When is a Christian not a Christian?
Schroedingers Cat
Shipmate
in Purgatory
So this is partially prompted by the odious Jacob Rees-Mogg saying that his Glorious Leaders Johnsons adulterous (and criminal and abusive and everything else) behaviour is not an issue for him. But also by the Trump-is-my-boyfriend churches in the states. And other stuff, so it is not about a particular doctrinal issue.
It is very easy to say "Oh they are not Christian", and one falls into the No True Scotsman fallacy, that is used by some of these people to deny that I am a Christian. And they may be right (as I have said before, if JRM represents Christianity, then I am not a Christian. Even if this brand is right, I have no desire to be part of that cult).
But it brings me to the question - if "disagreeing with me" is not the mark of not being a Christian, what is? If someone describes themselves as Christian, makes the claims, is part of a group who accept these claims (that is not a big requirement) - how does one validly argue that they are not, without excluding some of those who are.
One could argue "adherence to the creeds", which raises 2 major questions:
1. I am a Quaker. We do not have any sense of a formal adherence to a creed. Many within Quakerism are Christians, despite the fact that they may not know or believe in the creeds.
2. As with all such formulations, the wording is so open to interpretation, it is possible to mean utterly different things by it. I doubt that in any given Anglican church, any two people mean precisely the same thing by it, despite their saying of it together. And that is within one comunity.
How do you embrace the wealth of what Christinity is about globally? with all of the incompatibilities and inconsistencies? And yet, if everything can be Christian - if all you need t odo it claim it - then it is meaningless.
It is very easy to say "Oh they are not Christian", and one falls into the No True Scotsman fallacy, that is used by some of these people to deny that I am a Christian. And they may be right (as I have said before, if JRM represents Christianity, then I am not a Christian. Even if this brand is right, I have no desire to be part of that cult).
But it brings me to the question - if "disagreeing with me" is not the mark of not being a Christian, what is? If someone describes themselves as Christian, makes the claims, is part of a group who accept these claims (that is not a big requirement) - how does one validly argue that they are not, without excluding some of those who are.
One could argue "adherence to the creeds", which raises 2 major questions:
1. I am a Quaker. We do not have any sense of a formal adherence to a creed. Many within Quakerism are Christians, despite the fact that they may not know or believe in the creeds.
2. As with all such formulations, the wording is so open to interpretation, it is possible to mean utterly different things by it. I doubt that in any given Anglican church, any two people mean precisely the same thing by it, despite their saying of it together. And that is within one comunity.
How do you embrace the wealth of what Christinity is about globally? with all of the incompatibilities and inconsistencies? And yet, if everything can be Christian - if all you need t odo it claim it - then it is meaningless.
Comments
I agree ‘Christian’ is meaningless as a term. If I’m asked ‘are you a Christian?’ I ask ‘what do you mean by Christian?’ and then I answer their specific question.
That works.
My personal brand of Christianity emphasises an inward focus, an effort at self-understanding to aid in relating to those around me. I wish to focus on my personal conduct while seeking to avoid criticising the conduct of others. I don't know if that chimes with other people's way of living out their faith, but I'd guess that many shipmates have similar approaches.
One of the aspects of faith exercising my mind is the highly individual nature of my personal brand. In seeking to avoid moral criticism of others, I ignore a huge swathe of biblical precedent and Christian teaching. I see it as a massive difference between myself and the overwhelming majority of Christians, and that's a little disconcerting.
I think the collective aspect, the community aspect involved in setting standards lies behind your post, SC. You wouldn't care whether certain other people called themselves Christian unless you thought that their actions and beliefs reflected upon you. And their membership of our group calls into question our version of a Christian moral code, and vice versa.
A difficulty for all of us is Scripture and its Christian midrash comes out of cultures where individuals primarily understand themselves as part of groups. Their identity and values all comes out of group membership, rather than my culture, which stresses identity at least in differentiation from groups.
But this is not an either/or distinction. Group identity remains very strong indeed even in the most individualistic of our societies, like the USA. One massive difference between my brand and others is that many modern Christians truly believe that national salvation and the Christian purity of the nation (especially concerning gender and sexual identity) are inextricably linked. I think many American Christians in particular act on the belief that abortion is not only sinful, but the scale of that sinning puts their country on a path to destruction and woe at God's hand. This is an aspect of the cultural war fought and lost by conservative Christians in Australia by the 1980's, but in another phase right now in America. And conservative Christians in Australia are watching and waiting.
So I think I and many of our shipmates are on the pointy end of the community/individual spectrum when it comes to our expressions of faith, but I might well be wrong. Hell, I'm likely to be wrong about myself. This collective aspect of Christianity is playing the role of grit in my sock, so who knows what I'll think next week.
He does not hesitate to call out those who "preach Christ out of envy and rivalry" or indeed "out of selfish ambition, not sincerely", but then, almost in the same breath, adds "what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice."
Cultivating that acknowledgement of the Gospel somehow getting out there despite things that make our own toes curl is a good recipe against Pharisaism and holier-than-thou arrogance. At the same time, speaking out about what is toe-curling (from our perspective) is healthy and, provided we apply it personally, good for our own practice too.
Jesus had a lot to say about that!
I'm not even sure it's OK to laugh at this any more - I've got Guardian-reader's anxiety - but 'if loving the Lord is wrong, I don't wanna be right'. In my mind it was the Blues Brothers, but it turns out to be Coming to America. If I provided the link, someone would probably grass me to the big G.
Proper English and white!
If asked what that means I frame my answer according to the asker: eg "I was brought up in it", or "I think it's the best religion going and for me the most accessible", or "I think it's the most beautiful and just world view". Usually people who do follow it up have a specific question they ask me first eg "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Risen Saviour and Lord?" or "Do you believe in God?". To the first I would say "Well., yes ... but I would not use that vocabulary". To the second I would say "Of course!"
While I might ask people of Other Religions about their religion it would be a general inquiry and not a personal question. Apart from sometimes when I will add "Do you pray daily?" which is not offensive. But that is only if if the conversation is going nicely and they have not got a tricky agenda
Rees-Mogg's Catholicism strikes me as more of a vibe.
Do people really buttonhole strangers at bus stops and ask them that, point blank? It's never happened to me. But if it did, my impulse would be to reply, "Why do you want to know?"
Thing is, ultimately I am asking this of myself, becasue I am asking if "Christian" is a tag that I want. I am asking if there is a definition that embraces me and Mogg and others. In the end, it is about whetehr I want to use this, or whether it is so debased that I don't.
Beyond that, I am put in mind of the wheat and the tares. I agree it would be much more comforting if one could put a sharp dividing line between oneself and the more odious features of Christian history.
It happened to me in a museum in Holyhead, of all places - the exact question was "Have you found Jesus?", and I came within a heartbeat of answering "Yes, he was down the back of the sofa all along" before I came out with something more tactful.
(Although to be fair I have a friend and colleague whose journey from atheism to faith included him having a vision of Jesus in the friend’s Home Counties living room.)
That’s charitable
Quite so, it being no business of yours, mine or anyone else’s
Did it lead to a friendly and helpful conversation?
What I hate is ‘Call yourself a Christian!?’ which tends to come from judgemental non - Christians. But I’ll forgive them - eventually.
Do I like JRM? No. Do I think his version of Christianity is deficient? Yes, at least for me. Am I going to say he can't be a Christian because of the views he's expressed? No - I'll leave that for God to sort out in His own time.
“Believe in” is defined historically by the Creeds but has led to a lot of contention over what beliefs are orthodox and what are heretical.
“Follower” is even less well defined! It is shorthanded by a question and admonition. What would Jesus do facing your circumstances and choices? And once you have an answer to that, the admonition is “go and do likewise”.
Personally I like the idea that being a Christian is something we profess and wrestle with, both in terms of beliefs and following. It’s a personal and corporate journey. .Some expressions of Christianity believe you can and should codify all that. I’m not one of those. I prefer the Beatles’ advice about the journey.
Lyrics for "We can work it out.
(edited for copyright reasons. My quote of the lyrics was too long - B62)
There’s been far too much falling apart and not enough co-operative working out. Willingness to live with differences for the greater good.
No idea what true and false Scotsman is about. A regional expression apparently. Perhaps similar to things that walk and quack and thus are ducks.
I’m struck, though, by the absence of any offer by the singer to see it the other person’s way - the other person is being set up to take the blame for the break-up. “We can work it out if you would just start seeing things my way.”
(Post edited for copyright reasons; my original quote was too long - B62)
That's one way of reading it. The more natural, to my mind, is "try walking a mile in my shoes," not, "my way or the highway."
What’s sauce for the goose?
You’re right of course if it is just applied to one party.
This is sort of where I am coming from. I don't want to say JRM is not a Christian - as you say, that is not for me.
But at what point could we say this? Or is "Christianity" something that anyone can claim irrespective of their belief system - in which case it is meaningless. I have no desire to dismiss others faith just because it is completely disconnected to mine. And - importantly - I am a great beleiver in a degree of Cultural Chritsianity - that is, it will not be the same for everyone everywhere.
But then, what is it? Or - to put it in my orginal terms - what isn;t it?
It struck me that the Trump is my boyfriend type churches hitched their wagon onto the parade from the north. And it has had negative consequences for the whole church here. For the first time since probably the '30s religious affiliation, including all religious expressions, has fallen below 50% in the United States. But rather than seeing the glass half empty, I see it half full. There is opportunity out there.
I was once waiting at a tram stop in Plzeň, in the Czech Republic, when a Mormon missionary asked me, in English, if I believed in God. I didn't ask him what his game-plan was for the rest of the population who by and large didn't speak English ...
Tautology is what it means apparently. I will forget again the next time.
"Should I stay or should I go?" by The Clash is probably more pertinent here.
My sense is that it means something closer to "moving the goal posts," although the Wikipedia piece does seem to emphasize the idea of tautology. It's most like the Lewis Carrol notion that "a word mean exactly what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Odd, the LDS missionaries have very extensive training in languages of the nation they are sent to. I am surprised he used English in the encounter.
That being said , there are good Christians and bad Christians and an awful lot inbetween.
More likely Jesus and friends from the East (up the hill just past Jericho) and the Roman army, cavalry and whatever from Caesaria in the West.
English is a very common second language around the world. I'd have expected a greeting in Czech or whatever local language and then English would be reasonable to converse with.
I am very much struck with people like these folks asking a personal question like this. It bothers me. My many decades ago roommate fielded a question from a Jehovah Witness with "No, I have my own religion, I worship Satan". The rest of the conversation is lost to me. He didn't pass ACPO (assessment conference of postulants for ordination). I can only guess why.
Well it is a minority religion and also I look foreign. If that is important to people they will not hesitate to ask.
If it is around Christmas sometimes people actually like to say "Happy Christmas"; it makes them feel inclusive and I think it is very nice of them. The students at the high school where I worked loved to say "Happy Christmas'. It was so sweet. Often it was the first time in their life they had said it In Real Life so there was a certain thrill and frisson to the interaction. You know, the age of experimentation and taking chances.
The generation(s) that grew up under Communism learnt German and Russian in school. The generation that grew up immediately after the Velvet Revolution learnt English from hastily re-trained Russian teachers - at least one acquaintence told me her English teacher was working about four lessons ahead of her class, and passing on knowledge as she acquired it.
I have a lot of sympathy for rank-and-file JWs, because they are effectively told "Proselytise, or be disfellowshipped" - if you grew up in the faith, your choice is between annoying a few strangers, and being cut off from your entire family.
The gentleman @Schroedingers Cat mentions in the OP is, so far as anybody can know, baptised and professes the faith once delivered, in his case as a Roman Catholic. Whether one thinks everything he says or does is compatible with his profession, either by one's own standards or Pope Francis's, I think one has to accept that might make him a bad Christian, an inconsistent Christian or a hypocritical one rather than an unbeliever, an apostate or not-a-Christian-at-all. Alas most of the rest of us probably also fit all three of that first list of Christian sub-categories rather than none, one or even two of them.
As to the state of somebody else's soul, that's a matter for God, themselves and any confessor or director they might approach. One might speculate but neither I, nor any of the rest of us, can know that even with people we meet, yet alone somebody we haven't met.
The same objection occurred to me. In the Roman period, Caesarea to Jerusalem is said to have been a two-day march, with an overnight stop at Antipatris, the present-day Tel Afek, about 30 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Jesus and his companions had walked up the hill from Bethany, which lies two or three miles east of Jerusalem. Neither of them was coming from the south.
No reason at all, that I know of.