New to both the message boards and Church
louandnansmom
in the Lutheran church, and have recently started going to the Baptist
church. I have been readin you alls posts, and I have to ask if one of you
is a Baptist or a christian. I specifically was looking for a group to share
with, and all I have seen is a bunch of people arguing, and debating about
which version of christianity is better. I thought this was a group for
baptist? Am I mistaken. Im not trying to put you people down, or start you
to arguing, I just really want to know why this is labeled as christian
baptist? I really hope that you don't take me wrong here, I just want to let
you know that it doesn't look like you all are talking too much about how to
become better people or christians, and I will not return to this message
board, and Im sure alot of people that you could have helped by sharing your
faith have gone elsewhere, because of the horrible things you have said to
one another. Maybe ther Lutheran church isn't a bad place to be. Didn't
Jesus say something about the first commandment being to love one another as
he loves the church?
John W
wrote:
By al means do not look to the majority of those you see in here for
Christian advice. As you have detected, the Christians, the Baptists,
are in the minority.
However, ask your questions, and I'll bet you'll be happy with at
least some of the answers.
And sorry for the ruckus. A lot of it comes from the fact that so few
in here claim to be either Baptist or Christian.
I for one am a former baptist, and I am in here because this group
(baptist) comes closer to what i see as true than any other group.
God bless, and hang out for awhile.
John W
In Christ,
John W
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John Hennekes
Another less-than-stellar appraisal of the relative merits of this
newsgroup, which is especially significant and relevant because it
originates from an outsider, who appears to have no motive for being
here other than to seek the warmth of Christian fellowship.
Well, they certainly won't find it here, or will they? Status-quo or
introspection, blame others or accept responsibility, nonchalance or
self-realization. A finger that points away has three others pointing
back. Ah, the truth is seldom easy.
How many others (who are far less vocal) are being repulsed because of
our antics? Sadly, there are those guilty, who will not recognize
themselves as a culprit, for one reason or the other.
In fact, I will go on record to identify the innocent ones. They are
the ones who we see very few comments from, if at all. I'm as guilty
as anyone (but not everyone is guilty), and so I won't even sign my
name.
Axel
John,
Don't be too hard on yourself. Everyone has suffered from
"Foot-in-Mouth" disease occasionally.
I've used this NG for my own selfish reasons. On one level this group
is very entertaining. However on a more spiritual level, I have taken
from these posts some crucial insights into my own faith. There isn't
a day that goes by, that I'm not in question of my faith and what
sustains it. I have found that if I base the validity of my faith on
how others portray theirs I will be lost again. I use their posts as
a means to reflect on my beliefs and try to analyse the sometimes huge
gaps between what I perceive as Christianity and what is found in the
actions of Christians.
Axel
John Hennekes
Whenever our faith comes into question, Axel, just remember that it
was Christ's work on the cross, not Christians nor Christianity, which
sustains us now.
JohnH
John Hennekes
Just remember one thing, Axel, if you will. When your faith becomes
questioned, just realize that it was Christ's work on the cross, and
not Christianity nor Christians, which made all of this possible and
is what sustains us
JohnH
John H
"Axel" <one...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:78d0441d.03091...@posting.google.com...
Oops, I thought the first reply was lost in cyberspace. I see it's
reappeared.
JohnH
Axel
"John Hennekes" <johnhe...@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:qig4mvkejdg36aim9...@4ax.com...
I always try and keep that in mind, Thanks
Axel
.
I've been coming here off and on since around 1999 or maybe it was 2000?
I have no recollection. However, I took a break for a while and returned
only recently.
I do not claim to be a "Baptist" per se: I claim Christ Jesus as Savior.
My prayers for this newsgroup is that people would stop bickering,
name-calling and acting as if they were in a schoolyard yelling "Nyah
nyah nyah nyah nyah," and become truly patient in dealing with one another.
Jesus DID say, "And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as
yourself." (when referring to the greatest commandment, that is, which
is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength).
I attend a Baptist Church, of the American Baptist denomination - and am
their church clerk and secretary. I was raised Methodist. I was saved in
1982 - attended Calvary Chapel after a bad experience in a charismatic
church in which they stole all my bird necklaces from me, telling me
that I was worshiping birds. . .and in my confusion as a new Christian,
I can tell you I wanted OUT. They eventually gave them back, but we had
already started attending a Calvary Chapel. When we left the area we
were in and moved back to California, we started attending a few
non-denominational churches, but one after the other, they all closed
down, so we began attending a Conservative Baptist Church. After a few
years there, I left. In 1989 or 1990, I think that was. In 1997, the
Lord had been calling me back for years - so I started attending the
church I am now a member of.
So, while I do not claim to "be a Baptist," necessarily, I do stand by
their statement of faith, which does not include that one must be
baptized in order to be saved, but rather that baptism is the natural
response to a public statement of faith in Jesus Christ.
I hope that I haven't served to confuse you more? And I certainly hope
to see far less name-calling, argumentativeness and more calm discussion
and discourse.
May God bless your heart,
Feather
Phar Lap
<john_wea...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I for one am a former baptist, and I am in here because this group
> (baptist) comes closer to what i see as true than any other group.
>
Keep going and even you might arrive mate!
Phar Lap
<phi...@bbc.net> wrote:
You are new to a church in which my parents served for a total of around a
hundred years between them but which I left forty years ago. You also
appear to be writing from the USA where the Baptist Church has a different
character to what is generally found overseas.
Overseas the baptists are mostly far more liberal and far more
progressive. As a child I was warned by Baptists themselves about the
eccentricities of the American Baptists - I was warned that at times they
would not seem Baptist at all to me.
Fundamentalism is far more prevalent amongst American Christians than
amongst overseas ones. And American Christians are far more damning of the
secular world than Christians overseas - particlarly in countries such as
Australia where secular, Catholic, and Protestant, live and play together
without barriers of prejudice for the most part. We see how we act as far
more important than what our diverse backgrounds have led us to
individually believe
All this stems from reforms and advances in thinking that are only
beginning to hit American Christianity - some three generations later than
elsewhere. Forty years ago when I left the Church in England
Fundamentalism was already in decline. When it crops up now it is mostly
a fresh import from the USA brought in by well meaning intellectual
cretins. Sometimes they get a short term following - but pretty soon
someone says "Aw show us yer bum!" (Strine for "go away you silly little
man")
Christianity's present parameters retain Johannine-Pauline Salvation
Theology, invented decades after Jesuses death by people who used his name
to carry their own religious ideas rather than spread his own teachings,
at centre stage. Slowly however, and often in what would normally be
expected to be more traditional churches the realisation is coming that
this theology is "false" in the modern sense and poetic in the ancient
sense and belongs only to the ancient world. Christianity as it often
exists however still relies on treating obvious mythology as literal
history through a pattern of authoritarian control of the religious
institutions.
But Christians are wising up. (It is called democratisation of ideas)
They are recognising that fundamentalism is a dangerous right wing
political mindset that crosses the boundaries between religions turning
their adherents against each other in racist strife despite their
coincidence of mindset - for fundamentalism is an aggressive mindset per
se.
Fundamentalism in Christianity is the scourge of the religion, the
Antichrist that drives such as myself OUT of the religion. It was always a
political movement aimed at the repression of democratic and social
reform. It was a product of the mentality of the slave owner and
Imperialist combined with the mentality that placed the maintainence of
superstition as a source of power over the requirements of a free and
educated thought and will.
On lines such as this newsgroup you see that the conflict is far from
over. This line is so active because a Right Wing Fundamentalist movement
has usurped democracy in what should be and could be (and at times has
been) the citadel and arsenal of democracy and progress.
Fundamentalists hate to see it - but democratic thinking Christians are
asking questions and demanding answers. Their peculiar translations are
now being recognised as being ideological in nature and the conflict
between the present Christian forms which are on the one hand tyrannical
in nature and on the other hand providing of "Bread and Circuses" for the
populace, and what is increasing being recognised as the genuine message
of Jesus is now openly recognised.
What you see on this line - in its most extreme form - is the fight
between the supporters of Jesus and the supporters of social tyranny. To
these last belong the Right wing republicans, Fundamentalists,
Creationists, and neo Nazis that you will find here. To the former extreme
belong those who see Christianity as a way of life more about social
progress, welfare, compassion, love and sharing, and the reform of our
legal political social and theological understanding.
Where you place yourself is where you choose in this conflict. But Jesus
was about the conflict between good and evil, poverty and entrenched
wealth and privelege, tyranny and freedom, darkness and enlightenment
It is a Fundamentalist lie that limits him to the cross as a source of
Salvation through politically correct Right Wing thinking and assent to
contentless superstitious assertions
Some of us would remove the nails and bringJesus back down from the
cross. For to us Christianity is a progressive way of life based on a
real living human being
Or it is nothing!
+
iconoclast
" Phar Lap" <Melbou...@Flemington.com> wrote in message
news:Melbournecup-1...@ppp121.dyn27.pacific.net.au...
> It is a Fundamentalist lie that limits him to the cross as a source of
> Salvation through politically correct Right Wing thinking and assent to
> contentless superstitious assertions
>
> Some of us would remove the nails and bringJesus back down from the
> cross. For to us Christianity is a progressive way of life based on a
> real living human being
>
> Or it is nothing!
1. Using a term incorrectly like "fundamentalism" ( A specific HATE term
against a thousand different religious system.
2. "For to us Christianity is a progressive way of life based on a real
living human being"
Identifies one who has no fundamental concept of ANYTHING because neither
term or statement has any logical meaning whatever.
Both terms are hate statements.
Phar Lap
+++++++
On the contrary
You will note that I am generally unusually careful as to whether I use
the term "Fundamentalism" or "fundamentalism". This is because I have a
very good knowledge of the meaning of the terms and the difference between
the word with a capital "F" and with a lower case "f"
The Fundamentalist movement was largely responsible for the word
"fundamentalist" used as an adjective. The Fundamentalist movement was a
Princeton America based Right Wing (Protestant)political movement that was
anti socialist and anti social democratic. On the religious level it was a
reaction to increasing academic study and understanding of Judeo
Christianity which was drawing Christianity away from the superstitious
structure instituted as early as the first and second centuries by,
initially the Paulists, and later what became the Johannine Paulists.
Fundamentalism was a movement that sought to retain the political
authoritarianism both within the (Protestant) Church and in the Churches'
influence on administration and Government. It did this by claiming
certain items to be the Fundamentals of the faith that were not to be
questioned and amongst these was a recognition of the Bible as being
inerrant in literal history and theology both in terms of complete
passages and even in terms of verses taken out of context.
The fundamentalist movements in other religions largely have arisen as a
reaction - often a defensive reaction - to the Christian Fundamentalist
movement as a result of the recognition that the racism inherent in
Fundamentalism and its adherents often leads to an international foreign
policy of Imperialism not much different to the Imperialism that first
invaded the Americas. The fundamentalist movements often access American
Fundamentalist material and adapt it to their own religions. Often these
days they do it via the internet web pages of Fundamentalist groups in the
USA and the UK
Fundamentalism is always authoritarian and always intolerant including
"fundamentalism" in Catholicism, which centres itself on "tradition",
"traditional ("apostolic")authority , and "dogma"
Fundamentalsim is antidemocratic and anti social democratic. Its
political and religious ideal combine in the creation of a structure that
is bordering on the creation of a theocratic state. Thus Islamic
fundamentalists seek to create autocratic structures of government
implementing Islamic Law and keeping women in complete subjugation.
Christian Fundamentalists in their pursuit of theocracy raise the spectre
of the worlds first Fundamentalist nuclear power, which is what frightens
other cultures in that a crusading attitude is built into Fundamentalism.
It is also what attracts to the Fundamentalist fold right wing militias,
Conservative Republicans, neo Nazis, Fascists, Creationists etc including
those near psychotics and actual psychotics with Armageddon fantasies
"fundamentalism" is not a hate statement. It is the recognition of the
existence WITHIN the Churches of a tyrannical mentality which is the
source of terrorist attitudes especially when mimicked by other religions
and ideologies that is based on a genuine historical movement.
Fundamentalism is always politically authoritarian to the point of both
racism and fascism it is always intolerant to the point of terrorism in
its most extreme form
In Christianity Fundamentalism is so anti Jesuses teachings as to be
reasonably described as "the Antichrist" - where he is expected to be -
right within the religion itself
Fundamentalism is the Antichrist within Christianity - it is the force
that seeks to negate the progressive nature of Jesuses teachings and of
the Early followers of the Jesus movement. Fundamentalists to this end
unquestioningly support the supposed apostleship and scriptural authority
of Paul - the man in history most responsible for distorting the faith
from a social movement seeking to base society on love and compassion to
one based on authoritarianism and pagan based claims as to the nature of
Jesus that mostly ignore the central importance of what he said and
demonstrated during his lifetime.
Fundamentalism in Christianity is based on speculations about a dead and
Resurrected Jesus whereas the religion of Jesus was centred on a living
human teacher and social reformer.
DEFINITIONS
Fundamentalism. A movement reaffirming orthodox Protestant Christianity in
order to defend it militantly against the challenges of liberal theology,
German higher criticism, Darwinism, and other views regarded as harmful to
American Christianity. It arose in the early l900s and reached its height
during and after World War I. Since then, the focus of the movement, the
meaning of the term, and the ranks of those who willingly use the term to
identify themselves have changed several times. Fundamentalism has gone
through four phases of expression while maintaining an essential
continuity of spirit, belief, and method.
The 1920s. The earliest phase involved articulating what was
fundamental to Christianity and initiating an urgent battle to expel
enemies of orthodox Protestantism from mainline churches. A series of 12
volumes called The Fundamentals (1910-15) identified a wide listing of
enemies騎omanism, socialism, modern philosophy, atheism, Eddyism,
Mormonism, spiritualism, and the like. Above all, liberal theology, which
rested on a naturalistic interpretation of faith, and German higher
criticism and Darwinism, which appeared to undermine the Bible's
authority, were identified as threats. The writers represented a broad,
interdenominational Christianity in both North America and the United
Kingdom. The doctrines they defined and defended covered historical
Christian teachings. They presented criticisms fairly, with careful
argument and in appreciation of much their opponents said. Almost
immediately, however, the list of enemies became narrower and the
fundamentals less comprehensive.
The term "fundamentalist" was perhaps first used in 1920 by Curtis Lee
Laws in the Baptist Watchman-Examiner, but it seemed to pop up everywhere
in the early 1920s as an identification for someone who believed and
actively defended the fundamentals of the faith.
Late 1920s to the EarZy 1940s. By 1926 or so, militant fundamentalists had
failed to expel the modernists from any denomination. Moreover, they lost
the battle against evolution. Orthodox Protestants, who still numerically
dominated the denominations, began to struggle among themselves. During
the 1930s the term "fundamentalist" came to apply to one party among those
who believed the traditional fundamentals of the faith. New "pure"
denominations emerged. The distinctive theological point that the
fundamentalists made was that they rep resented true Christianity, based
on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and that this truth ought to be
expressed organizationally in separation from liberals and modernists;
separatism was aligned with the maintenance of fundamental Christianity.
Fundamentalists identified with purity in personal morality and American
culture. Thus, the term "fundamentalist" came to refer largely to orthodox
Protestants who left mainline northern denominations and established new
denominations, joined conservative Southern churches, or started
independent churches.
Early 1940s to the 1970s. From the early 1940s fundamentalists, thus
redefined, divided gradually into two camps: Many voluntarily continued to
use the term to refer to themselves. They equated fundamentalism with true
Biblebelieving Christianity. Others regarded the term as undesirable,
connoting divisiveness, intolerance, anti-intellectualism, unconcern with
social problems, even foolishness. This second group wished to regain
fellowship with orthodox Protestants who still constituted the vast
majority of clergy and people in the large Northern
denominations輝resbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian. They
began during the 1940s to call themselves "evangelicals" and to equate
that term with true Christianity. Beginning in 1948 a few preferred to
take the name "neoevangelical." Organizationally many separatist
fundamentalists formed the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC)
in 1941. Those desiring a more inclusive fellowship formed the National
Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942, which sought to embrace
orthodox Protestants as individuals in all denominations.
The term "fundamentalist" now expressed a contrast from evangelicals or
neoevangelicals, rather than merely with liberalism, modernism, or
neoorthodoxy. Fundamentalists and evangelicals in the 1950s and 1960s
shared much but remained apart because of a different ethos.
Late 1970s and the 1980s. By the late 1970s, and in particular by the 1980
campaign of Ronald Reagan for the U.S. presidency, fundamentalists entered
a new phase. They became nationally prominent as offering an answer for
what many regarded as a supreme social, economic, moral, and religious
crisis in America. They identified a new and more pervasive enemy, secular
humanism, which they believed was responsible for eroding churches,
schools, universities, the government, and蟻bove all鞠amilies. They fought
those they considered to be offspring of secular humanism evolutionism,
political and theological liberalism, loose persona morality, sexual
perversion, socialism communism, and any turn from the absolute, inerrant
authority of the Bible. They called Americans to return to the
fundamentals of the faith and the fundamental moral values.
C. T. MCLAmRE
See also EVANGELICALISM; FUNDAMENTALS, THE.
Fundamentals, The series of 12 volumes of articles published in Chicago
between 1910 and 1915 as a witness to the central doctrines and
experiences of Protestant Christianity and a defense against modern
movements, cults, and criticisms of orthodoxy. The Fundamentals, subtitled
"A Testimony to the Truth," is associated with the founding of
fundamentalism as a restatement of orthodox Christianity against liberal
theology and modernism; 3 million copies were distributed free to English
speaking ministers, missionaries, and workers around the world. The
Fundamentals originated out of, and was editorially controlled by, persons
in the Bible school, revival, and independent church movements associated
with the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and Moody Bible Institute. The
authors included Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, Independents, and
others, and were from England, Scotland, Canada, and the U.S.
Phar Lap
> I am new to both these message boards and the Baptist Church. I was raised
> in the Lutheran church, and have recently started going to the Baptist
> church. I have been readin you alls posts, and I have to ask if one of you
> is a Baptist or a christian. I specifically was looking for a group to share
> with, and all I have seen is a bunch of people arguing, and debating about
> which version of christianity is better. I thought this was a group for
> baptist? Am I mistaken. Im not trying to put you people down, or start you
> to arguing, I just really want to know why this is labeled as christian
> baptist? I really hope that you don't take me wrong here, I just want to let
> you know that it doesn't look like you all are talking too much about how to
> become better people or christians, and I will not return to this message
> board, and Im sure alot of people that you could have helped by sharing your
> faith have gone elsewhere, because of the horrible things you have said to
> one another. Maybe ther Lutheran church isn't a bad place to be. Didn't
> Jesus say something about the first commandment being to love one another as
> he loves the church?
It must come as a bit of a surpise to you to find the intensity of debate
here and the range of it, particularly when you say:
>I specifically was looking for a group to share
> with, and all I have seen is a bunch of people arguing, and debating about
> which version of christianity is better. I thought this was a group for
> baptist? Am I mistaken. Im not trying to put you people down, or start you
> to arguing, I just really want to know why this is labeled as christian
> baptist?
The fact is not only that not all of us on this line are Baptists but also
that some of us are ex Baptists who reached that state not so much by
walking away from the Baptist Church but by the fact that we (I believe
correctly) detected a blurring of lines between Baptists and other
denominations. We simply lost the delusion that a narrow Baptist
definition of Christianity was correct in its exclusion from the faith of
those of other denominations or of those who simply understood the actions
of Jesus in a different manner.
In my life I have particularly noted the works of three ministers and only
one is a Baptist. The first is the Reverend Martin Luther King - who for
me defined the Christians personal involvement in social progress. The
others were the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich John AT Robinson (deceased)
and more recently the Episcopalean Bishop of Newark (retired) John Spong,
these last two in reference to the desperate need for theological reform.
Christianity to me is no longer containable within "old bottles"
To me all these factors belong in ANY debate about Christianity, and so
personally do those - such as myself belonging to what Spong calls the
biggest Alumni Movement in the world , the "Christian Alumni" those who
see themselves as having left Christianity and the Churches, through often
unintentional "graduation" (or maturity) out of the currently dominant
narrow Fundamentalism dominated Christian institution world view.
So here is a piece of one of those writers. To me it is vastly more
enriching than the "Bread and Circuses" put on by Fundamentalists to prop
up their looney version of the Faith for to me Christianity that is not
progressive and is not rational , reasonable debateable and clearly based
on both equality and love is nothing to do with Jesus at all.
"I find it interesting that those who are identified with present day
institutional religion are the most eager to shut the debate down and even
to purge my ideas from the Church. But those who live on the edges of
institutional church life and those who have abandoned Christianity itself
are effusive in welcoming this debate to find a new way to God. So to
press for a New Reformation, I focus now on the dated way the Jesus story
has been traditionally interpreted and on what a reformed Christology
might look like.
The bedrock of the Christian experience is captured in the assertion that
the Holy God was present in and met through the life of Jesus. That
experience was at first not explained, it was simply stated. Paul did it
best when he wrote, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world." But once
that assertion was made, various explanations began to develop based on
the way God was perceived in the 1st century as a supernatural being
dwelling beyond the sky, who invaded human history to accomplish the
divine will. If God was in Christ, then an explanation had to be devised
about how this God above had entered the world in Jesus and how this God
in Jesus returned to heaven when the work of redemption was complete. The
story of the virgin birth was designed to achieve the divine entry. The
story of the cosmic ascension provided the means of departure.
The virgin birth tradition, however, assumed an ancient view of
reproduction which believed that the newborn lived in the sperm of the
male who simply planted it into the womb of the female. So to proclaim the
divine origin of a person, one simply replaced the human father with a
divine agent. It was not necessary to replace the mother since she was
believed to add nothing to the new life. A virgin birth was therefore a
rather sexist male misunderstanding of procreation.
But in 1724 the egg cell was discovered and people realized that the woman
was the co-creator of every life, contributing fifty percent of the
genetic code of every child. Suddenly virgin birth stories became
biological nonsense. The Church needs to face this fact. At the end of
Jesus' life a story had to be devised to enable the theistic God whom they
believed they had met in him to return to the divine abode above the sky.
The ascension story accomplished that. This story assumed that the earth
was the center of a three tiered universe. The sky was the roof of the
earth beyond which the theistic God lived in heaven.
But in the 16th and 17th centuries Copernicus and Galileo confronted us
with a new version of cosmic reality. The centrality of the earth was
obliterated and the heavens began to be demystified. Suddenly Christians
had to recognize that ascending into the sky was not the route to heaven.
Given our present knowledge of cosmology, such a journey would at best
achieve an endless orbit, while at worst one would ultimately escape the
limits of gravity and sink into the infinite depths of space. So the
literal story of the ascension no longer translates to space age people.
Perhaps the most challenging and disturbing realization of all comes when
believers begin to recognize that the primary way in which the death of
Jesus has been traditionally understood is in terms of human sacrifice.
That is hardly an appealing concept in our day. The words so central to
Christian self-understanding, like "Jesus died for my sins," or "Jesus
paid the price of sin on the cross of Calvary," or "I have been saved by
the blood of Christ, are nothing short of ludicrous when we recognize
what they mean. They assume a literalness about various elements of the
ancient Christian myth. That myth proclaimed that God, at the dawn of
time, completed the act of creation and judged it to be perfect. Turning
the creation over to human beings, this myth asserted that the human
creatures violated God's sacred order in an act of cosmic disobedience and
fell into sin. So distorting of our humanity was this "original sin," as
we called it, that human beings stained by this sin were exiled
permanently from God's presence. Unable to save themselves, the myth
continued, these human beings stood condemned before the throne of grace,
crying out for a savior to rescue them from their self-inflicted wounds.
Jesus was God's answer to these cries. He came from God to aid the fallen
world only to discover that the price of rescue would be his very life.
Accepting that price, Jesus became the human sacrifice which both God and
sin required. In the death of Jesus, God's sense of justice was thus
satisfied and the divine wrath of God was turned away from the fallen
human creature, at least from those who were willing to be covered by the
shed blood of this sacrificial act. Only through that human sacrifice on
the cross, this myth proclaims, are human beings enabled once again to
enter the presence of God from which the fall had banished us.
Christians have repeated the formulas of this traditional myth so often
that we have become inured to the grotesque image of God they reveal, and
to the destructive definition of human life they employ. Such words may
have carried the Christian message in an ancient world, but they are not
likely to carry it into an enlightened future. A Reformation must redefine
the function of the Christ if Christianity is to remain a viable faith
system.
We begin that Reformation with the recognition that we are post-Darwinian
people. We know that creation is neither finished nor perfect. Human life
is still in an evolving process. New galaxies are still being formed . So
the definition of human beings as fallen from an original perfection
becomes unreal. Reality for us is that we emerged from the darkness of our
evolutionary struggle and we have been moving for billions of years into
higher and higher levels of consciousness. Thus the tale of a savior who
rescued us from a fall that never happened and who has restored us to a
perfection we never possessed is not likely either to communicate or to
appeal to modern minds. Equally unappealing will be a liturgy designed to
reenact each Sunday that saving sacrifice of the cross which required the
death of the divine Son as a ransom.
The traditional view of Christology is thus no longer operative. These
ancient explanations must now be seen not as the essence of Christianity,
but as part of the cocoon of our religious immaturity that must be
abandoned. They can never be the essence of our religious future. If
these outmoded understandings of the meaning of Jesus exhaust the Christ
experience, then Christianity will surely die.
Christianity so clearly stands today in need of a Reformation that will
recast the Christ experience in radically different ways from those of our
Christian past. If God was in Christ, as I deeply believe, then a new way
must be found to make sense of that incarnate presence. But surely that
must be a call into the transforming love of God, rather than a call into
dependent gratitude. The idolatry of ancient and outmoded explanations
must be broken open or we stand to lose the wonder that makes the Christ
so radically important." (Spong)
+
iconoclast
" Phar Lap" <Melbou...@Flemington.com> wrote in message
> In article <zB_8b.3746$v%5.798@fed1read02>, "iconoclast" <ic...@home.net>
wrote:
>
> > " Phar Lap" <Melbou...@Flemington.com> wrote in message
> > news:Melbournecup-1...@ppp121.dyn27.pacific.net.au...
> > > It is a Fundamentalist lie that limits him to the cross as a source of
> > > Salvation through politically correct Right Wing thinking and assent
to
> > > contentless superstitious assertions
> > >
> > > Some of us would remove the nails and bringJesus back down from the
> > > cross. For to us Christianity is a progressive way of life based on a
> > > real living human being
> > >
> > > Or it is nothing!
> >
> > 1. Using a term incorrectly like "fundamentalism" ( A specific HATE
term
> > against a thousand different religious system.
> >
> > 2. "For to us Christianity is a progressive way of life based on a real
> > living human being"
> >
> > Identifies one who has no fundamental concept of ANYTHING because
neither
> > term or statement has any logical meaning whatever.
> >
> > Both terms are hate statements.
>
> +++++++
> On the contrary
>
Both terms are hate statements.
Fundamentalism to you is not fundamentalism to your neighbor.
Progressive is a cop out term and means only YOU and those that agree are
progressive.
Both are signs and statements of bigotry and hate.
BTW "real" is only to the beholder.
Phar Lap
wrote:
>
> Fundamentalism to you is not fundamentalism to your neighbor.
>
> Progressive is a cop out term and means only YOU and those that agree are
> progressive.
>
> Both are signs and statements of bigotry and hate.
>
> BTW "real" is only to the beholder.
No - several times. What is lacking in your case is maturity - with that
often comes a better grasp on reality.
Fundamentalism is a term actually based on the title given to a specific
political religious movement - as explained in my previous post. The
title Fundamentals was actually used for their core publications - hence
the term
the term fundamentalsim is derived from it to apply to a similar mindset
in other faiths and ideologies
The use of such terms has nothing to do with bigotry and hatred - the
upholders of Christian Fundamentalism are PROUD of their "Fundamentals"
As to "BTW "real" is only to the beholder" - get a grip!
But if you have lost it or never had it - it is good that you at least admit it.
People like John W fail even on that score.
+
iconoclast
" Phar Lap" <Melbou...@Flemington.com> wrote in message
Whatever it takes to justify your bigotry, you do it.
If your mastery of the English language is so limited that you resort to
self defined (or definition of similar ilk), so be it.
Phar Lap
wrote:
Actually I used an Encyclopaedia of Evangelical theology that is
recognised and endorsed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury
Which reminds me of the Joke
+
A man and his wife visited Canterbury and went into a tea shop near the
cathedral
The man looked across at two people sitting at another table and said to
his wife "Look dear, over there. I think it is the Archbishop of
Canterbury"
"Are you sure said his wife? Why don't you go over and ask him?"
So the husband went over and a moment later came back with a disurbed look
on his face.
His wife said "Did you ask him if he is the Archbishop of Canterbury. What
did he say?"
"He said 'F---Off'" said the husband
"Oh dear!" said the wife. "Now we'll never know"
+