For the last year and a half or so, I've been reading a lot of apologetics articles and trying to familiarize myself with a movement within contemporary Christianity that characterizes itself less on tradition and more on social justice. A lot of people on here probably know that I've never been a big time churchgoer save for weddings and funerals, and my constraint from weekly services is very much influenced by my parents' own views on organized religion, and the fact that the three of us are pretty much split in terms of denomination and degree of faith. I do see myself as a churchgoer one day when I'm more independent, and I've been looking into studying theology when I get to college so that I can understand these things more.
Now, I've never really had doubts about my own beliefs, but my confidence in organized religion has also been overshadowed many times by the abuses I see it has led to. So yes, I sometimes consider myself someone who's not particularly religious in a modern sense but as someone who goes by a faith, which I know sounds entirely contradictory. Most of you know that many of my views are at odds with what the majority of Christians are taught to believe. I accept evolution as scientific fact, I'm pro-choice on abortion, and I don't see homosexuality as immoral let alone agree with the common interpretations of the scripture about it (which I am NOT going to get into a brawl with people on this forum about anymore)
*. And I struggle to associate myself with those who I feel are embracing (and destroying the reputation of) a faith that I don't believe has properly been realized yet.
Recently, I've read two books and contacted one of the authors of them:
Jesus Was a Liberal by Scotty McLennan and the book I started last week,
Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don't like Christianity by Roger Wolsey. Rev. McLennan identifies himself as a member of the Unitarian Universalists, which is a religion that isn't particularly unified by a common figure or creed, but by a shared search for spiritual growth. Mr. Wolsey describes himself in his book as a United Methodist, which he contends to be a "big tent" religion composed of both liberal and conservative Christians -- but upon further research, that doesn't really seem to be the case, for the most part.
So I guess I'll cut to the chase -- I'm not sure what denomination I should explore or become more involved with if I take my interest in theology further in life. I would prefer to be in a denomination that's not totally unstructured (or em, "hipster-esque"), but frankly unorthodox from many traditional Protestant faiths. Sadly, the online quizzes haven't helped much in answering this question for me as they've ranked me pretty much anything from Baptist to Quaker, which I know are certainly not correct.
And my knowledge on the different teachings of the denominations is still rather limited -- as I'm not even sure if the one I was baptized into -- Congregational Presbyterianism -- is the correct one -- so I thought I'd ask what you guys thought. What denomination would suit me most?
*Let me emphasize this. I'm
NOT looking for a debate here. I'm looking for ideas.
