The Future of the Community of Christ (RLDS)

[huckelberry]

Metaxas is indeed a terrible person, very manipulative and dishonest, especially about the guy he pretends to understand most, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Eric Metaxas is a Republican consultant disguised as a Christian author. Here he is claiming that Jesus told him to whine about the 2020 election. Naturally, he doesn't even pretend to address Paul's and Jesus's repeated calls to submit to civil authorities:

Alphus and omegus, I half wish I had not mentioned Metaxas thinking it off subject. But on the other hand he might represent someone a part of a narrow set of beliefs that generate a sense of belonging to the right group. I watched, endured, a couple of you tube presentations hoping to get a clue as to his thinking. I found nothing to explain why he views supporting Trump as the same as Bonhoeffer resisting Nazi demands. He appears to assume it is obvious and that his audience also sees it that way. No need to explain. One thing I watched included him addressing the Pauline instruction to submit to civil authorities. Metexas proposes that the current situation is so dire that the need to resist overrides. I am not able to get into his head far enough to understand what Metaxas imagines is going on in America to justify that. (does he imagine transexual commies overrunning the capital building? I don't know.)

[huckelberry]

MsJack, I find myself with a couple of little puzzles. Both ELCA and PCUSA would be to my knowledge relatively conservative groups compared to what sounds like Unitarian universalism in Alphus and Omegus discription. The groups are liberal compared with fundamentalist groups but they hold basic Christian doctrines and dogmas. Your observation that tolerance and freedom from dogma is actually not much of anything makes sense to me. Perhaps I am wondering more what you have in view for more demands to make a difference. My wife spent years in the past with conservative evangelical groups. lots of hours going to church for prayer group, Bible study etc. She wondered, and I do not blame her, is this all there is to it?

Hello again Huckelberry, it's good to talk to you!

ELCA and PCUSA are certainly "conservative" compared to UU, but quite liberal when compared to a number of evangelical churches. I think this article explains it well:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... vmain.html

The thing with conservative churches is that they tend to create a social identity by demanding that their members abstain from certain things, whether that be coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, sex-outside-of-marriage (Mormons) or excessive drinking, drugs, sex-outside-of-marriage (evangelicals), etc. The extra demands on time can come off as simply more busywork (as your wife experienced), but conversely, they tend to enroll the member in a two-fold vision: (1) that your life needs to change, and this church can help you change it (through prayer, Bible study, attending meetings, etc.); and (2) that the world needs to change, and you can be a part of that change through this church (through social programs, evangelism, and community action). The more people invest in this message, the more likely they are to continue to invest (which is probably, at least some of the time, a sunk cost fallacy), and the less likely they are to leave.

Some mainline churches are more successful with (1) and (2), but some pretty much have the attitude that you are fine as you are and the world is fine as it is, which creates less demand for the product they are selling (i.e. church) and less opportunity to bring in new members. Though, I do think mainline churches tend to be better at social action.

Like I said in my first post though: conservative churches are now starting to decline, and I'm not sure all of the reasons for that have been studied, but as someone who has been pretty disappointed with the evangelical movement for the last 6-7 years, I'm not sure I'm all that sad about it, either.

Ms Jack, You have some authority in your thoughts on these questions so It is easy to try to encourage your sharing.

I spent a couple of decades in a PCUSA church. It was a growing community and I thought finding a strong middle path between fundamentalist dogmatism in liberal vagueness. People were asked to hold a committment to Christ as Lord but not required to sign on to Westminster specifics. The minister was enthusiastic and not rigidly doctrinaire. Two things happened ending my participation there. My wife decided to be Catholic and I go to church with her. I actually incline to enjoy and respect Catholic services despite the fact I still hold to some distinct Protestant views. The second matter has much more to do with this thread. Some leaders in the congregation increased expressed frustration with the national organization with its continuing fights about social justice. It was the fighting over it that was more of a problem than the idea of social justice. The congregation started a move to leave PCUSA for a more conservative evangelical group. They did. It is not a fundamentalist group but closer. It appeared to me as discussions proceeded that it was the issue of how to treat homosexuality that was causing the difficult conflicts.

I do not see any quick healing over the divides that and related subjects present. Perhaps in time society will get closer to a new balance or understanding. The adjustments will chase people from churches, divide groups into mutually suspicious groups.

[DrStakhanovite]

DrStakhanovite, thanks for expanding thoughts on the subject. I have a quick reply though your post deserves more thought.

Always happy to bandy words with the likes of you.

There have been times when Christianity thrived being the overwhelming majority of the culture. It has often not been a minority group rejecting the larger culture.

Right, we should be clear that what I’m writing about is what the fields of Cognitive Science and Social Psychology have to say about the contemporary context of American Christianity. You couldn’t take my post and apply it to 9th century Latin Christianity.

Instead it was and expression of hopes and ideals held by the majority of the society.

I’m hesitant to cosign the above statement because we too often extend the thoughts of the preserved words of the educated elite onto the broader population they were a part of. Going back to the 9th century; the literate few who had the opportunity to contemplate Middle Platonism and pour over the works of Augustine held to a Christianity very different in form and content from the more popular expressions held by the majority.

Even today when for conservative groups where rejection of outsiders or outside beliefs applies, there is usually only rejection of certain selected aspects of the larger culture which is otherwise fully embraced.

Right, the rejection of acceptance of popular culture isn’t an all or nothing decision, but it comes in degrees.

It has long been generally assumed that the point of the atonement was establishing a ticket to heaven for people who correctly accept it. Perhaps that is a reduction of meaning of the atonement. An invitation to build upon and toward a better humanity does not have to be black and white. The horrors of not doing that do not have to be limited to a rather narrow mythological idea of hell. They might manifest in time in a variety of ways.

There are always going to be people with nuanced and carefully thought-out beliefs that go against the forensic account of substitutionary atonement and an everlasting hell. Just how much cultural currency do you think those careful and nuanced beliefs have though? How much sway do they have in today’s world of Evangelicalism? Or say, African and South American expressions of Christianity influenced by proponents of the Prosperity Gospel?

[huckelberry]

There have been times when Christianity thrived being the overwhelming majority of the culture. It has often not been a minority group rejecting the larger culture.

Right, we should be clear that what I’m writing about is what the fields of Cognitive Science and Social Psychology have to say about the contemporary context of American Christianity. You couldn’t take my post and apply it to 9th century Latin Christianity.

Instead it was and expression of hopes and ideals held by the majority of the society.

I’m hesitant to cosign the above statement because we too often extend the thoughts of the preserved words of the educated elite onto the broader population they were a part of. Going back to the 9th century; the literate few who had the opportunity to contemplate Middle Platonism and pour over the works of Augustine held to a Christianity very different in form and content from the more popular expressions held by the majority.

Even today when for conservative groups where rejection of outsiders or outside beliefs applies, there is usually only rejection of certain selected aspects of the larger culture which is otherwise fully embraced.

Right, the rejection of acceptance of popular culture isn’t an all or nothing decision, but it comes in degrees.

It has long been generally assumed that the point of the atonement was establishing a ticket to heaven for people who correctly accept it. Perhaps that is a reduction of meaning of the atonement. An invitation to build upon and toward a better humanity does not have to be black and white. The horrors of not doing that do not have to be limited to a rather narrow mythological idea of hell. They might manifest in time in a variety of ways.

There are always going to be people with nuanced and carefully thought-out beliefs that go against the forensic account of substitutionary atonement and an everlasting hell. Just how much cultural currency do you think those careful and nuanced beliefs have though? How much sway do they have in today’s world of Evangelicalism? Or say, African and South American expressions of Christianity influenced by proponents of the Prosperity Gospel?

DrStakhanovite , I appreciate your pointed observations. I first thought that a wide spread of understanding in a church between field laborers and university folks is always present and of course would be there in the 9th century. But of course there is another obvious consideration, church unity was legally enforced in many places in those days. Today the Catholic church contains a wide range of understanding, including political extremes both right and left. But It has of course a long tradition of actions agreed doctrine and authority holding it together.(despite strains)

I nurse a hope that time will help develop an adjusted set of Christian assumptions that does not focus on exclusive groups. I do not wish to reject substitutionary atonement completely but I do not think the idea by itself is complete. It does not really have priority. It is just simple (particularly at age 8 perhaps not so much at age 19) I can see a whole current of thought expanding on those suggestions but that is larger in books than with people at large. You are certainly correct to point out that exclusionary thinking as well as offering special powers for blessings are still attracting more people.