The policy of one company I was at was that if you wouldn’t mind a random colleague looking over your shoulder as you used the tool, it was okay. So this one would be okay also.
It would have been fun if you rejected the candidate and left her to explain why at church. But I’m just mean.
Yes–apparently I don’t really understand that there is a deity and I believe in it. That said, the vast majority of Christians I know are more of the Buddhist style and don’t believe you can drag someone to enlightenment. Instead, they let their own lives be an example. None of that ilk are bible literalists, and most are very familiar with their texts, including some that are nonp-canonical.
Good points.
I find it hard to believe that people in the US can be “ignorant” of Christianity. Even my five year old son is not ignorant because I had to explain it to him a couple of times because that’s how in your face it is all the time.
In one particular case, we attended an open-casket funeral that had a cross emblazoned on the casket, and he loudly proclaimed, “Why is there a giant T on the casket?” And several people took it upon themselves to explain the glory of the Lord to my heathen child.
Another time he wanted to know why some people don’t celebrate Christmas, so I had to explain that Christmas is, to a lot of people, a Christian holiday, which led to explaining what a Christian is, which led to being asked when and how Jesus died. Awkward.
But no, there is no shortage of familiarity with Christianity. Certainly not for me, a former evangelical, first Pentecostal, then Baptist, scarred for life into a fear of hellfire from a god I don’t even believe in, currently married into a huge family full of extremely Catholic people. It is not ignorance I suffer from.
Growing up Jewish in America, i consider myself a child of Christendom.
I’d probably be just as pissy about the other religions if I had to deal with their worst people all the time. But I don’t. Those other religions don’t have political power in my country. They aren’t trying to restrict my freedoms based on their worldview. I have some specific beefs with Christian doctrine but I don’t know enough about other religions to have those kinds of beefs. Plus it kinda feels like punching down on some very marginalized communities.
If you have contempt for religion, the only real possibilities for you in this venture are:
1 Being bored crapless.
2 Being frustrated at all the willful ignorance that surrounds you that you will be too polite to point out.
3 Meeting someone interesting with whom you would like to pursue a (platonic? romantic?) relationship, maybe with a cool accent, but it will ultimately fail because of the incompatibility on religious beliefs.
I’d pass if I were you.
The kind of “ignorance” I see most often, of religion in general and Christianity in particular, is from people who think they know what religion is, or what Christianity is, or what religious people are like, based on their own experience. When really, they’re like the blind men with the elephant, and they don’t realize how much more there is to it than the biased sample they’re familiar with.
I certainly wouldn’t generalize about what religious people are like, given that they are usually as varied as any other kind of person. Some of them are assholes and some of them are my best friends. I don’t believe religion makes people into assholes. I kind of think of it as an accelerant. Whether you have hate or love in your heart, religion can enhance your fundamental nature. And yes, that’s just my observation.
Anglican only split from Roman by the interdiction by the Romans concerning right-of-appeal on legal matters, not on bible-belief grounds. Later, the Roman church de-emphasised the importance of the bible, without taking a wildly different view on the text. Greek split from Roman on a linguistic misunderstanding, again not on textual differences.
Hard-line Baptists reject the Anglican/Roman/Greek axis, and might have trouble with the group on religious grounds, but not particularly on bible interpretation. Hard-line calvinist/presbyterians reject the role of the priesthood, and again might have trouble with the group on religious grounds, but again not a bible-study problem.
Well said.
And quite clearly, at least half of the USA are, or have been made into, raging assholes.
Evangelical Christianity USA style is directly to blame for the Fascist crisis we are now embroiled in.
If Jesus was real, he’d weep. Or maybe smite some people.
Many posters right here on the SDMB. I have seen posts something like “why are Christians against gay sex?” (answer- some denominations are, but by no means all- some are welcoming) and so forth.
Most of the Ignorance come from conflating the Right Wing Evangelicals- a decided minority- with all Christians.
Familiarity breeds ignorance, to mess with a quote.
Exactly.
49% of those who voted for President, at most. Only 65% of voters even voted.
Oh, disregard that
Agreed. And even if Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are a minority of U.S. Christians, they are definitely the “loudest” in recent decades, and have often been perceived (justifiably so) as trying to force their beliefs on others, in the name of returning the U.S. to its Christian roots (which it never really had).
So, if someone doesn’t know a lot about Christianity, their impression is going to be strongly colored by what they see about it in the media and in society – and what they are seeing are predominantly statements and actions by the strident, the intolerant, and the judgmental. Thus, it’s not ignorance in the sense of “I don’t know anything about Christianity,” so much as ignorance in the sense of “I don’t know that not all Christians are like that.”
I’ve heard people complain about evangelicals but I’ve never talked to anyone who seriously believed evangelicals are the only kind of Christian there is. That flies in the face of common sense. Most people, unless they are in an especially culturally isolated area, know Christians who are not evangelicals. I know so many. So, so, many. Of a wide variety. Throughout my entire life.
Though I do think many people have determined that due to the actions of said evangelicals, they have zero interest in Christianity. You can dislike or even hate something without being ignorant about it. I don’t have to try every flavor of olive to conclude I hate olives.
And even Evangelicals are/have been more diverse than many people realize, and not all are right wing. I recall reading something by Jimmy Carter in which he self-identified as Evangelical (but not Fundamentalist).
Nowadays, I’m wary of using the term at all. It’s a fuzzy category, and I can’t trust the term not to change and acquire new connotations over time.
Not all evangelicals are “right wing evangelicals”. I know several who are not.
The more you live in small town America the more the RW flavor of evangelical is the only flavor of christian you’ll encounter in the flesh.
Sure, anyone anywhere can read about Catholics, Episcopalians, etc. And every other religion on Earth. But the people you will meet and hear mouthing off in the grocery store? RW evangelicals.
As a former evangelical, I can tell you that the term has three stripes, all of whom take the Bible as inerrant. You have Fundamentalists who believe that the Bible calls for specific cultural forms. Charismatics, who believe in ‘speaking in tongues’ and a more flamboyant service. And evangelicals who believe in similar doctrine as the others, but give a much wider view of how the beliefs are lived out culturally.
Your observations are very good, but let me expand on them some. The only definitive split of the Anglicans is the role of the pope. No doctrine changed hands, but the doctrinal path was on a different course. The Wesleys (John and Charles) came to America preaching a different form of Anglicanism which became Methodism and Wesleyanism.
Catholic doctrine holds that the church ‘owns’ the Bible much as they own the apostolic tradition and church practice. They can use many different sources for their decisions. Protestants tend to believe that the Bible created the church and all decisions need a Biblical basis. Most of the trouble Protestants have with Anglican/Roman/Orthodox is that they use sources other than the Bible for their doctrine. Protestants generally reject the priesthood based on doctrine from the book of Hebrews.
Based on the religious background of the Bible study, that’s pretty much what you’ll get. Personally I would not go to a Catholic Bible study because I know that I do not agree with their foundational doctrine, but there is no reason to believe any Catholic is ‘bad’ because of their doctrine. And I’ve met many evangelical (born again) Catholics.