The Unitarian Church was formed mostly by people who, before they were Unitarian, were Presbyterian or Methodist. It was formed in America because connections necessary for trade, work, welfare and community were held through church membership and attendance.
Unitarians are called Christians when you want to emphasize their shared culture and history. “Christian” in the sense that their religious heritage is Presbyterian/Methodist*, they go to church, and they aren’t atheists, Jews, Muslims or criminals.
If you want to emphasize differences instead of commonalities they are not called Christians.
*including, but not limited to the fact, that Presbyterian/Methodist also codes for “Not Roman Catholic”
Christ killers, yes, satanists, not in my experience. And we’re all going to suffer in the end times for sure.
And I thought the evangelical thing these days is to support Jews and Israel so the Temple can be rebuilt which is an end times requirement, and then we’ll get thanked by suffering eternally.
I know some evangelical nut jobs, but this is beyond them.
If one does not think Jesus Christ is real, one is not a Christian. This is not a matter of opinion; it is simply a fact. There are only a handful of fundamental core beliefs to Christianity, but a believe in Christ is definitively one of them. It was, and is, part of the basic credal foundation of Christianity and was there pretty much in the very oldest documents available, confirming the oral tradition that was primary for the next century or two. Note that while many churches, or bishops, have considered each other theologically heretical for not agreeing on more than that, they have not considered the others to be non-Christian. Although some Evangelical churches seem to fail to understand the difference.
There are some border cases such as the Gnostics or Unitarians as mentioned above, or for that matter, Mormonism.
With that strict definition, then why do you think that Unitarians are a border case? As I understand, many Unitarians are atheists or agnostics and that is no problem for the congregations.
It is true that the modern Unitarian Universalist movement started out as a merger of certain theologically liberal traditions within American Protestant Christianity, but it has developed into a radically non-dogmatic…religion-y thing. According to the UUs themselves, some of their members are Christians, but some UUs are atheists, some of them are Jews, and some of them are Muslims*. And for that matter, I suppose that some UUs are criminals.
*Strictly speaking, being a “Unitarian” is in fact totally compatible with Islam, but the Unitarian Universalist movement abandoned the notion of having any exclusive doctrine about even the existence of God quite some time ago, and the “Unitarian” in their name no longer says anything one way or the other about the existence of one God, or one God in Three Persons, or many gods, or no gods at all.
Since the UUs have managed to evolve from their historical roots so radically, I guess some day there may be “Christian” groups who don’t actually believe Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood person (let alone “the Son of God”), or at any rate, don’t really care one way or another about the question. But that will be a pretty radical change from a couple of millennia of Christian thought. In the meantime, even a pretty theologically liberal Christian denomination like the United Church of Christ still has a statement of beliefs that includes “We believe in God, the Eternal Spirit, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father…In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord”; and “We believe in the triune God: Creator, resurrected Christ, the sole Head of the church, and the Holy Spirit, who guides and brings about the creative and redemptive work of God in the world”.
Granted that the UCC–and other theologically liberal Protestant denominations–may well be headed in the same direction the UUs have already taken in terms of completely ditching any notion of “dogma” (and therefore of having any particular point of view about even the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth), in terms of their professed core theology they still have a ways to go before they get there.
I say it is a borderline case because some probably do meet the basic elements of Christianity. There is, insofar as I can determine, a thin but fuzzy line between Unitarianism and Universalism still. The one is by a razor’s margin still Christian (or potentially so), the other is clearly not. This is neither a moral judgement nor a philosophical point, just an analysis of what the group/s believe. I say group/s because while there is a Unitarian-Universalist organization I’m not certain that everyone joined onto the same cheerful-nonbelief tent.
Edit: I also wouldn’t say the definition provided is strict per se. It is the one that the earliest Christians applied to clarify who they were and has continued to apply thereafter. Like C. S. Lewis, I have a great dislike for people who turn a term of description into a term of approval.
Why do you include Mormonism as a borderline case? Mormons very explicitly believe that Jesus was both real and is divine. Sure, it’s an obvious scam with the explicit intent of funneling money and power to the people in charge, but that doesn’t change what its beliefs are.
I’m not smiling bandit, but presumably he said that Mormonism is a “borderline case” because it has significant enough theological differences from “traditional” Christianity that it’s controversial whether Mormons should be considered Christians.
Further complicated that Mormons believe in a book featuring Jesus that only Mormons believe actually happened. If it didn’t happen, then it features a “fan fiction” Jesus.
From a non-Christian perspective, that doesn’t matter, since you would believe a lot of the bible, including Jesus’ divinity, is fictitious as well. To other Christians though, there is a distinction.
Putting aside the silly infighting between sects, this thread very overtly has been using an inclusive definition that centers only around one specific set of beliefs: what is Jesus and was he real. Under that definition (and any other definition that is inclusive of all the other myriad accepted-as-christian subsects that have spun off in every conceivable doctrinal direction), Mormonism is most certainly a form of christianity.
Honestly, the silly argument that Mormonism isn’t christianity are the best possible argument for christianity not having anything to do with Christ being real or not; clearly the definition is, instead, completely arbitrary, and not even slightly universal even from a categorical perspective. Which is to say there is no criteria for what it takes to be a christian, so clearly an outright atheist can be one too.
Weird and annoying, I know, but that’s what you get when people can’t agree on a definition.
Do you know how much silly fanfiction I’ve read about people having personal Jesus experiences, seeing him in dreams and on toast and hearing about him sending his holy spirit to testify that, no seriously, no homo?
If inventing your own Jesus tales is enough to disqualify you from being christian, there are no christians left.
I you equate some randos having a religious experience with a founder of a religion writing a 500 page book and cultivating 15 million followers, then point taken.
Is there a reason I shouldn’t? The only difference* is that one person wrote their personal revelation down. It would be nonsensical to use “wrote it down” as a disqualifier for the “Christian” label, obviously. And if you’re going to use “has personal revelations” as a disqualifier then, once again, there won’t be many christians left.
According to the people who wrote the book, that is.
I don’t know about that: if you’re an Anglican priest and you gradually cease to be certain that God is real, you’re kinda locked in to what you’re doing, unless you want to find another career. And if you’re middle-aged or older, that might be a heavy lift.
But if you’re an Anglican and stop believing in God, you can just stop going to church.
OK, what does a dyslexic agnostic insomniac do? Sits up all night, wondering if there is a dog.
Gotta agree with UltraVires on this one. However exemplary one finds the residents of Middle-Earth, or the Jedi, or the characters on Star Trek, there’s no named religion based on them, AFAIK. So there’s no need to give a name to the ‘religion’ Mr.X has constructed around what he regards as a fictional New Testament character.
He’s not a member of a religion; he’s just a good person who’s chosen a possibly fictional character as a moral role model. Good choice, though.
Ignorancefought. Apparently this was a real enough religion to get tax exemption.
So. Given that, whether there’s a ‘need’ or not, I’d say it’s entirely reasonable and correct to recognize that Mr. X is indeed a member of a religion. And it’s entirely reasonable to call that religion a variant of Christianity.
Okay, well if you don’t see a major distinction between Enid seeing Jesus in her toast, and another guy building a world-wide proselytizing religion that, according to him and his followers, is the ONLY path to salvation, then that’s fine. I’ll agree to disagree.
Note: I’m not saying Mormons aren’t Christians. I’m an agnostic and it really doesn’t matter to me. I’m just saying that when other Christians think the “Mormon Jesus” is a heretical version of their Jesus, and therefore they aren’t “real” Christians, I can see their point.
Just because a handful of people decided to call their especially devoted fandom a ‘religion’ and were even able to get recognized as such by the IRS, doesn’t mean anyone else has to take it seriously as a religion, any more than one would have to take strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords seriously as a basis of government.
If some other christian calling you heretical means you’re not a real christian, then (one again) nobody is.
Really, the only functional definition for a christian that I’ve heard is “if they call themselves a christian, they are one”. Due to the extremely diverse nature of people who call themselves christian any more specific definition would seem impossible to agree upon. Of course the OP specifically says we can’t ask Mr. X his opinion - so it then comes down to, given any person who claims he’s not a christian, why should we listen to that dude’s No True Scotsman?
We’re agreed; nobody has to take Catholicism or Protestantism seriously, devoted fandoms though they be. And now that we’re agreed that nobody needs to take any of that nonsense seriously we can now agree that, serious or not, we can still label them.
