Well, here evangelical churches have a prolifical music market, with people massively buying original evangelical CDs (because downloading is a sin, you know) and different kinds of Bibles (the young woman Bible, the surfer Bible, the Family Bible… all of them only with different covers and illustrations inside – same text). Here we have mascots for the churches, and each sells a lot of dolls of these mascots.

It’s f*cked up, I know, but we are a third world country, people are not smart yet… :(

“making pharmacist refusals based on religious belief illegal – and every other instance of enforcing one’s prejudice on others” What do you think you’re doing? Uh, enforcing your prejudice on someone else! You’re elevating your beliefs over someone else’s and in the process forcing your beliefs on someone else.

Face it. Everyone is an extremist to someone. Radical right. Radical left. We all fall there on someone’s scale. There’s a reason you belief what you believe – you think it’s right and the world would be better off if everyone believed as you do. Guess what? Everyone (well, almost everyone) believes that.

How do you solve that? You have free dialogue (without condemning language or tone) and agreement to disagree. In the end, someone’s beliefs ARE going to be forced on someone else. But we’ll never have a civil conversation with accusations, innuendo, and sarcasm.

Peace.

That helped answer my question as to whether the Church of Christ is evangelical. It matched 8 (or 9) of Barna’s 9 criteria, and all 7 of the Evangelical Manifesto.

I wasn’t sure if you had to be a Holy Roller or speak in tongues to qualify for the definition. C. of C. is too staid for that, but not too rigid, narrow, self-righteous, or closed-minded.

Within her book, she boils it down to a few points:

“… people who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior and as the only way to heaven, who accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and who are scaring the bejesus out of the rest of America.”

Basically the hallmarks are Jesus as the narrow way, being ‘born again’, and biblical inerrancy. It’s kind of loose. Technically, she lumps in liberal and moderate evangelicals. But Fred Clark over at “Slacktvist” is an Liberal Evangelical, and he’s not scaring the bejesus out of anybody. Except LaHaye & Jenkins.

She expands on this a bit on her blog: http://www.christinewicker.com/?p=30

Here she looks at the 9 points from the Barna Group and compares them to the (liberal) Evangelical Manifesto.

Since I have too many functioning brain cells to do that, I will go ahead and make it somewhat relevant:

Christians seem to be the most in favor of rampant breeding, and forcing others to be breeders. (@abortion forums.)

So (especially if no one can give me any more answers to my above question about the C. of C.) here it is:

My nickname for the “Ask Amy Dickinson” advice column is “Breeders’ Digest”.

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/disinformation/#comment-14511

S/He denies global warming and deleted my posts which sited scientific literature on the matter (how surprising!). Yet, claims to be scientifically motivated. How sad.

Does Church of Christ count as “evangelical”?

I can tell you that when I believed it from age 17 to 20 (and not from birth because I wasn’t raiseed in any religion, thank God!) that

I once said, “Aren’t we a denomination?” Ha! No, of course not! They are the original church!

There is no speaking in tongues or modern miracles. All the miracles happened, but do not happen now. (Remember, this is not a debate; this is a description of their beliefs.)

They pass around matzoh and grape juice for communion. They don’t believe in drinking wine/ alcohol. This is funny ever since I read the comment: “Unless the ancient Middle East had refrigerators, their grape juice DID ferment into wine!”

They do not call themselves “dunkers” (*snerk*) but that is how they baptize. I know. I was there. Only adults, or over the age of 11 to 12. (All the ones born into it get the call by then. They call it divine; we call it conditioning.)

Bringing my belonging to them for three years out into the light somehow banishes the shame of it. Maybe the Catholics have a point: confession can be good for you! Ha ha!

Since I don’t know exactly what “evangelical” means, and C. of C. doesn’t get high profile, I’m hoping someone can answer my above question.

I gotta agree with Sundog on something: that

There isn’t a one of us here that is sorry someone else has put forward a diferent point of view. But just prattling about your God and how wonderful he is will never cut it.
Faith is the absence of reason, and I will never make that bargain.

I don’t know or agree for sure that faith is necessarily, exclusively, and always “the absence of reason”.

At least in the human condition of uncertainty (which,by the way, Christians deny, even though Schrödinger and Heisenberg had uncertainty with all their knowledge).

But I do know that I have seen too much….
… oh… what shall I call it? … let’s see now… oh, yeah!… I know!…

… “Unreasonable Faith”!

(not that I would steal that from the name of a website or anything)

As is happens, yes. Well, reading about Eliade in a philosophy of history mode at the moment , but yes.

For what it’s worth, the concept of sacred space and language have been part of my lexicon for a while. Episcopalians have to justify their liturgical conservatism somehow, and “sacred time” sounds better that “’cause that’s the way my father did it.”

I wanted things like sacred space and language to carry me away from the profane world.

You been reading Eliade?

No. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. As I pointed out on a different thread, reasoning (as we understand it today) was basically invented for the purpose of thinking about theological problems.

Now, I’d certainly agree that belief held *contrary* to available evidence is generally not reasonable. But that’s a different thing than faith.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/18/palin-told-to-pay-back-taxes/