Religious types: what does your church, etc. teach that you don't believe, and why?

Great Debates
1

Contrariwise, what do you believe that your church, synagogue, mosque, or other worship center does not teach?

Note that, by religious types, I mean persons who regularly attend services of an organized religion. If you were raised Catholic but no longer believe in God or attend Mass–well, you can still answer, of course. I can’t stop you. But you’re not the person I mean to query. I mean to query the Catholic who goes to church every week but is nonetheless cool with abortion rightsl, or the Jew who attends synagogue but has made a conscious decision not to keep kosher, and so forth.

2

Can I answer for my parents? They’re committed Catholics who are nonetheless supportive of gay rights.

Me? I’m a Buddhist. I eat humanely raised/slaughtered meat, and I am not averse to using measured violence as a solution to problems if A) there isn’t any other solution and B) using measured violence will prevent larger amounts of violence.

Typically this takes the form of “I’m going to put my drunk buddy in a headlock before he starts a bar fight”, just so we’re clear on what I mean here.

3

I’m a member of the ELCA, which is pretty squishy-left politically. I disagree with them on several issues (apart from abortion).
[ul][li]Their position on Israel is pretty silly[/li][li]Their position on illegal immigration is equally so[/li][li]They are pretty much lockstep Democrats on matters governmental - if they have ever opposed any government spending besides defense, I never saw it.[/ul][/li]
None of these are matters of doctrine, just political opinions with which I disagree.

Regards,
Shodan

4

It’s matters of doctrine, faith, & morals that I’m mostly interested in.

5

I used to be a person who regularly attended services of an organized religion, and didn’t believe any of it.

I was seventeen before I was told non-attendance wouldn’t be held against me (as it demonstrably had been in my youth).

6

I’m really not sure what this contributes.

7

Nothing.
The personal actions/conducts of certain big guys, sure.

8

I met the conditions of your OP. I answered. What do you want, Shakespeare?

If you want to find deeper meaning there, consider it to be a subtle way of pointing out that there are lots of reasons that people go to churches, and they tend to attend for those reasons and be pretty sloppy about the details they don’t care about. Take for example a good friend of mine who’s a mormon. I recently asked her what her opinion was on elephants in pre-Columbian America. She verrrry cautiously averred uncertainty, because she’s smart enough to smell a trap. In actuality of course she doesn’t believe in pre-Columbian American elephants; however they’re official doctorine of her church by virtue of being in a book it states unequivocably is unvarnished fact.

I imagine that most people aren’t intimately and consciously familiar with every nook and cranny of their church’s doctorine, and don’t really care about chunks of the rest of it. That which they don’t know or care about would meet with what you’re asking for - but they’re not consciously aware of these things, so they’re not going to mention them here.

9

I go to a Reform synagogue every week on Saturday morning, and about once a month on Friday evenings.

I don’t keep kosher, but that’s not something my synagogue (or the movement) teaches against, and I do it as an actively Reform Jewish practice. Eating non-kosher food (especially flagrantly non-kosher food like pork and shellfish) to affirm rationality and disavow doing superstitious-like actions with no meaning to the practitioner has been a strand in Reform Jewish since the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. (Which isn’t to say that eating kosher is non-Reform. My synagogue’s stance is, if it is meaningful to you, eat kosher, if it isn’t – or if it is meaningful not to – don’t eat kosher.)

I also oppose circumcision, which is more broadly practiced in my particular community than keeping kosher, but also doesn’t contradict any official “doctrine” (inasmuch as there is one).

The position in UK progressive Judaism that I most disagree with is its stance on interfaith marriage. Reform rabbis aren’t allowed to preside over marriage ceremonies between Jews and non-Jews. The rabbinical college, Leo Baeck, won’t accept students with non-Jewish partners. Its argument is that rabbis and their families, if they have them, should be a model for the community for Jewish living, but I think saying that an interfaith family cannot be a positive model is extremely problematic.

A friend of mine is married to an Anglican vicar and would like to train to be a rabbi, but Leo Baeck won’t accept her. They would accept her if she were married to someone whose surname was Cohen but who never went to services and didn’t have any relationship with religion at all. I think an interfaith partnership with two people who are thoughtfully, actively engaged with their religions is much more of a positive model for a religious community* than a “fully Jewish” partnership in which one happened to be born to a Jewish parent but doesn’t engage with religion meaningfully.

It is the only racist policy I can think of the UK Reform movement holds, and it is extremely disappointing, because it is otherwise very progressive about converts, Palestinian rights, non-halakhic Jews (Jewish father but not mother), and other issues that are common sticking points in the more conservative branches of Judaism. I can’t see how there is any reasonable justification for it.

*I’m not saying they would be a more positive model for any group, or that thoughtful religious people are better role models than anyone else generally – only in the context of leadership of religious communities.

10

I beleive the ELCA would allege that these are matters at least of morals, but…

I tend more towards modal monarchianism than trinitarianism, but I am hard put to define the difference.

Regards,
Shodan

11

I’m a Roman Catholic regular Sunday churchgoer in good standing, etc. etc.

[ul]
[li]I do not believe that homosexuality is an aberration, nor that homosexual acts are inherently sinful or disordered.[/li]
[li]I do not believe that use of contraceptive birth control within marriage is a sin. (For those familiar with RC doctrine, these first two points are actually related.)[/li]
[li]I don’t think I believe in modern day physical miracles. I don’t think I’m doctrinally required to, other than the big one mentioned in the Creed. However, my point of view on the topic approaches Deism, which I think is technically a heresy. :eek:[/li][/ul]

12

Predestination - which is one of the reasons I haven’t joined the church. It isn’t something that comes up frequently or even regularly, but it’s there, lingering in the background.

13

I’m LDS (Mormon)

  • I am in favor of gay rights, generally, and gay marriage, specifically.
14

Assembly of God here-

While I believe in experiencing the Holy Spirit and in speaking in tongues/prayer languages, I do not hold to the doctrine of “The Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the Initial Physical Evidence of Speaking in Tongues”. The New Testament passages don’t really support that doctrine as strongly as the Pentecostal-Charismatics teach, nor can you find any historic Christian group which held that doctrine until about 1900.

The Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church- because the historic position of the Church is that the Rapture is near simultaneous with Christ’s Return to defeat AntiChrist and the Bible heavily supports that position. The idea of any distinction between the two events seems to show rumblings in the 1600s, has one definite advocate in the 1750s (Morgan Edwards) but doesn’t develop full force until the 1830s.

I lean to a future Tribulation and earthly Millenial Reign of Christ, as does the AoG, but I’m iffy about them. My “rival” belief is a 70 A.D. Tribulation and the Present Reign of Christ to bring all peoples into faith in Him & eventually create a Christian World Order.

I believe in a very open-ended Afterlife & that while salvation comes only through Jesus Christ, a lot of people leave this life as non-believers in Christ who may well become believers & so be saved. I also believe that Hell may well result in rehabilitation or annihilation for those who go there.

While it may be prudent & virtuous to abstain from alcohol, it is not Biblically mandated.

15

But there really were several species of elephants in pre-Columbian America. So what’s the problem?

16

Or else Jesus was being really, really mean at Cana. :smiley:

17

Episcopalian/Anglican
Episcopalians are a famously liberal denomination but historically speaking very broad in official doctrine (what there is of it). So while I have many theological differences with the nominal head of our church (the Presiding Bishop) and many of the other leaders, there is nothing that Anglicanism “teaches” that I disagree with. Because there is very little dogma it holds to beyond the historic creeds, and even those it gives a wide latitude of interpretation.

18

I don’t know if this should go in here, but I was looking up information for someone on Laura Schlessinger -remember her, big noise on talk radio some years ago, the wanna-be Queen of Morality? She still shows up on Larry King once a year or so. Well, she converted to becoming an Orthodox Jew in the 90’s and was always talking about it, all excited over her strict new lifestyle, quoting the Bible left and right. I was somewhat amazed to read that she is no longer an Orthodox Jew and has dropped out of the program, so to speak! All that learned religious blabbering she used to do! I don’t know why, but the Queen of Morality lost her religion.

19

I guess I’m calling myself a Zen Buddhist now (wow, that was quick), and there’s a lot of variety there and not a lot of dogma, but I don’t hold with none of that reincarnation claptrap. The Zen dudes seem to not think most of the Buddhist cosmology and stuff is terribly relevant, though, so that’s cool. I also have no intention of giving up meat or alcohol.

20

In the time period specified? Suuuure there were.

My dad is in a similar boat - he has confessed his apathy about gay activities to me, but it is a secret from my mother and the rest of the family. As is his habit of going to rated-R movies, though I’m not sure if that’s officially mormon doctorine or just something some high ranking church guy expressed a personal opinion on. (To my mother there’s no difference.)

For context, my dad is about 20% overt jack mormon, 65% doin’ it 'cause he’s supposed to, and 15% apparently actively devout; he’s kind of hard to predict. It would be interesting to see how he’d answer this thread himself, though in a public discussion I would expect him to lie about the 85% so yeah.