AjaxMinoan wrote:
Quote:
I think I know what you mean. I'm an Anne Rice Christian, myself. I reject your convoluted tangle of nonsensical doctrines, eschew your violent history, built-in anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism, inquisitions, wars of religion, chopping each other's heads off over scriptures, Puritans hanging Quakers, Protestants slaughtering Catholics, Catholics slaughtering Protestants and Orthodox, Orthodox slaughtering Catholics, white bigot Christians burning crosses and burning down Black churches, continual refusal on the part of the most populous branches of xianity to ordain women, etc.
Christianity is more than those things, though, so at a certain point, disavowing them does little good beyond the individual doing the disavowing. Some things are cultural, and shared. When I'm in a room with others who were not raised xian, I'm definitely the christian; that's just the way the ball bounces. I'm also not likely to absorb much anti-xian hatred or become some scapegoat in those situations. I can also walk into a Catholic church and still have a good idea of what's coming up next, and how to act.
I don't think there is anything wrong with those things, but they are what they are. Outside of severe amnesia, they cannot be erased. Some things like my AME background I do not want erased. It's one of the foundations of civil rights activism in this country.
I'm non-denominational myself, but I don't though walk by a Lutheran church and think I'm better than the people inside. I've walked in, and found very good people there.
I've found that "non-denominational" has morphed into just another denomination. You may like this - my father used to refer to himself as a "methacostal baptist" or some other made-up term "non denominationals" often use to denote they've moved beyond denominations. It's a very Protestant anxiety, but the humor around it is an improvement over lynchings and wars of religion.
I can get with the Lutherans, especially the ELCA Lutherans, the largest branch over here. Lutherans have some seriously nasty history,
Deutsche Christen being one fine example. But once they got over here and had to compete with Catholics and about a bajillion other Protestants all screaming as loud as Luther himself once did, they calmed down a bit.
Today, ELCA is one of the mainline denoms that allow out gay clergy and is coming around on same sex marriage.
http://bit.ly/3yXZayA friend of mine grew up Lutheran Church in America (Missouri/Misery Synod) and is on her way to becoming a Luther scholar. In fact, I have some recent stuff I ran across on Luther in the mail to her, along with this movie
The White Ribbon, which is my favorite movie right now.
(And don't tell nobody, but right across the street from the Mission in San Francisco, there's a Lutheran church that still has services in German. Always meant to go, still intend to at some point. More on the point about being a cultural xian, warts and all -- my little pre-literate German is terrible but because of common culture, services in non English languages are always interesting, because you have a pretty good idea of what's coming next, whether Orthodox, Pentecostal, Polish Catholic, etc. That sort of thing is interesting to me.)
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