Christianity in your mind's eye

[historia]

Christianity is one of the world's largest and most diverse religious traditions.

And yet, for brevity's sake, it's convenient to make reference to 'Christianity' or 'Christians' on this forum without having to reel off a litany of qualifiers about which particular churches, beliefs, and practices we are describing. But do we all have the same thing in mind when we do this?

Consider these comments from a couple of our friendly neighborhood atheists:

Take mainstream Catholic teaching, remove Mary, mother of God stuff, remove Papal authority. That's my working assumption of what Christianity is

As far as I'm concerned, anyone that says they're Christian is Christian, but pretending that the Catholics are anything but the standard for orthodoxy is chutzpah.

Questions for debate:

When making reference to 'Christianity' in general terms, should we all have in mind Roman Catholicism (or something close to that)?

Is that, in fact, the expression of Christianity you have in your mind when you personally use the term 'Christianity'?

[tam]

Peace to you,

Christianity is one of the world's largest and most diverse religious traditions.

And yet, for brevity's sake, it's convenient to make reference to 'Christianity' or 'Christians' on this forum without having to reel off a litany of qualifiers about which particular churches, beliefs, and practices we are describing. But do we all have the same thing in mind when we do this?

Consider these comments from a couple of our friendly neighborhood atheists:

Take mainstream Catholic teaching, remove Mary, mother of God stuff, remove Papal authority. That's my working assumption of what Christianity is

As far as I'm concerned, anyone that says they're Christian is Christian, but pretending that the Catholics are anything but the standard for orthodoxy is chutzpah.

Questions for debate:

When making reference to 'Christianity' in general terms, should we all have in mind Roman Catholicism (or something close to that)?

Is that, in fact, the expression of Christianity you have in your mind when you personally use the term 'Christianity'?

If I use the term "Christianity" I will use a qualifier such as "Christianity (the religion)" to distinguish the religion from the faith. Because religion and faith are not the same, though not everyone accepts that.

For the most part (and no exceptions are coming to mind), when someone uses the term "Christianity", I think of the religion and all its many sects and denominations. Roman Catholicism is necessarily included in that (perhaps the first 'daughter/sect'), and then another 'daughter/sect' came out of her, and then another, and then others out of them, etc, etc. I can understand why they do that to a point, considering how Luther felt about the RCC religion/leadership. But Luther did not come out of the RCC all the way; he carried some of her erroneous doctrines and teachings when he started a new sect (as each subsequent sect has done). Protestantism is not a different religion. Just a different sect of the same religion.

Of course, these days you must also clarify what you mean by the word, religion. Some people use the word religion as just meaning belief or faith (though I find this is mostly done by people who are trying to prove that someone else actually is religious when they claim not to be religious, refusing to accept that a person can have faith, but not religion). For me, by religion, I mean the institution... organized, institutionalized religion. The RCC. The LDS. The WTS/JW organization. Pentecostal. Anglican. Lutheran. All those evangelical groups, even though they might not always give themselves a name. ETC. So again, the RCC and every other sect and denomination are part of "Christianity" (the religion).

Sure, there are some differences in them, but they all have men as leaders, follow doctrines and traditions that have been handed down (and every sect that came out of a previous sect carries some of the baggage from that previous sect - such as the trinity doctrine, the 'hell' doctrine, the 'bible is the word of God' doctrine... as well as mimicking the previous religions set-up: religious leaders such as "popes", priests, reverends, governing bodies, rituals, 'articles of faith' that adherents must abide by, traditions/rules of men, etc.) And just compare the similarities of the RCC to the Roman state religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Pontiffs



**

As for being Christian, that has nothing at all to do with religion. Christ did not start a new religion nor continue a previous religion. God sanctioned one religion (the Temple/Levitical preisthood/law given through Moses)... UNTIL such a time as Christ came. Then we were meant to listen to Him, to worship in and through Him (in spirit and in truth). His promise is that if a person loves Him, they will remain in His word, keep His commands, and that person will be loved by His Father, and they will come and make their home with(in) that person (John 14:21, 23).


A Christian is a disciple of Christ who is also anointed with holy spirit. Being a member of a religion does not make a person Christian. Neither does (physical) water baptism (that was for repentance of sins as committed under the law/old covenant). The baptism of holy spirit (the water of Life) - the baptism that Christ gives us (Mark 1:8; John 20:22) - is what makes a person an anointed one (a Christian). Though a person can be a disciple without (yet) being Christian (as the apostles were disciples first, then later received holy spirit).



Peace again to you, and to you all,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

[cms]

My question for those who offered this type of a response: Do you do the same thing for other religions?

Historia, I'm pretty much in agreement with theophile.

I don't think Christianity (or any religion for that matter) is a matter of belief if belief means intellectual assent to a set of basic propositions (e.g., Jesus saved us all from sin).

To me, Christianity is more a way of life, or right living in the Spirit of God. In other words, producing the fruit of the Spirit( love, compassion, justice, truthfulness etc.)

As for being Christian, that has nothing at all to do with religion. Christ did not start a new religion nor continue a previous religion.

tam, I agree. Christianity was in existence long before Jesus. It was just called by another name, mainly Israel.

God sanctioned one religion (the Temple/Levitical preisthood/law given through Moses)... UNTIL such a time as Christ came.

However, I disagree with what you say here. God didn't sanction one religion, He sanctioned one way of life, a life of the Spirit, that is to love others as ourselves. The Temple/ Levitical priesthood was a sect that some did not leave behind when they came out of Egypt. It was excess baggage as you say.

Roman Catholicism is necessarily included in that (perhaps the first 'daughter/sect'),

I think Roman Catholicism is a daughter/sect of the Levitical priesthood.

[historia]

You already have my answer up there, I would just add that around half of all Christians are Catholics, around a third are Protestants. Catholic minus the distinctly Catholic ideas is a pretty safe starting point.

I agree with this way of approaching things completely.

I would add that Eastern Orthodox Christians have very similar beliefs and practices to Roman Catholics and constitute 12% of all Christians. Throw in Anglicans, who also share a ton in common, and now you have close to 2/3rds of all Christians worldwide.

Roman Catholicism minus a few distinctives -- I wouldn't say Mary as the Mother of God is one of those, but I catch your general drift here, Bust Nak -- and you have what I think of as 'historic' Christianity.

That isn't to say that the remaining Protestant churches and other Christians aren't part of Christianity. But it simply recognizes that the diversity we see in Christianity lies largely at the margins, in increasingly small numbers. We should think of Christianity primarily as this historical core of Orthodox beliefs and practices, and see the rest as exceptions to the rule.

I look at other religions the same way. When I think of Islam I think of Sunni Islam. When I think of Judaism, I picture conservative or orthodox Judaism. Not because that captures the entire, diverse array of beliefs and practices in either religion, but simply because that is the mainstream expression of each tradition.

[historia]

Any view of Christianity that doesn't include both this:

[image]

And this:

[image]

Is incomplete.

I appreciate this point.

However, what if we were to keep both images in view, but, taking up Bust Nak's point in post #4, actually scale the images so their relative size reflects the relative number of adherents of each of these groups.

It would look like this:



And this:



If you can't see the snake handler picture, it's because snake handling churches have only a few thousand members, while Eastern Orthodoxy has well over 200 million. To scale, the snake handlers are but a tiny fraction of one pixel.

That's also how I think we should view Christianity. Groups like snake-handling Pentecostals are so small that they (literally) drop out of view, whereas Eastern Orthodoxy is just basic Christianity.

[cms]

That's also how I think we should view Christianity.

historia, Are you saying that we should all see Christians as people who dress in robes and wear crowns on their heads?

Christianity is named after Christ Jesus. If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is that we should all view Christianity through a different lens.

[cms]

Bust Nak, you said:
Catholic minus the distinctly Catholic ideas is a pretty safe starting point.

I'm just curious, why all the minuses? Why not just the starting points of Jesus the Christ ( the pure form of God's word to love others as ourselves)from which the name Christianity is derived?

[Diagoras]

But, apart from this forum or any kind of debate, when you personally think about Christianity, do you picture it as just being this really basic, minimal set of beliefs? Or do you picture it differently?

As a non-theist, I'm inclined to picture Christianity more as 'being this really basic, minimal set of beliefs', than the 'acting in a certain way'. The latter is compatible (in my view) with the philosophy of humanism in many respects, so it would be too broad a characterisation to be really useful.

Those basic beliefs have been stated by otseng in another thread to include - assuming I recall correctly: the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus as indisputable fact. There may be other beliefs held by a sufficiently large proportion of people professing to be Christian to warrant being included in that 'minimal set'.

The problem with the above view is what to do with the denomination that is 'mainstream' in every respect, other than one of those basic beliefs. Would you say they were 'Christian-like', for example? A plot of frequency against various specific beliefs (if such a thing were practical) would likely result in a kind of 'normal distribution' for Christianity and the virgin birth would be pretty much in the middle.

[historia]

Are you saying that we should all see Christians as people who dress in robes and wear crowns on their heads?

No, what I'm saying is that the large number of beliefs and practices held in common between Eastern Orthodoxy & Roman Catholicism are what we should all have in mind when someone talks generally about 'Christianity'.

Christianity is named after Christ Jesus. If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is that we should all view Christianity through a different lens.

Which lens are you viewing it through now?

[Eloi]

Jesus said:

Matt. 7:13 “Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; 14 whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it."

So, whatever you think of real Christianism based on big religious institutions should be really wrong.

[cms]

No, what I'm saying is that the large number of beliefs and practices held in common between Eastern Orthodoxy & Roman Catholicism are what we should all have in mind when someone talks generally about 'Christianity'.

historia, Jesus Christ represents Christianity. He was the model, the very definition of Christianity. The law of Christ is to love others.We are warned not to add or subtract from the word/law for good reason. Although different denominations may share some common beliefs, in adding or subtracting this and that, they become separate and distinct bodies of their own.
Example:
JW's aren't Catholic. So from you're saying, Catholicism is what we should have in mind when someone talks about JW's.