Liberal churches report surge in participation in reaction to Trump presidency

[RINO Tom]

Give it a year or two, and things will change back.

"Real Christian"'s hatred of "liberal" churches is truly strange.  I don't think Jesus would hate 'em!

[RINO Tom]

Most mainline Protestant churches are nothing more than social clubs where people throw around vaguely Christian language now and then to feel good about themselves and virtue signal. Some are even borderline agnostic are just places where normal people who are freaked out by hand waving and "fire and brimstone" preaching go to share their more private, reserved faiths in God and Jesus with each other ... they also occasionally use common sense to see some Biblical stories as allegory and don't care if the psychos down the street at the evangelical "church" think they're less Christian for this basic level of intelligence and non-cultish attitudes.

Always rich when these much newer evangelical religions trash Christian faiths that have been around for so much longer because they're not weird enough.

EDIT: I won't delete anything, as I guess I typed it once so I had to have sort of meant it ... but I'm sorry if I overreacted there.  It's just really annoying to have anyone else tell you that your denomination's teachings which you've grown up with in your family for a long time or that your personal relationship with God is any less legitimate than someone else's, especially when Mainline Protestantism has been the traditionally dominant belief system in this country for decades prior and isn't some strange new twist on Christianity (if anything, that's evangelicals, especially new age ones).

[RINO Tom]

Most mainline Protestant churches are nothing more than social clubs where people throw around vaguely Christian language now and then to feel good about themselves and virtue signal. Some are even borderline agnostic are just places where normal people who are freaked out by hand waving and "fire and brimstone" preaching go to share their more private, reserved faiths in God and Jesus with each other ... they also occasionally use common sense to see some Biblical stories as allegory and don't care if the psychos down the street at the evangelical "church" think they're less Christian for this basic level of intelligence and non-cultish attitudes.

Always rich when these much newer evangelical religions trash Christian faiths that have been around for so much longer because they're not weird enough.

EDIT: I won't delete anything, as I guess I typed it once so I had to have sort of meant it ... but I'm sorry if I overreacted there.  It's just really annoying to have anyone else tell you that your denomination's teachings which you've grown up with in your family for a long time or that your personal relationship with God is any less legitimate than someone else's, especially when Mainline Protestantism has been the traditionally dominant belief system in this country for decades prior and isn't some strange new twist on Christianity (if anything, that's evangelicals, especially new age ones).

The problem is, that the institutions have been traditionally dominant, but the belief systems currently holding sway in them are new. There is a lot of talk in the PCA and ACNA about how "I didn't leave X, X left me". There's been so much change in mainline theology that many of those denomination's founders and early leaders would be unwelcome now. It's hard to imagine J. Gresham Machen for example ever getting ordained in today's PCUSA.

From a confessional Protestant point of view, the pedigree of Schori and Spong is only marginally older than some Pentecostal rolling around on the floor.

I think that's a fair point, and at the end of the day I'll take whatever insults or jabs that anyone - more religious or less religious than I - will throw at me, and it won't change my beliefs.  I have never seen the value in critiquing things like this or thinking that looking at the Bible and "picking and choosing" which parts you see as feasible or relevant to a modern world makes one a hypocrite, etc.  If I truly believe in the Resurrection but believe that such a fantastic event - manufactured by God Himself - probably happened in a much less "worldy" way than depicted in books that are thousands of years old, I don't see myself as some type of "cultural Christian" or part of a "social club that uses vaguely Christian language."  I find it perfectly logical that some of the Bible's stories were either 1) put in there to teach a lesson and were not grounded in any type of historical truth or 2) have been morphed by centuries of translation to the point that we don't know what actually happened, and I don't find these opinions sacreligious or whatever.

I fully respect those who feel differently (so long as they don't come at my beliefs), but I have always held that traditional Lutheran view of "if God didn't want us to use our brains, he wouldn't have given us them."  Questioning things isn't bad.  The other Lutheran view I adhere strongly to is the idea that each individual can have a personal relationship with God, so while I appreciate evangelism and specifically the role it played in spreading early Christianity, I don't think someone who has developed a more private and secluded relationship with God is failing in his or her "duty," spiritually.

[RINO Tom]

2) have been morphed by centuries of translation to the point that we don't know what actually happened,

With respect, I don't really understand the point of this argument because we have numerous copies of the Bible in the original languages (far more than for other religious corpi such as the Mahayana Buddhist sutras, which were originally written in Sanskrit but are mostly extant in Chinese), unless the point is that there might be some uncertainty because many of the characters in the New Testament would have been speaking Aramaic rather than Greek.

I didn't mean translation from one language to another so much as the story changing over time.  Additionally, I think some of the allegory might have made more sense to someone in the BC years than someone in 2017 (obviously) and so it should be interpreted that way.

[RINO Tom]

2) have been morphed by centuries of translation to the point that we don't know what actually happened,

With respect, I don't really understand the point of this argument because we have numerous copies of the Bible in the original languages (far more than for other religious corpi such as the Mahayana Buddhist sutras, which were originally written in Sanskrit but are mostly extant in Chinese), unless the point is that there might be some uncertainty because many of the characters in the New Testament would have been speaking Aramaic rather than Greek.

I didn't mean translation from one language to another so much as the story changing over time.  Additionally, I think some of the allegory might have made more sense to someone in the BC years than someone in 2017 (obviously) and so it should be interpreted that way.

Thanks for clarifying. There are plenty of people who do use this talking point about translation from one language to another and it annoys me to no end. My bad.

No problem!   Interesting topic, for sure, I just don't hold it to the same logical rigor that we would discussing non-religious history.  That's not to say the Bible isn't a largely historical text, as I believe it is, but I think that applying some imagination to the more fantastic elements of Scripture - based on one's conception of God and His nature, based on scientific discoveries, personal experiences, etc. - is perfectly normal and doesn't fundamentally dillute one's religiosity.