Who Decided what the Christian Faith Really Is


I often write about one of my favorite books on religion, Professor Steven Prothero's book, God is Not One. Prothero starts with the assumption Christianity, and all other religions in the world, are about what followers THINK their faith is about. Often that is different than what leaders or theologians in a faith claim it is about.

Recently, I came across an academic definition of how the explain this difference. It is called, among other things, "lived experience." That is, what does a faith mean to the people living or experiencing it? The academic I've encountered spends time in China talking to Christians about how they view their faith and what they think it is about. His message is Christianity in China includes a broad variety of beliefs and interpretations and should not be seen as uniform. 

Pundits within the faith are often fishing for good news. For example, one comes across some church that says it has seen in increase in it youth numbers. Or, there was a someone claiming young single men are joining churches. These isolated events are parlayed into a new and positive trend. However, the percentage of young people who were born into the church but leave by young adulthood keeps rising. 

Claiming numbers of Christians are rising in China and Africa is also fishing for good news. Africa is a place with many histories and cultures. Some indigenous religions involved spiritual beings and practices very different from orthodox Christianity but the Christian label is slapped on them. 

This is what the link tells us about China. It is a huge place with histories and cultures different from each other. One would expect the version of Christianity adopted to conform in many ways to these many groups. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ancient God, Bel (Baal), the Main Character in an Ancient Play

Image
In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle...
Read more

What Was the "Argument" in the Election

Image
I hate to add my blog to the piles of blogs and pundits analyzing and pondering the meaning of the just passed election. But that's what I feel like doing today. I've always like Senator Ted Cruz's summary of politics. He once said, "First, win the argument. Then, win the election." I think there is a way of applying that to anti abortion Catholics and Protestants. The link talks of Catholics who now feel they have no political home because Republicans let them down with Trump but they remain against abortion rights. Taking Cruz's win-the-argument thesis, I'd call the past election about an argument between two groups. One group's argument was, "Trump's a jerk." The other's argument was, "Abortion is wrong." The group, "Trump's a jerk," won the argument and then the election.  While one can argue the election, or any election, it about more complex issues, I believe in the end elections hinge on very simple ar...
Read more

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more