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Cythereal posted:Not what I was asking. I was talking about the "heavy sin" part, like the thing was saying some sins are much worse than others.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:25
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StashAugustine posted:
Why not? Seems to line up with Romans 3:23.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:29
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Why not? Seems to line up with Romans 3:23. to me "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" is not mutually exclusive with "some sins are worse than others" in no case does this mean "it's okay, go ahead and commit sins cause they're not that bad" but i would argue that there is a moral difference between adolf hitler and a shoplifter
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Jul 16, 2015 19:33
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Jul 16, 2015 19:34
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StashAugustine posted:to me "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" is not mutually exclusive with "some sins are worse than others" From an earthly, human standpoint I would agree. Emphasis on human. Of course our civil laws should exact punishment according to severity. But I don't think that same logic applies to salvation. fake edit: I'm in the Lutheran camp as listed in the OP, FYI
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Jul 16, 2015 19:39
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Masturbation is just a manifestation of lust, which is a deadly sin, hth.
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Jul 16, 2015 19:39
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Paladinus posted:Masturbation is just a manifestation of lust, which is a deadly sin, hth. Which is a manifestation of pride
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Jul 16, 2015 19:42
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Pulvis Sumus posted:Yeah, that's what I intended to do regardless. I only asked because I remembered reading a blog post a while ago written by an Episcopalian priest who claimed to offer communion to everyone regardless of their baptismal status or standing with the church. I wasn't sure if that was a common practice for Episcopalians or not. There are, however, a number of priests and bishops who commune everybody. A few years ago there was a push at General Convention to change the canons to remove the requirement for baptism. I got in a lot of arguments at Episcopal Cafe about it, because it seems to miss the point of communion and baptism. A lot of the proponents seemed to rely on very shaky logic. Most notably, they'd cite incidents in Scripture like the Ethiopian eunuch, or the masses of gentiles converting, and leave out the fact that the converts still got baptised.
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Jul 16, 2015 20:55
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Today, I found out that Urantians are a thing. What can you tell me about, since they seem to be tangentially Christian, and American.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:03
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JcDent posted:Today, I found out that Urantians are a thing. What can you tell me about, since they seem to be tangentially Christian, and American. Just from reading the wiki page on The Urantia Book, their cosmology is fantastic. It's seriously like reading a post-scientific revolution version of the cosmology of many Mahayana Buddhist sutras, including my favorite the Avatamsaka Sutra.
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Jul 16, 2015 21:30
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Keromaru5 posted:Standard practice in TEC is that all baptized Christians may receive communion. There has been a lot of excitement over the election of Michael Curry as the new presiding Bishop in that he does not appear to be afraid of the word Jesus, unlike his predecessor, however his invocation of the phrase "Jesus help me, traditionalists exist," during his first public Eucharist as Presiding Bishop at the close of General Convention didn't exactly win over traditionalists in the audience.
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Jul 17, 2015 14:12
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PantlessBadger posted:he does not appear to be afraid of the word Jesus, unlike his predecessor  How did it work?
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Jul 17, 2015 14:18
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Shouldn't 'servants' in the Bible be 'slaves'?
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Jul 17, 2015 14:38
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Hogge Wild posted:Shouldn't 'servants' in the Bible be 'slaves'?
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Jul 17, 2015 14:41
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HEY GAL posted:post the original of the quote you're thinking of and someone will tell you It's not a certain quote, I was just reading about slavery in Greece and Rome and thought about it. I don't think that free people worked as servants.
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Jul 17, 2015 14:49
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Pulvis Sumus posted:Yeah, that's what I intended to do regardless. I only asked because I remembered reading a blog post a while ago written by an Episcopalian priest who claimed to offer communion to everyone regardless of their baptismal status or standing with the church. I wasn't sure if that was a common practice for Episcopalians or not. I don't know about Episcopal churches specifically, but Protestant churches have wide variations in their communion policies. Probably the best way to find out would be to call beforehand. But if that's too intimidating, you can go to the service and just plan on not taking communion at first. Then when you get there, if there is a bulletin, look through it and see if there is an explanation of their policy. If there isn't, then pay attention during the parts of the service that prepare the communion table. Sometimes the minister(s) will say something at this point that explains the policy. And if you want to feel special, you can do the secret non-communing arm signal handshake to get a blessing.
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Jul 17, 2015 18:55
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Paladinus posted:
Wtc indeed. She referred to Jesus as Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer, but simply not as Jesus. Also I beli very she avoided references to Jesus as the Son or Lord because those might be offensive. Western Anglicanism has a lot of issues with respect to falling away from Christian norms, but The Episcopal Church has its own special brand of crazy.
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Jul 17, 2015 23:39
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Or just "the birth we celebrate." You can read more about it here, in which we see Ricky Gervais talk more about God on Easter than a Presiding Bishop. The same author also did a wordcloud for Christmas.
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Jul 18, 2015 00:12
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Keromaru5 posted:Or just "the birth we celebrate." Ha-ha. Love that Nippon is the same size with God in the Easter one.  This is so baffling to me, though. Why specifically avoid the name Jesus? It's like in one of those Chick Tracts about Catholics who don't know anything about Jesus. Wiki posted:At her direction the national church has initiated lawsuits against departing dioceses and parishes, with some $22 million spent thus far. I realise that some may have left because of her liberal views on social issues (that's the only thing I knew about her before, really), but it's still one of the most hilarious things I've heard a bishop do in a long time.
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Jul 18, 2015 00:53
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 The text I cropped out: "You know it's bad when your mechanic calls in two priests!"
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Jul 18, 2015 00:57
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I didn't read any of those articles but it's weird that church leaders would not say the name of the dude who is super popular even among people who aren't Christian.
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Jul 18, 2015 01:13
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Lutha Mahtin posted:I didn't read any of those articles but it's weird that church leaders would not say the name of the dude who is super popular even among people who aren't Christian. It might be an attempt to put some stylistic distance between one's own "respectable" church and the stereotypical televangelist yelling about JEEEEEZUS every other sentence.
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Jul 18, 2015 01:17
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To me, it's sort of like Man of Steel's reluctance to say "Superman."
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Jul 18, 2015 03:19
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Keromaru5 posted:To me, it's sort of like Man of Steel's reluctance to say "Superman." Given the fact that she was Presiding Bishop for 9 years it's more like watching Smallville and expecting to hear superman, flying and the iconic suit. Also, it's worth noting that litigation against the Diocese of South Carolina ended up costing closer to $40 million and TEC lost the suit, which everyone was expecting for the same reason that every parish that has tried to sue their diocese when they leave has lost. Property belongs to the diocese, not the parish or the national church. Quite a gong show. The Anglican Church of Canada has its own issues, but our Primate at least is willing to name God and Jesus as such. Lutha Mahtin is probably right to some degree, but it's also specifically the term Jesus and Son of God which is concerning (along with God the Father). The review committee that steered amendments to Holy Matrimony to allow for its application to same-sex relationships is doing a review of their main service book to remove "offensive" gendered language like God the Father or even God the Son as their next priority for the 2018 GC. There are folks in the senior echelons that have it in their heads that the only way for Christianity to thrive is if you take out all those offensive Christian bits.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:11
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Thirteen Orphans posted:
The guy on the right is probably a subdeacon or (maybe) a reader like me.
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Jul 18, 2015 05:39
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quote:Lutha Mahtin is probably right to some degree, but it's also specifically the term Jesus and Son of God which is concerning (along with God the Father). The review committee that steered amendments to Holy Matrimony to allow for its application to same-sex relationships is doing a review of their main service book to remove "offensive" gendered language like God the Father or even God the Son as their next priority for the 2018 GC. There are folks in the senior echelons that have it in their heads that the only way for Christianity to thrive is if you take out all those offensive Christian bits. What on earth are they smoking? Are they removing all the references to wine to avoid tempting recovering alcoholics next?
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Jul 18, 2015 09:11
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They haven't made it clear, all they've said so far that I've seen has been a vague reference to God the Father being gender non-inclusive and thus they term it offensive. Here's my best possible explanation for the mindset behind what's happening in TEC these days. This was from a news article/interview given to a member of their commtitee exploring same-sex marriage prior to General Convention (they approved an amendment to Canon law stating that the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony can be given to any persons who may legally be married in the United States, an adept move to allow for Matrimony to be extended to other non-traditional marriages without further debate or amendment of the Canons): “How long are we going to allow documents like the Book of Common Prayer [American 1978 BCP] to contain language that is explicitly discriminatory?” asked the Rev. Will Mebane, interim dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Buffalo and a member of the Task Force on the Study of Marriage. “Demands for the Confederate flag, a symbol of hate, to come down have been heard. … It is time to remove our symbol that contains language of discrimination.” What’s more, committee members said, the current task force has discovered how ill-equipped the church is to minister to unmarried people, who represent the majority of adults in America. In its next phase, the task force would consider a host of issues unrelated to same-sex marriage, including how to reach and care pastorally for those who cohabitate or do not ever intend to marry. “People who are talking about marriage are asking for a very conservative alternative,” said Michael Wood, a deputy from the Diocese of New York. “The progressive position is much more a position of not marrying at all. ... What is the church’s response to the call to give to that new cultural reality?” http://livingchurch.org/prayer-book-discrimination The same sense of needing to respond to cultural mores is leading the massive theological shifts within TEC, because they see opinion polls that say young folks don't mind same-sex marriage and think discriminating against women is wrong and from an external perspective view the Church as homophobic and patriarchal, so regardless of theological Christian norms (they have made only the thinnest efforts to provide rational theological justifications for canonical changes such as same-sex marriage even if there were a compelling case to be made, and I'm not saying this to try and start a debate on the issue here, just to reinforce the point that it doesn't really matter what Scripture and Tradition say to the people making these changes in TEC) they want to do what they can to try and attract fresh young faces to congregations which are shrinking every day. The problem is that those same folks who are in that young, progressive pro-SSM/etc, etc, mindset are also extremely sceptical of religion and while they might cheer a church that approves Same-Sex Marriage and hold it up as an example to others, it's not going to convince them to enter the doors of a church, because the Church has failed to give them any reason they need or would want to come to meet J... I mean that guy who the Presiding Bishop doesn't like anyone to mention! The new Presiding Bishop is theologically similar to the previous one, however the big difference is he comes from the southern evangelical persuasion. So now TEC has gone from, "come as you are and be affirmed," to, "come and meet JEEEEZUS," though I'm pretty sure it's still verboten to mention sin or why you need Jesus. Interesting times we live in, for sure. Look to see much of the same things happen in Canada next year when we hold our General Synod and approve Same-Sex Marriage and make further attempts to replace the use of the Apostle's Creed in the Daily Offices with poetry that uses less specific and gender neutral terms to refer to God and Christ.
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Jul 18, 2015 16:28
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So has this whole debacle affected your Liturgy in any way already or is the Creed the first target?
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Jul 18, 2015 17:34
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Incidentally, today the two big German Churches published the demographic changes from last year. It's pretty depressing: never before did that many people (217,716) leave the Catholic Church, not even during the height of the abuse scandals a couple of years back. The main reason probably was a change in how the church tax was paid - while the total amount didn't change at all, many people probably thought it did (or remembered that there actually was a church tax) and decided to leave. What's interesting is that the Lutheran Churches suffered even more with about 411,000 people leaving, which seems to disprove all those who insist that the RCC only need to adapt to current societal mores to regain lost ground. On the other hand, the percentage of people who attend mass weekly rose by a whopping 0.1 percent. Yay.
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Jul 18, 2015 21:58
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System Metternich posted:Incidentally, today the two big German Churches published the demographic changes from last year. It's pretty depressing: never before did that many people (217,716) leave the Catholic Church, not even during the height of the abuse scandals a couple of years back. The main reason probably was a change in how the church tax was paid - while the total amount didn't change at all, many people probably thought it did (or remembered that there actually was a church tax) and decided to leave. What's interesting is that the Lutheran Churches suffered even more with about 411,000 people leaving, which seems to disprove all those who insist that the RCC only need to adapt to current societal mores to regain lost ground. I don't usually take religion statistics at face value. My favorite example of this is the researchers who took public polling data asking how often Americans how often they read the Bible, where it turns out that if you ask this question to Americans, tons of them answer "all the time". They then compared this to a time-use study, where people kept a log throughout their day of what activity they did and for how long. The result, of course, was that people read the Bible way less than they claim. This isn't directly related to membership numbers, but there are some related issues that come into play for those, too. I haven't ever tried to study this formally (and yet here I'm posting about it), but every church I have ever visited, or been a member of, has had a different method for counting their attendance and membership numbers. I know of many churches where the ushers for the week are given the job of taking an attendance count, and this is usually achieved by one of them going up into the balcony and counting the heads in the pews (note: this is a terrible method). And if you ask my dad about churches keeping their membership rolls up to date, he will regale you with horror stories, like the church that had not produced an accurate and updated member directory in several decades.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:13
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Lutha Mahtin posted:I don't usually take religion statistics at face value. My favorite example of this is the researchers who took public polling data asking how often Americans how often they read the Bible, where it turns out that if you ask this question to Americans, tons of them answer "all the time". They then compared this to a time-use study, where people kept a log throughout their day of what activity they did and for how long. The result, of course, was that people read the Bible way less than they claim. This isn't directly related to membership numbers, but there are some related issues that come into play for those, too. It's a bit different overe here in Germany, though, as you're required by the state to declare your religious affiliation (or lack thereof). As leaving the Church isn't something you can do by yourself, but instead an act of bureaucracy started by yourself telling the authorities that you want to do so, the number of people leaving can be determined pretty exactly. In Austria, the Church has a centralised database that keeps track of every single Catholic known to it (and the public authorities), complete with date of birth, address, marraige status, children etc. It's pretty impressive, and I'd think that the German Church is similarly equipped. Re: mass attendance: it's (I think) prescribed by the German bishops' conference that twice a year on a (normal, so no feast days or anything) Sunday all the people attending mass in every church and parish are counted mostly by the same method you mentioned. Why is this a terrible one? At least over here, there is only a very limited amount of coming and going during the service, so it should deliver a decent approximation. System Metternich fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 23:23
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Lutha Mahtin posted:And if you ask my dad about churches keeping their membership rolls up to date, he will regale you with horror stories, like the church that had not produced an accurate and updated member directory in several decades. Tsk, tsk, tsk,if you're already going to give me an opening, at least try making it a funny one.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:29
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System Metternich posted:Incidentally, today the two big German Churches published the demographic changes from last year. It's pretty depressing: never before did that many people (217,716) leave the Catholic Church, not even during the height of the abuse scandals a couple of years back. The main reason probably was a change in how the church tax was paid - while the total amount didn't change at all, many people probably thought it did (or remembered that there actually was a church tax) and decided to leave. What's interesting is that the Lutheran Churches suffered even more with about 411,000 people leaving, which seems to disprove all those who insist that the RCC only need to adapt to current societal mores to regain lost ground. A friend of a friend has moved to Germany a month ago and one of the first things he lamented was that as a (nominal) Catholic he had to pay 180 euros a month as a church tax. I checked how it's calculated later and there were no way he earned that much. How can people be so confused about a tax that is based directly on their income tax?
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Jul 19, 2015 00:24
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As an American, I have to ask... Church tax?
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Jul 19, 2015 00:59
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Keromaru5 posted:As an American, I have to ask... It's a holdover from mandatory tithing
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Jul 19, 2015 01:01
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Keromaru5 posted:As an American, I have to ask... Average of 1.43% of income for the Lutherans in Finland. Varies depending on the parish. Around here the church buys the tax collection service from the state so in practice you often don't even notice you're paying something - it's taxed with all the other taxes. It's pretty handy for the church to be able to evaluate their income even a little but then again you can probably guess what the tax does to voluntary donations. Or the attitude of some people (I'm a taxpayer, I want my services!).
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Jul 19, 2015 01:17
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System Metternich posted:It's a bit different overe here in Germany, though, as you're required by the state to declare your religious affiliation (or lack thereof). As leaving the Church isn't something you can do by yourself, but instead an act of bureaucracy started by yourself telling the authorities that you want to do so, the number of people leaving can be determined pretty exactly. In Austria, the Church has a centralised database that keeps track of every single Catholic known to it (and the public authorities), complete with date of birth, address, marraige status, children etc. It's pretty impressive, and I'd think that the German Church is similarly equipped. Even with a government checkbox, membership is not going to be effectively counted. This is because you will have many people who are still on the rolls but never attend, and even people who don't consider themselves Christian but  on filling out the paperwork. Similarly there are probably people who attend church semi-regularly but who are not actually on the books. This is going to be even more true in Europe than my observations as an American.A better method for a church to count its members is to do as my grandparents' longtime church did and define a set of criteria by which a person is considered a member. Every year, they would go through their list of members and see if each member had actually participated in the church, and if someone had not done anything in a long time, they would automatically remove them from the rolls. My grandpa was very active in the lay leadership there and explained this to me once; I forget all the details but they had devised a way so that they wouldn't accidentally remove active people (e.g. shut-ins) from the rolls. For attendance, counting heads is a bad method because it's been proven over and over again by scientists to be a bad method. I can dig out academic citations if you really want, otherwise we can just leave it. And even if it was an acceptable method in terms of getting an accurate total count, it is really bad in terms of being able to ascribe any particular significance to the number. One reason for this would be that taking a sampling only twice a year is just mind-bendingly stupid. "Oh hey, attendance over in Wurstburg grew 40% this year!" says Bishop Schnitzelmeister as he looks at his two data points, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the two largest families in the parish coincidentally had many visitors on the two Sundays they took roll. This leads to another point, which is that a total number does not say how many members are attending, how many are friends/family of members, how many are visitors who might want to join, etc. I honestly cannot see what those churches are gaining from collecting data that way, except perhaps as a bureaucratic formality for the denomination or the government. Here again, my grandparents' old church had a good method, this being an attendance logbook. Each pew had an attendance book with perforated paper, and at each service this would be filled out by each person/family in that pew and passed from one side to the other. In it were lines where you could write your name and mark member, guest, visitor, etc. Then after the service someone would tear off all the sheets for that week and record who had been there. Lutha Mahtin fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Jul 19, 2015 |
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Jul 19, 2015 04:25
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Paladinus posted:So has this whole debacle affected your Liturgy in any way already or is the Creed the first target? There was a Trial Use liturgy for Morning and Evening Prayer released just before Advent that included the new Affirmation of Faith to be used instead of the Creed, but it has since been updated and replaced with the use of the Apostle's Creed or Shema Israel. I just looked it up now because I was going to link to it. The reaction must have pretty broadly been negative so that's good. That said if you read the hymnal (Common Praise) that was released in 1998, it already contains plenty of changes in it to remove gendered references to God, Christ, etc. If anyone is interested, this article highlights some of the changes that were made to the language in the hymns between the 1938 hymnal and the 1998 hymnal. It includes removing references to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in favour of the gender neutral Creator, Word/Redeemer and Spirit, and referring to the Holy Spirit as she in other hymns. It also introduces references to God as Mother. With that hymnal already having been authorized, the revision of the Daily Offices is now being viewed as the first step towards the complete revision of the Prayer Book to use gender inclusive language and remove "offensive" terminology (such as God the Father). In the preamble to the new trial use liturgy it describes the goal of the language revision to be developing faithful and fair language. The trial use psalter actually defines what that means as: "(i) faithful to the intent of the writers of the psalms as poems expressing the relationship between God and the people of Israel and (ii) fair to current users of the psalms who have found the predominately masculine language a barrier to the integration of the psalms into the life of prayer and worship." So basically, there are two people working on this revision with a goal of creating liturgies, a psalter and collects that reflect their own personal biblical exegesis and avoid using masculine references to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. The next project after this is completed will probably be a review of other occasional services (Baptism will be first as an additional baptismal promise relating to the environment was added last year after General Synod but no new printings of the BAS have yet been authorized) and the final revision will be the service of Holy Communion itself, which will likely be revised only after TEC has published its new BCP as the BAS borrowed heavily from the American 1979 BCP when it was made in terms of eucharistic prayers. Fun times, and definitely not a wonder that of the two largest Anglican churches in my city the largest is traditionalist (can you guess whether or not it's my home parish?), the second largest is now an Anglican Use parish in the Ordinariate.
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Jul 19, 2015 06:09
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Valiantman posted:Average of 1.43% of income for the Lutherans in Finland. Varies depending on the parish. Around here the church buys the tax collection service from the state so in practice you often don't even notice you're paying something - it's taxed with all the other taxes. It's pretty handy for the church to be able to evaluate their income even a little but then again you can probably guess what the tax does to voluntary donations. Or the attitude of some people (I'm a taxpayer, I want my services!). There's also a tax for companies that has to paid to the Lutheran and Orthodox churches regardless of the owner's religion. The personal tax was 900 million euros in 2014 and the company tax was 100 millions. This was paid straight to the parishes and lutherans get 99,92% and orthodoxs get the rest. Churches paid 22 millions back to the state to compensate the costs of the tax bureacracy. The reason for the company tax was to pay for the resident registration that the churches do. The company tax is being removed, and in the next year the churches will get compensation straight from the government budget for the resident registration. This will mean that most of the parishes will get more money. Officiallly Finland doesn't have state churches, but in practice it does. It's easier to think of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church as state agencies instead of normal religious organizations.
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Jul 19, 2015 07:05
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Hogge Wild posted:There's also a tax for companies that has to paid to the Lutheran and Orthodox churches regardless of the owner's religion. The personal tax was 900 million euros in 2014 and the company tax was 100 millions. This was paid straight to the parishes and lutherans get 99,92% and orthodoxs get the rest. Churches paid 22 millions back to the state to compensate the costs of the tax bureacracy. The reason for the company tax was to pay for the resident registration that the churches do. The company tax is being removed, and in the next year the churches will get compensation straight from the government budget for the resident registration. This will mean that most of the parishes will get more money. Officiallly Finland doesn't have state churches, but in practice it does. It's easier to think of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church as state agencies instead of normal religious organizations. Yes and no. They do have some leftover stuff from the state church days but in practice neither can affect other's policies in any way as organizations. That's not to say the public image still isn't that of a state church. In addition to keeping the registry, the portion of the company tax goes towards maintaining cementaries and (I think) historically important buildings that have to maintained by law. You're right in that most parishes get more money after the change but I'd say it's about time because the church was still a net payer by a pretty wide margin (~30-40 million euros) and those smaller parishes were hurting a lot. Of course now about 1/4 will receive even less. While the wild fluctuation of the company tax income is gone, making budget makers across the church require about half the heart medication, the compensation is set to 114 million while in 2013 the expenses were 143 million.
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Jul 19, 2015 08:03
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