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HEY GUNS posted:many friendly atheists in it and one pagan There's a thread title right there.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:23
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Cessna posted:There's a thread title right there. "Christianity thread: also friendly atheists and one pagan"? edit: of course that'd also bring in people to harass said "one pagan" and maybe no. "Christianity thread: all are welcome, all are welcome, allllllll are wellllllcome innnnn this plaaaaaaaaaace"
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Nov 12, 2018 16:38
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HEY GUNS posted:you remembered what i said? i don't even remember what i said half the time. many years! I wouldn't feel right unloading my thoughts on this thread like I sometimes do if I didn't also listen! Thank you all for your support and patience, by the way, recently and in the past.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:39
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zonohedron posted:"all are welcome, all are welcome, allllllll are wellllllcome innnnn this plaaaaaaaaaace"
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Nov 12, 2018 16:42
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The other day my rabbi casually mentioned that some time in the next year I'll be up before the Beit Din and I think that's the first time it really sunk in as a real thing that's happening.
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Nov 12, 2018 16:43
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HEY GUNS posted:i hate u we are companions on the journey breaking bread and sharing liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife and in the love we bear is the hope we share for we believe in the love of our God we belieeeeeeeeeeeve in the love of our Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood
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Nov 12, 2018 16:55
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zonohedron posted:"Christianity thread: also friendly atheists and one pagan"? Christianity Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 12, 2018 |
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Nov 12, 2018 17:06
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Thank you, thread goon who PM'd me about my last few posts not including cute animals. I have since edited them and will try to remember to keep this up in the future.
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Nov 12, 2018 17:16
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Cythereal posted:Thank you, thread goon who PM'd me about my last few posts not including cute animals. I have since edited them and will try to remember to keep this up in the future.
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Nov 12, 2018 17:20
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HEY GUNS posted:"this slow, hard cat has unusual taste in food, but he's my friend and we hang out" No joke, a pastor while I was in college said that Jesus' challenge to us is to be as happy as a cat with an empty cardboard box in a patch of sunshine. https://i.imgur.com/JKPWTdb.mp4
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Nov 12, 2018 17:27
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Freudian posted:The other day my rabbi casually mentioned that some time in the next year I'll be up before the Beit Din and I think that's the first time it really sunk in as a real thing that's happening. What's that mean? A googling tells me the Beit Din is a rabbinical court, but what's the occasion?
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Nov 12, 2018 17:31
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Pellisworth posted:What's that mean? A googling tells me the Beit Din is a rabbinical court, but what's the occasion? Conversion! I've been attending my local Liberal/Progressive synagogue since last June, and officially on the conversion track since last August. This isn't a path I ever thought I would have taken, but I guess a lot of the people in this thread can relate to that.
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Nov 12, 2018 17:39
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Freudian posted:Conversion! I've been attending my local Liberal/Progressive synagogue since last June, and officially on the conversion track since last August. This isn't a path I ever thought I would have taken, but I guess a lot of the people in this thread can relate to that. Congrats! Forgive me if you've posted about this before, but I'd be pretty interested to hear about your journey to conversion.
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Nov 12, 2018 18:46
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I haven't posted about it before, and I'm always happy to yammer on about it. I was born and raised weakly Methodist, and attended our local church. It never really stuck with me - I felt I was being asked to believe too much - and by the time I was 13 or so I was pretty sure I was an atheist. I kept going out of habit, and because I enjoyed the friends and community there, but after I moved away to university I stopped attending. It wasn't my faith. I still consider myself affiliated with the community - I still belong to a New Testament Greek group there, even - but I was okay with not being a person of faith. I certainly had no intention of converting to Judaism - like most people in England, I had only a very vague idea about what Judaism even was, beyond "the Old Testament", "don't eat pigs", and "that time a guy came up to me on the street and called me a Jewish oval office and told me to go back to Israel". Then I first watched the final episode of season 3 of Orange Is The New Black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO94rhKJAR8 I need to stress that I did not convert off the back of five minutes from a Netflix show. But this opened my eyes to the idea that converting to Judaism was a thing that people did, and made it understandable to me. Over the next six months or so, I kept coming across more and more Jewish thoughts, opinions, quotes, ideas. I didn't go out looking for it (except I guess for that Coursera class on the Talmud I took because it looked interesting) but it found its way to me. And so many of the answers it gave were ones that either I'd been looking for all along, or ones that I'd come up with myself and was glad to see other people backing up. It all seemed to resonate. And so by December 2016, I was going "yeah, let's google local synagogues and start to make this happen". Turned out the one just up the road from my church was liberal and gay-friendly, and I was all set to start contacting them. At which point I realised I was feeling the intoxicating rush of novelty. All of this was going too fast. If I wanted to go into this, then I needed to do it with a clear head. (Also, I was seeing a guy at that time, and he expressed views about being worried for my eternal soul that really put a stain on the whole thing.) So I decided to give it six months or so to simmer over in my head. In June of 2017, I was signed up to a fanfic exchange and really didn't want to write the fic for it. I decided I needed to get something done that day. So I emailed the synagogue, and asked if it would be okay to attend a service. I got a prompt and friendly reply from both the congregational chair and the rabbi, and that Friday I went to a Shabbat service for the first time in my life. It felt right. I didn't understand half of what was going on, but it felt right for me to be there among it all, it clicked in a way that I didn't know it could click. And I decided to turn up next week. And the week after. Part of this feels like the first thing in my life that was an active choice on my part, rather than me going along the path of least resistance. It certainly wasn't peer pressure - nobody expected this. This is my journey, my choice, my people. I didn't finish that fanfic.
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Nov 12, 2018 20:11
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Francis with the stop order today. Holy cannoli. Not sure how anyone in America can give money to this group ever again.
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Nov 12, 2018 21:18
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Freudian posted:I haven't posted about it before, and I'm always happy to yammer on about it. I like hearing conversion stories. Freudian posted:Part of this feels like the first thing in my life that was an active choice on my part, rather than me going along the path of least resistance. It certainly wasn't peer pressure - nobody expected this. This is my journey, my choice, my people. Something I find quite interesting is the idea that churches and other places of worship in western countries are increasingly being filled with people who made a distinct and conscious choice to attend, absent of any societal expectations. I'm not saying it's better, but it's different, and it will fundamentally alter faith communities in the years to come.
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Nov 12, 2018 22:11
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Francis with the stop order today. Holy cannoli. Not sure how anyone in America can give money to this group ever again. For more context, the US Council of Catholic Bishops had planned to devote their yearly meeting solely to handling the abuse crisis. This was a promising sign. It didn't mean anything good would come of it, but it meant something good could happen. And then, today, came a last-minute notice: don't vote on anything related to sexual abuse by clergy until all the bishops have met in February. Meanwhile, the Vatican's ambassador to the US... quote:warned of supporting outside lay investigations into the church. He seemed to refer obliquely to both the bishops' now-tabled proposal to establish a lay commission capable of investigating bishops' misconduct, and also the more than a dozen U.S. states' ongoing criminal and civil investigations into crimes committed by priests. On the bright side, Daniel Cardinal DiNardo spoke after the ambassador: quote:“Brother bishops, to exempt ourselves from this high standard of accountability is unacceptable and cannot stand,” DiNardo said, striking a markedly different tone just after the ambassador spoke. “Whether we will be regarded as guardians of the abused or the abuser will be determined by our actions.” (both quotes from the Washington Post)
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Nov 12, 2018 22:37
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I wonder if churches that talk a lot about "answering God's call" tend to do worse with Millennials 🤔
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Nov 12, 2018 22:40
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HEY GUNS posted:i hate u Awww, I like that song, cloying as it is. I remember you didn't like it when I shared it a couple years back, so I don't mention it as much  Freudian posted:Part of this feels like the first thing in my life that was an active choice on my part, rather than me going along the path of least resistance. It certainly wasn't peer pressure - nobody expected this. This is my journey, my choice, my people. Wow, another compelling story this week. It seems to me that you have answered a calling, what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called God's search for us. It's very exciting to imagine where your choice to respond will take you, especially as it seems that you have made that choice with great deliberateness. Lutha Mahtin posted:I wonder if churches that talk a lot about "answering God's call" tend to do worse with Millennials 🤔 Clearly it's better to reach them by message and text. As for Millennial me, my mind immediately goes to, "Yes, but what do you think is God's call for us right here and now?"
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Nov 12, 2018 22:57
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Lutha Mahtin posted:I wonder if churches that talk a lot about "answering God's call" tend to do worse with Millennials 🤔 My question in my head in response to this is what is God’s call and prove it. Airy, vague, abstract sermons kill me. Thinking about this makes me thankful for my pastors.
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Nov 12, 2018 23:16
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ThePopeOfFun posted:My question in my head in response to this is what is God’s call and prove it. Airy, vague, abstract sermons kill me. Thinking about this makes me thankful for my pastors. i was making a joke about millennials preferring text messages over phone calls 
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Nov 12, 2018 23:39
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Lutha Mahtin posted:i was making a joke about millennials preferring text messages over phone calls I’m pretty dense. 
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Nov 13, 2018 00:17
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Mr Enderby posted:I like hearing conversion stories. Yes I think it is appropriate that people attend church of their own volition, it isn't like going to a civic ceremony where everyone suspends their disagreements for the sake of a societal narrative. Praise and worship is meant to be made honestly, there's enough scripture about people who like to make a big show about being holier-than-thou. I think it is better if a church is small and honest than large and cult-y. There is also something to be said about keeping a regular prayer schedule, but I think that's more to do with how the brain works, neurons that fire together fuse together. (This is an example of the subtle differences between reformed Catholicism and Protestantism hey guns, protestants are happy to be much more free-form.)
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Nov 13, 2018 04:23
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zonohedron posted:we are companions on the journey My life has instantly become nothing but untuned piano and a dozen singers in eight different keys and time signatures.  Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Francis with the stop order today. Holy cannoli. Not sure how anyone in America can give money to this group ever again. Every time I think the Church may be pulling itself together, it chooses to act in a way that gives the opposite impression. It's not heartening. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 04:27
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asio posted:Yes I think it is appropriate that people attend church of their own volition, it isn't like going to a civic ceremony where everyone suspends their disagreements for the sake of a societal narrative. Praise and worship is meant to be made honestly, there's enough scripture about people who like to make a big show about being holier-than-thou. I think it is better if a church is small and honest than large and cult-y. There is also something to be said about keeping a regular prayer schedule, but I think that's more to do with how the brain works, neurons that fire together fuse together. (This is an example of the subtle differences between reformed Catholicism and Protestantism hey guns, protestants are happy to be much more free-form.) what is reformed Catholicism also, not everyone likes free-form and many people itt enjoy structured ritual and tradition edit: Protestants are far from monolithic and plenty of us prefer a more "high church," formal, and ritualized liturgy. I think you're being a bit reductive. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 04:27
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i'm not totally sure but i think asio is trying to make some kind of smug dunk-burn about top-down catholic "rigidity". it is probably a dunk-burn they should abandon imo
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Nov 13, 2018 04:41
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I refer to the lol I got for pointing out that there is a difference between reformed and Protestantism. I was raised protestant and currently attend a church that prefers the term reformed. Both terms are mostly interchangeable but some people (not me) disagree. No barbs intended. Edit: the church of England and it's Australian version, the Anglican church of Australia Also The Uniting Church in Australia, which was formed in the 70's with unification between (most) Methodist, Presbyterian and Church of Christ congregations. asio fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 04:47
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asio posted:I refer to the lol I got for pointing out that there is a difference between reformed and Protestantism. I was raised protestant and currently attend a church that prefers the term reformed. Both terms are mostly interchangeable but some people (not me) disagree. No barbs intended. Traditionally, at least, "Protestant" refers to churches that come out of Luther and the other theologians around him, while "Reformed" refers to churches that stem from people like Zwingli and Calvin.
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Nov 13, 2018 04:51
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Epicurius posted:Traditionally, at least, "Protestant" refers to churches that come out of Luther and the other theologians around him, while "Reformed" refers to churches that stem from people like Zwingli and Calvin. Yes, one finds that "high" Anglican churches prefer reformed and "low" ones protestant. UCA prefers protestant whereas the type of church that sings Hillsong prefers reformed. (Extremely general statement)
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Nov 13, 2018 05:02
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asio posted:I refer to the lol I got for pointing out that there is a difference between reformed and Protestantism. I was raised protestant and currently attend a church that prefers the term reformed. Both terms are mostly interchangeable but some people (not me) disagree. No barbs intended. Epicurius posted:Traditionally, at least, "Protestant" refers to churches that come out of Luther and the other theologians around him, while "Reformed" refers to churches that stem from people like Zwingli and Calvin. Yeah, I think the "lol" you got was because "Reformed" is more commonly used to refer to churches from the Calvinist tradition and a lot of our posters don't think very highly of purestrain hardcore Calvinism. Certainly, the Anglican tradition combines aspects of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, I guess I've just never heard it labelled as "reformed" or "reformed Catholicism." I think we're just unfamiliar with how you're defining things, I'm guessing you're an Aussie? I'm not sure we've had any posters from there recently, so welcome! I think most of us would categorize Anglicanism as one of the main strains of Protestantism. They're Protestant in that they split from Roman Catholicism, but distinct from other Protestant groups in maintaining some aspects of Catholicism others didn't and consciously synthesizing parts of Lutheranism and Calvinism to form the early Church of England. If you asked me, I'd say there are four main "Old World" Protestant traditions: Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, and Radical Reformed (Anabaptists and such). Then you have all the wild stuff that happens in America that produced American Baptism, Mormonism/LDS, American Evangelicalism, etc. I'm pretty sure you're just using different language, which is the source of confusion.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:05
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asio posted:Yes, one finds that "high" Anglican churches prefer reformed and "low" ones protestant. UCA prefers protestant whereas the type of church that sings Hillsong prefers reformed. (Extremely general statement) Low Anglican churches prefer Reformed. High Anglican churches prefer something pretty close to Anglo-Catholicism.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:06
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I went to a mass yesterday where the priest greeted the congregants and also the people watching th stream of the mass and I suddenly got a bone deep chill knowing that some priest has started a mass somewhere asking people to like comment and subscribe
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Nov 13, 2018 05:07
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asio posted:I refer to the lol I got for pointing out that there is a difference between reformed and Protestantism. I was raised protestant and currently attend a church that prefers the term reformed. Both terms are mostly interchangeable but some people (not me) disagree. No barbs intended. you said "reformed catholic and protestant". did you forget to put a comma in there somewhere? and no, reformed is a sub-group of protestantism. you don't even agree with these weirdos who claim it's separate so why are you posting so haphazardly about it
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Nov 13, 2018 05:11
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Thank you for clearing up the mess of posts I have subjected you all to. Part of the problem I have trying to use these terms is also the cultural heritage in them. Henry VIII had a dim view of Luther. Calvin was in contact with Thomas Cranmer. Calvin did a lot of work trying to bridge the gap between Luther and (everyone else). The Privy Council that followed after Henry VIII's death were (Extremely generally) evangelical protestants. So, in amongst all of this (at least where I see it), there's a not insignificant amount of emotional attachment people have to the idea living under a monarch who holds the title "defender of the faith". Personally I like the ecumenical approach to the faith and see these differences as mostly preferences of worship style. In retrospect I realise that the reformed/protestant discussion is a huge barrel of worms. I hope that this thread can help me be more informed about what definition people give them. But if it causes offence I'm sorry and will drop it. Edit: Lutha Mahtin posted:you said "reformed catholic and protestant". did you forget to put a comma in there somewhere? and no, reformed is a sub-group of protestantism. you don't even agree with these weirdos who claim it's separate so why are you posting so haphazardly about it Sorry, I appear to have experienced different use of these terms than you. "Reformed Catholic" is a term some churches use to describe themselves. Mostly if one thinks the British Monarch is higher up than the Pope. Because a monarch once disagreed with a theologian, but needed to follow the same route because of a political situation. asio fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 05:19
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Lutha Mahtin posted:you said "reformed catholic and protestant". did you forget to put a comma in there somewhere? and no, reformed is a sub-group of protestantism. you don't even agree with these weirdos who claim it's separate so why are you posting so haphazardly about it relax my dude, asio is posting in good faith and not trying to dunk on Catholics or anything, he's just using words differently than most of us are used to http://ergofabulous.org/luther/ quote:How is it, then, that you drivel like people in their second childhood? asio posted:In retrospect I realise that the reformed/protestant discussion is a huge barrel of worms. I hope that this thread can help me be more informed about what definition people give them. But if it causes offence I'm sorry and will drop it. Nah no one's mad we just misunderstood what you meant.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:24
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yeah sorry i have never heard those terms used that way. in my experience as an american, if i heard someone saying "heh i'm reformed not protestant" i would think they were either very mistaken or that they were part of some extremely obscure out-there congregation that only their own members have ever heard of
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Nov 13, 2018 05:27
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Lutha Mahtin posted:yeah sorry i have never heard those terms used that way. in my experience as an american, if i heard someone saying "heh i'm reformed not protestant" i would think they were either very mistaken or that they were part of some extremely obscure out-there congregation that only their own members have ever heard of Yeah, I grew up in Michigan with a large Dutch Reformed population, and "Reformed" was always just a shortened version of that - and some of them are sufficiently extreme that claiming to be "Reformed, not Protestant" would not be surprising. It's a label you have to be a bit careful with because it means so many different things in different contexts.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:34
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asio posted:Sorry, I appear to have experienced different use of these terms than you. No need to apologize! I think it must just be a difference in usage in America compared to the Commonwealth, or at least in Australia. I'm currently a member of the Episcopal Church, which is the main Anglican branch in the US, but I've never encountered "reformed" or "reformed Catholic" in the way you're using them. When most of us see capital-R Reformed, we think of hardcore Calvinist bodies like Dutch Reformed groups which are quite distinct from Anglicanism. I think Lutha Mahtin and I were also confused by your contrasting protestantism with reformed since reformed (Calvinist) thought is part of the larger Protestant tradition. At least the way we categorize things mentally. I'm guessing you'd consider yourself a high-church Anglican? There are several of us in this thread, I'd consider myself in that group.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:39
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Pellisworth posted:No need to apologize! I think it must just be a difference in usage in America compared to the Commonwealth, or at least in Australia. I'm currently a member of the Episcopal Church, which is the main Anglican branch in the US, but I've never encountered "reformed" or "reformed Catholic" in the way you're using them. Thank you, yes, I think there is a lot of pick n mix when it comes to this. We have a very healthy congregation from South Sudan, who have a licensed anglican priest from their congregation leading upbeat, gospel music-heavy services in the same church we sing Eucharist in three hours earlier every Sunday. Then we have Roman Catholics up the road who sing Mass in Latin but are engaging with the process to try and turn their worship service into something resembling a service in the reformed (or protestant) tradition. The differences are getting very muddy. I think maybe denominations should instead base themselves on what kind of music and worship service they like because the theology is mostly the same, there's just different areas of that same faith they are drawn to in particular. I would probably come across as a high anglican if we met but that's mostly because I prefer the music.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:51
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I will chime in here and say that not all Reformed groups are "hardcore Calvinist". For example, the United Church of Christ, a mainline Protestant group in the US, has a significant Reformed identity due to the historical ways in which their denomination came together. But I will say that I think in general, when talking about Christianity, at least to my knowledge saying "Reformed" generally refers to the sub-group of Calvinist Christians who refer to themselves that way. It is really odd-sounding to me to hear an Anglican refer to themselves as "reformed". Another thing I will add here is that Lutherans sometimes refer to themselves as "Catholic" in some ways. The precedent here is because the term "Lutheran" was originally a slur, similar to how "Mormon" was originally a slur against LDS people. So if that term was a slur, then how did Lutherans refer to themselves before that? Well, Luther himself didn't have a coherent branding strategy, at least in terms of how we think about such things today. But I believe he did at least at some points think that perhaps people who formed churches under his ideas should call themselves "evangelical Catholics". Now this is tricky from our modern English-language perspective, since we are greatly influenced by the rise of the American "Evangelical" movement. This is a distinct and different movement compared to how Lutherans use the word "evangelical". I always forget to look up my sources beforehand before talking about this, but basically IIRC there is more than one word in German that we translate into English as "evangelical". And I believe that the one that Lutherans use is not the same one that the American Evangelical Movement uses.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:54
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