I for one don’t paint christians as right wing nut jobs.
Just plain nuts. Period.
Ditto Hindus, Buddhists, and any other form you can think of. Most of them are perfectly normal and functional in all other ways. More like, say, a foot fetishist. I don’t want to know the details, I find it a bit disturbing to learn about an individual, but I wouldn’t enact a law against it.
That doesn’t really help, since Aeschines wasn’t talking about denominations.
None of which changes how they feel about the culture wars. Most of my relatives are as enthusiastic about peace and economic justice as they are about closing down Godard films and opposing gay marriage.
There are other churches than the Catholics which call their clergy “Father.” As for the reverend Archbishop, he is no more “primate of the Eastern Orthodox Church in America” than Jay Dennis is “President of the Protestant Church of America” – unless “the Eastern Orthodox Church in America” is some splinter group with a high-falutin’ name and a total membership of 350. From the sounds, he may be the Exarch of the Greek Orthodox Church for North and South America – but that hardly governs any of the other Orthodox national churches represented here, nor the Orthodox Church of America, the only “official” orthodox-Orthodox autocephalous church headquartered in the U.S."
No, he wasn’t. He was talking about some form of rabid fundie that apparently can be identified by the presence of a fish sticker on a car. If someone has a good data set on percent of Christians who are fundie righ wingers, I welcome the link. I was linking something that helps shed light on the entire discussion.
As for the culture wars, they are over a lot more than just gay rights and abortion and movies. You will, once again, find Christians on both sides of those battles as well. How to care for the poor is a HUGE issue to Christians, for example. Once again, given the percent of the US poplulation that is Christian, it is near impossible to argue that the right wing has a hold on the Christian population. If that were true, the Republicans would have held both houses and the Presidency for decades.
They have not, which helps show that while fundie right wingers certainly do exist and certainly are a strong voting block, they are far from representative of the vast majority of the United States that self-identifies as a Christian.
To match your personal anecdote regarding family members: Our congregation welcomes gays. We are fighting with our national organization about ordination. Specifically, I fear that the Presbyterian church will split over this issue in the next ten years. One set will allow gay ordination, and another will forbid it. The parallels to the prior split over slavery are easily seen.
Actually, Kal, that post of Ralph’s was very much on the money. Because there is, putatively, someone with the right and authority to judge who is a Christian – and what He had to say about what constitutes a follower of His is pretty close to how Ralph defined it.
I will allow that people have every right to believe He never lived, or that when He was crucified, He stayed dead, or a dozen other variations on what historically happened. But the point behind that would be that if He isn’t presently risen and “sitteth on the right hand of God the Father” (metaphorical phrasing, of course) with the role of judge over all who claim to follow Him, then all this foofaraw is about as meaningful as deciding whether Geordie LaForge and Daredevil together could take down a Sumo wrestler armed with a 1920s style death ray in some lighthearted IMHO thread. And if He is risen and our judge, as many of us believe, then what He had to say about the right thing to do and who is truly His follower, is in fact the defining characteristic. (Of course, one important thing to do in that circumstance is not to violate another of His strictures and assume to yourself the right to make that judgment in His place – not always an easy thing to avoid.)
But I suspect there are gonna be a lot of people who consider themselves good Christians, sheep of His flock, but who will find themselves designated “goats” (cf. Matt. 25:31-46) – that little “with the measure you judge, you too will be judged” has a lot of bite to it.
I am not sure why you answer like this - if they aren’t Christian, then they are irrelevant to your analysis of Christianity, and so there is no need to call them tiny & unimportant, because even if they were a dominant force they would still not be relevant to a discussion of Christianity. It’s almost like you included “tiny, unimportant” as a qualifier that admitted they were Christian, but that there were so few of them that they did not alter your overall analysis of Christianity.
Why would you say they aren’t Christian? You seem to be in danger of getting circular if you are saying that it is a requirement of Christianity that one believe all non-Christians are damned to an eternity in hell…
I agree that Ralph’s favored interpretation (the woman helping the poor) would probably be the more popular one (gee…d’ya THINK? 
). Thing is, there’s no way of knowing if there’s someone judging you (someone who matters, anyway). So in the meantime, It might be that Ralph has it right and it might mean that Phelps has it right. I certainly hope it’s not the latter, but we really don’t know.
Because they self-identify as “Christian”. However, they don’t act how a “Christian” is supposed to act - at least according to their book.
Nothing circular, just more “Christians” make Christians look bad.
-Joe
Pretty much no one acts as he or she is supposed to act. I think it’s a mistake to treat “Christian” as meaning “someone who lives up to all the ideals of his or her religion.” You can’t even come up with a universal set of criteria for what those ideals are.
When it comes right down to it, a Christian is whoever chooses identify as one.
Precisely. They don’t make a difference in practical terms. And they are “Christian” because they call themselves Christian, but their attitude is so different that they are only technically Christian. They are the equivalent of laissez-faire capitalists who are also card carrying members of the Communist Party in Soviet Russia.
That pretty much is what mainstream Christianity has held. That is what Christanity means, in practical terms; the belief that you are right, everyone else is wrong, you will go to Heaven and they will burn. Christianity, regardless of the correctness or lack thereof of it’s metaphysics, is an extremely nasty belief system.
Actually, I go through the reverse. I look at the title of the sermon and I wonder how much Bush bashing is going to go on. I don’t like Bush at all, but listening to a 30 minute sermon about the evils of George W Bush even tries my patience.
Aaah., the joys of being part of a liberal church.
It makes me nuts, but what can we do? I don’t think I have the energy it would require to start a movement to shove the fundies out of the spotlight. Why can’t people just use the gunk between their ears and understand that just because some members of a group are morons it is totally illogical to then conclude that all members of the group are.
So if someone tells you he’s a duke or a senator or a spy, you believe him?
You’re wrong. Plain old wrong. Seriously incorrect. Mistaken. In error. Again, you describe what only some people believe and make a great leap across logic to think that means all of them think that way. :rolleyes:
Er, all those things have some outside, obvious points. You can’t be a Duke without there being some framework to support you, records of your enoblement, etc… To be a senator, again, has obvious points; they’ve been elected, and you can check electoral records or (depending on your trust level) the media to get information on that. Same for a spy - an outside agency makes you a spy. All these things have many ways we can tell if they have that role or not.
With religion, OTOH, it’s more difficult. It’s a matter of belief, and belief alone. The only way you can know if a person is christian or jewish or athiest or whatever is by, well, asking them what their beliefs are. Sure, they could lie. But it’s really the only way to tell. So your analogy isn’t that good.
The problem with this analogy is that there’s a clear, uncontroversial definition of spy, duke and senator, but there’s no real way to do so for religious beliefs. Polycarp’s definition of Christian as someone who does what God wants is good and all, but since we aren’t God, that just means we can’t know who is “really” Christian. It really just redefines Christian to mean “good person” or maybe “good person who also claims to be Christian” which is kind of self serving, and is a bit useless when talking about the Christians who exist in the real world. Under this definition, is the guy who earnestly believes that God wants him to discriminate against gays because of Leviticus Christian? What about a Jewish guy who does good works, under that definition, is he Christian? What about a person who believes earnestly in all the aspects of Christianity that you like, and none that you don’t, but turns out to be a horrible sinner? Is he Christian?
I would argue that the only workable definition of a Christian is inclusive of everyone who derives their religious beliefs from either The Bible, or the idea of a trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost.
on Preview: what Revenant said.
What’s going on is there are a lot of hateful, ugly assholes who see Christianity as the jersey of the side they think is winning, so they all went and signed up. A few million bad apples are spoiling the whole barrel.
2000-odd years of Christians seem to disagree with you.
And once again a Christian apologist lies. I said nothing of the sort. I said “mainstream Christianity”; unless Christians are Borg, that obviously doesn’t refer to every single individual who happens to label themselves Christian.
Small detail missing, I think from my post rather than your take on it: by my definition, a “good Christian” is someone who does God’s will *as it was set forth and explained by Christ Jesus (allowing for figures of speech and such, of course – we know, for example, that it was standard First Century Aramaic usage to do contrasts by the love A/hate B metaphor, even if what was meant was “Put A first, then consider B if time and resources permit”; hence “love God and hate your parents” is not to be taken as the literal words would suggest). Since those words are (at least reasonably acceptably) preserved and both internally consistent and capable of objective external review, they do constitute an independent measure.
Your other examples, of course, apply only insofar as they match up with that basic one – a Christian should be one who follows Christ, in the same way as a Randian follows Ayn Rand’s precepts or a Marxist Karl Marx’s. If someone elevates the Bible to a position of authority that eclipses Jesus’s authority in his/her life, he or she becomes a Bibliolater. The good Jew is a good Jew, following the Law as He understands it by rabbinic precepts. The “horrible sinner” is in fact a good Christian – according to Paul’s take on things, we all are, to one degree or another. (Unfortunately, most people stop there with the accusations and guilt-inducement, and don’t pick up on the other half of the message, God’s love and grace.)
Being a “Bible believer” doesn’t make you a Christian – no Bible I know of ever willingly hung on a cross or was raised from the dead. And its truly odd that the Bible as expounded by various people seems to show God as having exactly the same ideals and prejudices that they do. (Probably true for me, too, but when I notice myself doing that, I try to back off and take a better look.)
As for the doctrine of the Trinity – I found it very interesting to see that a liberal Catholic lawyer of my acquaintance ran a test on a group of mixed Christians on that other board, and demonstrated that over 40% of them subscribed to one ancient heresy or another. I think a loose “nutshell” acceptance of the doctrine* is significant to self-identity as a Christian, but not everyone is moved to be the kind of systematic theologian who cares about the nitpicking details of the doctrine.
And the particular radical-social-conservative fringe of Christianity that has developed an inordinate influence on GWB and his Administration is both loud and influential out of proportion to its numbers. As somebody above noted, people quietly doing the right things don’t make news. News is by definition loud, obnoxious, and controversial. And that suits them just fine – being told they cannot force people to practice their shibboleths, they can spin into being persecuted for their faith. I see it daily.
Conversely, if some people of a group are considered saints, we shouldn’t believe anyone else is either. So if there are a group of outliers on either end, are the vast majority core in the middle just like everyone else, regardless of belief? If this is the case, why believe at all?
For the sake of brevity, let’s just limit this statement to present day. You claim that the majority of mainstream Christianity believes that non-Christians will burn in Hell. First, this requires a definition of mainstream Christianity, and second, more proof than your opinion that this is true. I completely many Christians believe in this decidedly unChristian notion, but I’m not convinced it’s the majority. If you prove me wrong, I’d actually be interested in learning the truth, despite being a Christian.
As an aside, Catholicism is the world’s largest demonination of Christian, and it’s my understanding that the Magisterium does not currently preach that nonChristians will burn in Hell. Heaven and Hell are for God to decide based on the actions in one’s life. Shit, I personally believe that as far as the afterlife is concerned, everybody gets what they want, as in the modern apologetic that Heaven would be Hell to a person who does not practice agape. Belief in Jesus is meant to be an opening of the heart for which agape to flow through. There are probably many people in Hell who were/are Christian 
Wow, this seems really well thought out. I’d still be somewhat hesitant to try and divide Christians into “real” and “not real” piles based on any definition other than self identification, but that looks like a really good way to look at things.