I’m a Christian…have been my whole life. I’m a United Methodist…whole life. We don’t get into the born-again thing in our church. We’re very laid-back, in general, and many of our members (heck, even our minister) profess to not believe in much of the standard beliefs of Christianity. We are not fundamentalists in any way, shape or form.
I have friends and aquaintances who are born-again, very fundamentalist, and they are mostly Baptists or non-denominational. But none of them scared or embarassed me like the mom on Trading Spouses the other night.
They had a born-again, bubbly Christian from California trade places with a negative, jaded Jew from (I think) Maryland. The Christian woman could not finish a sentence without using the word blessed. She was warm, open and friendly, but she could not define “born-again”, even though she used the term to describe herself. The Jewish husband tried to ask her what denomination she was, and all she could say was “Christian”. And she hated fresh flowers for some bizarre reason. She tried very hard to bring only good things to the experience, but came across as very preachy and juvenile when trying to get bickering teens to be nice to one another. Her Bible-study class was extremely boring, though I did like when they prayed for the families involved in the swap and “especially the people who do the editing”. But for the most part, the mom came across as slightly dim, slightly out of touch, and unable to form any sentence that didn’t include a reference to God.
Don’t get me wrong, the Jewish mom did not come out smelling like roses. She was controlling with her family, rude, late, inflexible, superior, condescending and totally insensitive.
But the Christian mom gave Christians a black eye. There is not one woman in my church who is as vapid and air-heady and breathlessly praise-filled as that woman, and for that I am very, very glad.
They took her to see the sights in Washington, DC and she was thrilled to see all the monuments and buildings, while the Jewish family, who goes there all the time, was bored out of their skulls. Then she decides she wants a Bush-Cheney t-shirt, and goes on a comparison-shopping tour of all the vendors, critiquing the sizing of the shirts and the pricing. At the end of the show, she leaves decks of Bush/Cheney playing cards as gifts for the (Democrat) family. The implication was that “these are the kind of religious nuts who voted for Bush…they’re all dimwits like this!” And that’s so far from the truth.
What’s the matter kittenblue? Didn’t she bless your socks off!?
She was horrifying to watch. But I think most non-Christian Americans have had enough exposure to Christians to know that she is not ‘normal’ (for lack of a better term).
The most annoying thing to me was the arrogance. “Golly, I don’t know why the children didn’t stop bickering - I used the toothpaste example!” “I really felt like the husband and I had really shared something important when I explained to him how to hijack his children’s emotions to scare them out of having sex before they’re married.”
I hope watching the edited show woke her up a little bit this week. But ultimately, I think both families come out of this with just another excuse to pat themselves on the back.
Hee. My sister got married in her husband’s church, and before the rehersal, my hubby and I prowled all over the building, trying to figure out what denomination they were. There were two oil paintings of old dudes hanging in the vestibule, but we didn’t recognize them. No hymnals. All the Bibles were KJV. We even poured over some newsletters we found laying around for clues, but there wasn’t anything to indicate then name of a sect.
So we asked the groomsmen, “Hey, guys, exactly what denomination is this church?”
They responded, in unison, “Christian.”
Uh, thanks, fellahs. We might be godless East-Coast libruls, but we had that much figgered out from the crosses and the Bibles and whatnot. But their answer was so confident and casual, as though that was a complete and satisfactory answer to the question, that we didn’t press them.
We asked my sister later, and she rolled her eyes (not in a mean way, but in a God-bless-‘em way) and said, "Oh, they’re Bible-believin’ fundies. But they’re not all that bad." The minister did do the bit about the man being the head of the family as Jesus is the head of the church during the ceremony. Our side of the family tried not to snicker, despite knowing the bride.
I agree the Christian mom was kinda horrible to watch, however the Jewish mom was just a bitch. The Christian dad actually offered to go to synagogue(sp?) with her, if she would go to church with him. I thought that was a class move by the guy trying to make her more comfortable. She was real bitchy turning it down.
Doesn’t “Christian” simply mean the non-denominational kind? There are not a few of such churches in my area, and, in fact, one of the largest churches of any kind in the country is in my hometown, and it’s of the non-denominational Christian variety (this church just added another $25M building to their “compound”, with a main auditorium that seats almost 10,000. And they have several services every weekend!).
My point being that someone calling themselves “Christian” rather than “Presbyterian” or “Baptist” is something I’ve heard before and is not at all unusual.
Well she was a little sour and jaded but lets face it, as she pointed out, she’s in the minority. She is constantly bombarded with the Christian message in one form or another and Hubby’s intentions are not “let’s make you comfortable” It seems more like he is thinking “Gee if you come to our church you can see how we live and become like us.”
He tossed the bone of joining her at the synagogue only when she initially rejected his invitation to church. (Judging by his reaction to her jewish cuisine I have a feeling he wouldn’t have faired well at the Synagogue.) I think she took it as an attempt to convert and she did say no tyhank you he kept pressing it.
DaddyTimesTwo, I don’t think we’re talking non-denominational, at least as I understand the term. When I think “non-denominational,” I think of a church welcoming and accommodating to all, servicing a broad Christian community, ecumenical, moderate, compromising between different viewpoints, etc.
A main-stream Protestant walking into my BIL’s family’s Christian church (called “The First Christian Church of Hicksville,” FTR) would not feel at home. My family (ELCA Lutherans) were mildly amused by parts of the ceremony. (See St. Paul’s feelings about the power structure of the family, above.) And, uh, probably best not to speculate about how a Catholic would be made to feel.
They have a specific set of conservative, fundementalist, non-mainstream beliefs, but they don’t call themselves a Fundementalist Christian or Bible-Believing Christian or Born-Again Christian church, or make up some other descriptor that would clue people into what flavor of Christianity they follow. They just call themselves Christian.
The thing that bugs me about it (but only in a distant, nagging sort of way, because as an atheist, I’ve got no dog in this fight) is that by claiming the unmondified name Christian they are not-so-subtly excluding other people who call themselves Christians. I hardly think that them calling themselves Christians without any other name means that they draw no distinctions between themselves and a Catholic Christian or a Methodist Christian. Do they even consider Lutherans and other sects to be Christians? I get the impression from their choice of nomenclature (not to mention my experiences with other Christians who share similar beliefs) that they consider themselves to be the “true” or “pure” Christians, and therefore don’t feel the need to add any other distinguishing label. I could be wrong about that, though.
I’ve never actually watched this show, but it seems like appearing on something called “Trading Spouses” would be, well, frowned on by the Christian church.
See, I knew the show was missing something!!!
BTW, that Christian mom was just completely out of her gourd. Being Christian had about as much to do with it as her being blonde. The lady was a total nutjob.
I don’t want to imply that all people who respond “Christian” when asked what Protestant denomination they belong to are the same. The following is based solely on my personal experience.
However, in my single days, I dated a couple of girls, one who belonged to the “Church of Christ” and another who attended the “First Christian Church” (the beliefs are essentially the same, but the Churches of Christ split off from the First Christian Church in a dispute primarily over music in church). Part of dating these girls was attending church with them. Being an agnostic Jew, I found the concept to be an interesting sociological experiment.
Both churches were of the type whose members would identify themselves as “Christian”. The preachers would teach during bible study that members were not to identify themselves as part of any denomination, that they were just “Christians.” The reasoning was that there is only one Christain church, and by identifying themselves as “Christian” they were identifying themselves as members of that one Christian church. We were taught explicitly that people who identify themselves by denomination are not Christians. You are either a Christian or a Baptist or a Presbytarian, but could not be more than one of those. We were also taught that they were most definitely not Protestants, that their churches were formed solely according to principles set forth in the bible and not from any other source.
For these particular churches, to identify oneself as a “Christian” meant to identify oneself as a member of the one and only true Christian church.
On to the show: Was I the only one who found the Revolutionary Times village a little creepy? I’ve been to a couple of those before, but something about the one on the show seemed a bit . . . off to me.
Sorry if you’ve heard this before, but I read the thread title as Trading Spaces. Color me confused about the radical new format of that decorating show!
I’m guessing it was an Assembly of God, or something like that. They CALL themselves “non-denominational”, and officially, they are. But unofficially, they’re pretty much your hardcore fundamentalist, fire and brimstone, closed-minded types.
The scary Christians. They consider true ecumenicalism to be heresy. They say they welcome all “Christians”, but they really only welcome Christians who think like them.
(Think someone like His4ever. I don’t think she really belonged to a specific denomination, but this would have been her kind of church).
(jumps) Dude! My grandparents are Church of Christ. They never struck me as any stricter than your run-of-the-mill Bible Belters, though. And my grandma has talked about the schism over music in the church. I think that it happened in the 20th century, right? I think she had a couple of aunts who ended up on the other side (squints and tries to remember). And my aunt married a Catholic… oops.
I think Church of Christ does full-immersion baptism.
When I was a teenage Christian, I went to a church that called themselves “non-denominational”, and the people acted very much like the woman and her friends. They also spoke in tongues, laid hands on the sick for healing, and were ‘slain in the spirit’ (that Benny Hinn act where he puts his hand on a person’s forehead and they fall over). I had a feeling that the woman and her homies did this too, it was just too freaky to put on Trading Spouses. I think the producers felt that what they did have was freaky enough.
But people like that indeed exist. I’ve met many. What surprised me was that it was in California, right? I’m in Oklahoma where it’s common, smack in the Bible Belt. But in California? I guess they’re everywhere.
FYI, I no longer identify with being a Christian. (part of the reason was people like this, but that’s neither here nor there)
The minister did do the bit about the man being the head of the family as Jesus is the head of the church during the ceremony. Our side of the family tried not to snicker, despite knowing the bride.