Christianity in America

[Bereta_Eder]

what do u mean?

[Chris 62]

You never used to troll, or pick on the less swift, as you do now.

It was quite interesting.

[Bereta_Eder]

true.

however, in my previous post the meaning of my reaction was that such were the horrors of WW2 that americans must know them (it is normal not to know them so well or more precicely feel them so much as the europeans do since here is where it happened - that was not an offence) and be remembered by the younger generations of europe.

i found the phrasing of Ethelred very apte to describe what I think. (which is what i said in the previous paragraph)

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ethelred
That depends on what you call a break I suppose. They sure didn't seem to want the King in charge of their laws and its the Sovereign of England that is in charge of the Church of England.

Who was head of the Aglican Church during the English Republic?

[Lemmy]

Originally posted by Chris 62
You hope.

Better brush up on the palsms, you will be reciting them soon.

Christian democrats!

And you say the US is over-religious!

yeah..ok, really, if you would see the party program, you couldn't tell they were Christian Democrats, no religious points in there. The name is just a remnant from when they were created.
The really Christian people nowadays cast their vote to the ChristenUnie (Christian Union), which only got a few %'s in the last election.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
So I would not say that the modern translations of the bible are literally true and without error. Equally, the modern interpretations may not be correct. But this is man's error, not God's.

Then you don't really take the Bible literally in the same sense as the people I was referring to. Most Fundamentalist believe that god made sure the translations are literally correct not just in some original version that we have no copies of.

Of course not. Where in the bible does it say that the world will end in 2000? Nowhere!

Tell that to the milenialists. There is stuff about a thousand years somewhere in the Bible that was once thought to apply to 1000 AD, then to 2000 AD. If I live to be 1050 I bet I see it happen again in 3000 AD.

Why do you assuse I was replying to you? I was replying to the original post. I must say, I am very impressed by the size of your ego.

Your use of the term 'idiot'. It’s not in the first post by Marcus. It’s in my post. Cybershy already teed of on it and he clearly was talking to me. Ego was not involved. I checked to make sure it was my post that contained the term idiot. That kind of narrowed it down to me and those replying to me.

From your post:

Does that make me an idiot? If it does, please define your use of the word idiot.....

Its hard to see how that wasn't a reply to my post since Marcus didn't call anyone an idiot and I did. I stand by that statement too. Watt is an idiot. Not stupid but an idiot nevertheless.

Try running the CONTROL-F find function for 'idiot', it’s me, Cybershy quoting me, and then you. Ergo, not ego, it wasn't Marcus you were replying to.

Funnily enough, I would have said the same about you. You seem to understand parts of the world with reasonable ability, but you are constrained by trying to use your own physical experiences and faith in 'scientific method' to explain everything. It quite clearly cannot.

Not just my physical experiences Rogan. I don't work at CERN and I will take YOUR physical experiences as well. Not any mystical experiences though because those cannot be checked by others.

Of course scientific method can't, at least at present, explain everything. However it can show that the Bible is not a good fit with the universe we live in. Not without getting pretty loose in your biblical interpretation. I am not going to go on mysticism and the writings of ancient men that I cannot always check on. There are parts I can check though and some of those parts don't fit the real world.

Note that I use quotes in the previous statement since I think a proper scientific method takes into account the assumptions made and the limitations of the model - something which you do not appear to do.

Speaking of assumptions that is one that you just made and you should know better by now since I have already said that everything I know is tentative and subject to change no matter how much it seems like I am 100% sure. However at present I see no way to reconcile the world we live in and a literal interpretation of the Bible. I really see no need to try to reconcile that since it was written so long ago and by men not god. It is men that claim it’s true and godly. Why should I believe those men when I can see that they got a lot wrong?

Once again, the bible says no such thing.

Once again it’s easy to add up all the various numbers and ages in the lists of various and sundry generations. If the Bible is literally true then the numbers should work out. If its not specifically the world itself that is about 6000 years old, there is still Adam. The 6000 figure is also going back to Adam not just the point where Jehovah says "Let there be light". That is only six days before Adam, to the people that came up with the 6000 figure. All the rest is for Adam and his alleged descendents. 6000 minus six days is still pretty close to 6000. The human race is much older than that. Jericho is much older than that.

I don't argue much about the six days of creation. I mostly just point out that the order is wrong. However it doesn't matter to my argument if people want to avoid that as long as they still believe in Adam. That’s 6000 years based on what the Bible says. I don’t' say it, the fundamentalists do and they can and do give good biblical justification for it. Take it up with them.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by paiktis22


*stands up and applauses*

really.



this is one, if not THE, best thing I have read in Apolyton, showing great understanding, conscience and realization.

again

Yeah well I got raked over the coals for it anyway by Cybershy. I can't figure out what his problem was with it.

[Bosh]

A lot of it has to do with the success of European countries to centralize and set up national churches (even Spain and France, since the French had Gallicism and the Spainish were always into being "more Catholic than the Pope"). The European countries generally had a real cultural epicenter and a fairly unified culture which allowed these national churches to dominate fairly well, at least among the elite. In the cases where there was a large minority church that survived it was generally among a small minority culture (like the Welsh going Methodist and the Western Norwegians going Pietist as a result of which western norway is easily still the most religoius part of the country).
When these national churches went into institutional decline they never were replaced by a new vigorous sect, so when people got around to revolting against the national church they generally went with a secular doctrine when the national churches had generally (with England being the major exception) kept religion fairly monopolized. This is especially the case as the welfare state started to grow and thus take away the church's traditional place in poor relief and education (much earlier than in the US when we didn't have much of a welfare state until the New Deal and education remained locally enough controlled that there was a lot of blatant religion in public schools into quite recently, something that didn't happen in europe where education was far more centralized and secular). And finally since the European churches were generally much more monoplistic, centralized, and powerful than any of the US's thousands of small sects (with the exception of the Southern Baptists in large swaths of the south) lead to a reaction in the form of political anti-clericalism which never really existed in the US since religion wa so fractured.

In the US's case having a lot of immigrants from fringe religions (puritans, disproportionate amounts of pietists from germanic countries etc.) the most important difference in the case of the US was the frontier. It was big, damn big. Big enough to make any kind of centralization impossible until very recently. This mean that while there were a number of attempts to establish religious monopolies (especially in New England) they generally failed miserably since they never could extend their reach into the frontier effectively. This lead to lots of fairly independent churches poping up all along the frontier and kept religion in the US a lot more dynamic and vibrant. Equally important is that US culture became FAR less centralized than European culture, not only do you have the dozens of immigrant groups with their own religions but you had lots of regional cultures each with one (or more) predominant religion. This meant that religion was something that was YOURS something that brought together your community and backed you up and provided support, not some vast hierarchy controlled by the rich and which was in bed with the government that was taxing your ass off (in many cases to pay the clergy) and being generally annoying.

Another result of the frontier on american culture was that it was damn hard to set up much in the way of government on the frontier (much less a welfare state) and it was hard to set up much of a civil society that would give people an alternative to church for socialization etc. Thus there really wasn't much out there besides the church to provide social glue so christianity sunk its roots deep. Similar sorts of things happened on the Russian frontier in Siberia with various forms of Old Belief.

Finally the American Revolution had a lot to do with America becomming much more religious than Europe. Contrary to bull **** Christian propaganda the Founding Fathers were EXTREMALLY secular and so was the bulk of the American elite (with the south being something of and exception), while at the same time the European elites were religous (although often pretty cyncial about it or just holding too it because they though it made a good opiate for the masses). So when the common people got around to rebelling against the elite, some secular doctrine (especially socialism) looked damn good in Europe while the vigrant Great Awakening american popular christianity made a pretty decent vehicle of revolting against the Deist merchantocracy of the coast...

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Who was head of the Aglican Church during the English Republic?

I don't know. The place was bit chaotic then anyway. Maybe they didn't know either. My guess would be the Archbishop of Canterbury as I think that is the actual rather than technical head of the CoE these days.

Hey I only talk like I know everything. I do know that I don't actualy know everything.

If you know how about you tell me? I am willing to learn. I am even willing to change my mind if given good enough reason. Rogan can easily change my mind on physics. Its religion that he is going to have trouble with.

[Lincoln]

Well at least I learned here what the "control-f" function does. That is what I like about Apolyton, there is always a diamond somewhere in the dunghill.

Anyway, those who are interested in the Christian influence on American culture should know that there is both a true and false aspect and it can become rather confusing. For example some lived and loved the Indians and fought for their rights and others thought God was telling them to kill the Indians. The same holds true for slavery. It was largely the influence of Christians that led to their emancipation and at the same time many so called Christians held slaves and fought for the right to keep them. (By "fight" I don't necessarily mean literally taking up arms.)

There is a portion of the United States (the south mostly) where Christianity is in the fabric of the society. I don't think that this will change in our lifetimes. People here are very kind and generous and they help their neighbors in very practical ways. On the other hand there are some who make a profession of being a Christian and they get a lot of press coverage. I think that it is important to actually live here in order to get a true picture of reality. As usual, the fanatics on both sides of an issue get most of the attention.

[SnowFire]

The first question is loaded, and close to meaningless as far as I'm concerned.

As for the second question... I'm going to agree with the others that the "fundamentalist" revival, which has a major focus on the End Times, came about more in this century than the past one. The Scofield Reference Bible back in what, 1905? was the first big thing that caught on (with its good old footnotes explaining his preposterous views as fact and insisting that they were the only one obvious meaning), and the Scopes Trial was ironically the second (because the intelligentsia "won," the fundies retreated from the public debate, and the liberal Christians stopped waging the war in the papers, thinking that the battle was over. Far from it, "fundamentalism" just grew outside the spotlight instead. And I use fundamentalism in quotes because again, modern fundamentalism is something of a new thing- their claims of tradition aren't very valid.). Anyway, therein lies the problem, they seem to have won the debate and even rephrased it in a way that gets the "causual" religious person. Look at the tabloids and how often they push prophecy junk (On a rotation of Nostradamus-Revelations-somebody else; repeat. The somebody elses are occasionally amusing- I never knew Mother Theresa was a seer?). Or look how the word prophecy has been corrupted- a prophet is somebody who speaks the word of God. And yet one of those phone-calling "I have an important message to tell you, concerning prophecies" didn't even seem to realize that, she thought it was just future predictions (with a religious slant, of course).

Anyway, it's a shame, because it's scared the standard ministers away from preaching Revelation. Because there is definitely some interesting stuff in there, as well as important revelations- it just gets overshadowed by the idiotic interpretations some people come up with.

[November Adam]

I don't take the Bible literaly, but I do believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelations will come to pass. I n my life time? Maybe, maybe not.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
All of you foreigners know so much about America.
Amazing.
Actually, the Puritans had no intentions of breaking from the Anglican church.

But please, continue with your education of us on our country.

Yup! They was hopin' to take it over! ( Cromwell )

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ethelred


I don't know. The place was bit chaotic then anyway. Maybe they didn't know either. My guess would be the Archbishop of Canterbury as I think that is the actual rather than technical head of the CoE these days.

Hey I only talk like I know everything. I do know that I don't actualy know everything.

If you know how about you tell me? I am willing to learn. I am even willing to change my mind if given good enough reason. Rogan can easily change my mind on physics. Its religion that he is going to have trouble with.

Anglicanism in the colonial days had some strange features to it. During her reign Queen Elizabeth had this odd notion that she could end religious strife in England by declaring all Christians, not only Anglicans, but also Catholics and Calvinists were to be considered members of the Church of England. You could believe what you wanted, just so long as you went to one opf her churches on Sunday. Priests had to swear an oath to the monarch too. Needless to say this didn't quite satisfy the Calvinists or the Catholics.

During Cromwell's reign the CoE became "reformed", It's services and administration were amended to conform to Calvin's teachings. Clergy then served at the pleasure of the congregation and broader matters were decided by local and regional councils with Cromwell as the ultimate authority. Conditions in the colonies were much more lax, and in the Anglican colonies church was pretty much conducted as it had been before. The main effect of Cromwell's reign in America is that the colonies were allowed an unprecidented measure of represntative government and self-rule.

[DarkCloud]

I believe that John, the disciple was heavily into drugs whilst writing his gospel and the Book of Revelation- thus I don't take him seroiously.

Do you realize how many mushrooms and hallucionogens he would have had access to on that island he was exiled to?



As for the bible twah: It COULD be true. But unless it can be proven I won't believe it. I believe in God, not the bible.