How about, at a minimimum:
1. Trinitarian
2. Belief in the full divinity and humanity of Christ
4. Belief in full incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection
3. Belief in the providential nature of Jewish and Christian revelation, and their interconnectedness
My first thought was to say “first 7 ecumenical councils,” but some are more important than others. The validity of images flows from the incarnation, but denying them does not automatically involve denying Christ as human and divine.
PDGM

How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian?
I’m wondering why we’re asking this question. Are we taking a survey of “Christians” (by whatever definition)? Does being a “Christian” automatically get you preferment in the afterlife? (Most Christian groups would say No, not necessarily.) Are we forming a congregation of “Christians”? (If so, and if you survey the vast array of Christian groups, you’ll see that the criteria vary quite widely, to the point that certain Protestant groups say that Roman Catholics, the largest Christian denomination by far, are not “really” Christians at all.)
Who needs to know whether I or you or anyone else “qualifies” as a “Christian” and why do they need to know that?

My reaction is similar to Odessa’s. I would only append that I see the question being misstated and misunderstood.
What set of tenets does one need to believe in order to be accepted as a member of a [fill in sect] Christian church?
We have a similar dilemma in modern pagandom. We solve it simply: It is up to the person to exercise intellectual and emotional integrity by examining his or her beliefs and telling the rest of us whether he or she should be labeled “Pagan”. There are plenty of Pagans who reject that notion, with quite as much fervor as one might expect from some Christians.
To borrow a phrase from some Christians: Only the gods can judge, and the only reliable ear to listen to that judgment is the heart.

And if you doubt that Jesus REALLY arose from the dead, but believe that the faith is bound together with centuries of believers who have been guided by that belief, does that make you less of a Christian?
I think there’s a danger in either Christopher Hitchins or the Vatican getting to define what it takes to be a Christian and that doubt about the specifics of Jesus birth and resurrection doesn’t take away from the core belief of Christianity.

Interestingly enough, your interlocutor is suggesting that you may be wrong in excluding Unitarians from the Christian family. But he is, ironically, excluding you as among those whose opinions may be right.
At the end day, we are all exclusivists; it just depends on what level of abstraction at you choose to stop.

Three thoughts:
1) It is obviously convenient for “evangelical” atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) and conservative Christians to join in defining liberal Christians as non-Christians, regardless of the merits.
2) As between James Reeb, the Unitarian minister who was beaten to death in Selma in 1965, and Archbishop Toolen of Mobile, who opposed the Selma marches, which one “professed religion but reduced it to pudding”? (I acknowledge that this is an unfair question for many reasons — not least because it fails to acknowledge the important civil rights work of many Catholic clergy — but characterization of Unitarians as religious narcissists is also unfair.)
3) Does “the whole megillah” of Christian belief include belief in the literal truth of the Adam and Eve creation story? Noah’s Ark?

I’m not sure it has to be about belief. Maybe just a certain kind of hope is enough for those who do not yet have strong enough faith to fully believe Christian orthodoxy (and that would include just about all of us, if by “belief” we don’t just mean intellectual assent but also humble submission). I would say that those who can recite the Creed in hope that by the grace of God they will be transformed into the kind of person who can believe its contents, both in mind and in action, should be considered fellow “believers.”

Re: I think there’s a danger in either Christopher Hitchins or the Vatican getting to define what it takes to be a Christian and that doubt about the specifics of Jesus birth and resurrection doesn’t take away from the core belief of Christianity.
Huh? Then what IS the core belief of Christianity, in your opinion?
The core beliefs of Christianity- at their most basic- are summed up in the Nicene Creed. If you don’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection, then I’m not sure why you would call yourself a Christian.
“I BELIEVE in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible:
“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man: And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried: And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures: And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father: And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.
“And I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the Prophets: And I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church: I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins: And I look for the Resurrection of the dead: And the life of the world to come. Amen.
I wasn’t aware anyone actually claimed the Unitarians to be Christian. They deny that Christ was divine, after all, which seems like it would make you definitively non Christian.

What must one believe to claim the title of Christian? There are different ways of coming at this question, including theological and historical approaches. What can we say about Christianity as a historical phenomenon? Specifically, what can we say about the origins of Christianity, about what the earliest Christians believed?
Historically speaking, we may reasonably speak of early Christianities, not just early Christianity. The language of Trinity and Incarnation developed over time, and while it can be rightly argued to be the only adequate articulation of the faith that was there from the beginning, this may be more a theological conviction than a historical assessment.
What is not a theological assertion is that the phenomenon of Christianity is incomprehensible apart from the shared conviction that Christians have earth-shaking news for all mankind, that a world has passed away, and a new world ushered in. Specifically, Christianity in its earliest known forms was strikingly characterized by the defining, shared conviction that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth God has acted in a decisive and definitive way on behalf of all mankind.
To be a Christian in this historical sense must be seen as presupposing something something much more precipitous than merely standing in a particular philosophical, moral or even religious movement, or belonging to a particular movement or culture, or tracing one’s thought or social milieu to a particular teacher or prophet. It means rather to be a citizen of a new world, not of human making, but brought about by God. Not just a work of God among many, but the apex or climax of the divine work on behalf of all mankind. Not on behalf of a particular people, comparable to similar works among other peoples. The missionary zeal of the early Christians, one of the most characteristic aspects of early Christian praxis, does not reflect a belief that the Christians had found something that was true for them.
Thus, my rock-bottom minimum qualifying criterion for anyone who wants to claim the title Christian (note the carefully qualified language) is: Anyone who wants to claim the title Christian must, at minimum, believe that in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth God has acted in a decisive and definitive way on behalf of all mankind.
I don’t say that acceptance of this thesis is sufficient theologically to make one a Christian. (For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe this much.) But disbelief in this thesis is sufficient historically to exclude one from being a Christian. A man who disbelieves this — who believes that Jesus is a way to God, or the only way to God for some people but not necessarily for all — can still claim to be an heir to a larger Christian culture or heritage, or to be a fan or student of whomever one believes Jesus to be. But he has unequivocally placed himself outside of Christianity as a historical phenomenon.

Mr Hitchen’s makes a good point but in the wrong context. Something that dogma, literalism and stereotyping do equally well, if not as witty nor poignant.

The earliest creed was Jesus is Lord. Paul in 1 Cor 12:3 says that no one can say except by the Holy Spirit. Saying Jesus is Lord had a very specific and real meaning (i.e. Ceasar was not Lord nor anyone or anything else, but everything was under Christ). That would seem to be the minimum. Not that things like the Nicene Creed aren’t true, but the person and work of Jesus is the core.

The only meaningful answer to would be one that came from Jesus’s mouth. What would he say? Judging by his words, he thought actions were much more important than words and beliefs.
By that standard, clearly he’d think an atheist who gave away all his worldly possessions and devoted his life to helping the poor, who turned the other cheek, who loved his enemies, etc., was much more of a “Christian” than someone who asserted the truth of all the various items of jibber-jabber mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but who didn’t walk the walk in any significant way.

How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian?
Just my two cents, but I’d go with the Nicene creed, as well. C.S.Lewis’s did a pretty good job of addressing this question in his book, “Mere Christianity.”
I think the problem with me and perhaps other Christians is that we try to believe too much — better, I think, to believe less but bet your life on it. So, Nicene creed for me…
Best,
Mike

odessa: Who needs to know whether I or you or anyone else “qualifies” as a “Christian” and why do they need to know that?
As you phrase the question, the answer is, “No one.” In Mere Christianity, however, C. S. Lewis points out that the issue isn’t whether one “qualifies” or whether a person is good or bad, but an issue of definition. If I’m talking about dogs, I’d better have a clear idea what “dog” means. This doesn’t mean that dogs are “better” than cats, rabbits, or ferrets; it just means that if I say, “Dogs go ‘meow’,” I’m obviously confused about what I’m saying.
Of course, as Lewis also pointed out, “Christian” has become a generic term of praise (or revilement, depending on the quarter whence it issues), which makes it useless as a descriptive term. The point is not to say who is “really” a Christian, or whether Christians are “better” than Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, non-believers, or whatever. The point is to have some idea of how Christianity is defined, so that one can meaningfully say things like “Christinity teaches…” or “The main goal of Christianity is….” This was why Lewis was concerned to tease out the basis of what he called “mere Christianity”.
In that regard, his book of the same name does quite a good job of doing just that, I think. For the Reader’s Digest definition of Christian belief, I think the Apostle’s, Nicene, and secondarily, Athanasian Creeds are pretty good summations for Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.

Nate W., that is a wonderful way to define it.
I notice Rod, perhaps in deference to some of his readers, ignored the issue of Mormons. They call themselves Christians, but non-Mormon (“real”?) Christians tend to baptize converts to their churches from Mormonism and exclude them from Christendom.
Bill M. did a similar thing in his movie “Religiousity,” where he exposed the silliness of certain Christians without ever engaging seriously with the questions of Christianity.
OT: Hector (and others): do you pause after the word salvation in the Nicene Creed? Our hymnal breaks the creed thusly:
For us and for our salvation
He came down from heaven . . .
I don’t pause there and my daughter always gives me a dirty look because everyone else does.

Horsefeathers,
“The only meaningful answer to would be one that came from Jesus’s mouth.”
Christianity is founded upon Jesus, but Christianity cannot be reduced to whatever we can say about what Jesus taught, to the exclusion of what we can say about what his followers believed and taught in his name. Any meaningful definition of Christianity must be consistent with whatever we can know about Jesus (assuming that Christianity itself is meaningful), but we can certainly make meaningful statements about what Jesus’ earliest followers believed that can contribute to our understanding of what a Christian is.
“Judging by his words, he thought actions were much more important than words and beliefs.”
The Gospels indicate both that (a) he believed we would all be judged according to our deeds and also that (b) he regarded his mission in the world and what people thought of it and of himself as of crucial importance.
“By that standard, clearly he’d think an atheist who gave away all his worldly possessions and devoted his life to helping the poor, who turned the other cheek, who loved his enemies, etc., was much more of a “Christian” than someone who asserted the truth of all the various items of jibber-jabber mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but who didn’t walk the walk in any significant way.”
The Gospels might support the claim that Jesus would approve of the first man rather than the second (e.g., one of the parables of two sons). That doesn’t tell us who the historical Jesus would call a “Christian,” if we insist on asking such anachronistic questions.

A thought experiment:
Would self-described “liberal Christians” find it quite alright for someone with the beliefs Rod professes above to describe himself as:
(A) A Jew?
(B) A Muslim?
(C) A Hindu?
(D) A Buddhist?
(E) An Atheist?
If not, why not?
Is “Christianity” the only term whose definition is required by “liberals” to be infinitely malleable?
Must “feminism” be a malleable enough term to accommodate misogyny?
Must “gay pride” be a malleable enough term to accommodate homophobia?
Must “liberalism” and/or “progressivism” be a malleable enough term to accommodate conservatism and/or traditionalism?
Must “liberal Christianity” be a malleable enough term to accommodate Christian fundamentalism, evangelical Christianity, and the Religious Right?
If not, why not?

Re: By that standard, clearly he’d think an atheist who gave away all his worldly possessions and devoted his life to helping the poor, who turned the other cheek, who loved his enemies, etc., was much more of a “Christian” than someone who asserted the truth of all the various items of jibber-jabber mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but who didn’t walk the walk in any significant way.
That second person would be a _bad_ Christian, and would certainly be treated more harshly in the afterlife than the atheist. The atheist might well make it into heaven, for all anyone knows. But that wouldn’t mean that the virtuous atheist is therefore a Christian.
‘Christian’ is not meant to be a term of praise- it’s meant to be a term of description. Do you think that one can be a Marxist who believes in trickle-down economics, or an environmentalist who believes in turning Yellowstone into a parking lot?

Hector, lots of “Christians” don’t use of the Nicene Creed. You’ll almost never hear it recited in Evangelical churches or protestant churches. Ironically,it isn’t recited by small-f fundamentalists for not being sola scriptura. It is a “symbol of faith,” but not the definition of it.
As others have said, it’s not surprising that a fundamentalist and evangelical Athiest would align himself with fundamentalist Christians in deciding the tenets of the faith. It’s about an intellectual and world view.

I’d add that our perspective needs to be informed by the cry of the father of the ill son in Mark 9: “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.”
It’s like a spiritual Heisenberg principle. The more you focus on the rational dimension of belief, the less you can see of the mystical; and vice versa. Belief and unbelief coexist in all but the most saintly Christians, and at times even there as the lives of the saints teach. And there is a living and organic exchange between rational belief and mystical belief.
Then there’s the entirely separate issue of what an individual claims (which might be anything they’d like) and what institutions claim, as to the required tenets of membership. Whose definition of Christian are we after, IOW, the potential Christian’s or the Church’s? And if the latter, it begs the question of what is the Church, where is the Church?

Only the pope speaks infallibly about matters of faith and morals, so you’re all just wasting your time

Last time I checked, believing Jesus is the Son of God, that He died for the atonement of our sins, and that He rose from the dead is a pretty big part of Christianity. In fact, I think even the Emergents believe in those core doctrines.

“1. Trinitarian
2. Belief in the full divinity and humanity of Christ
3. Belief in full incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection
4. Belief in the providential nature of Jewish and Christian revelation, and their interconnectedness.”
Of course, none of this excludes, for instance, a simultaneously held belief in Muhammad’s prophet, or Buddha’ awakening to Nirvana.

I like Hitchens and believe he has a point. However, it is hard to give a settled answer to that question. To be a Christian, as others have pointed out, is, in part, an aspirational goal. I strive to be a good Christian because I got the idea at some point during childhood that it was a good thing to be.
My father was a Lutheran pastor, so I did have a religious upbringing. But, having spent two years in EFM (Education for Ministry, a course of laypeople sponsored by the University of the South) I have to say I came away from that very rich and meaningful experience convinced that human beings have no real idea about God.
The Bible is a tale of human longing for God, of religious communities who strove after God, but in no sense to I believe that it was written by God. Do I believe in the miracles of the Bible? I’m an agnostic about them. I simply don’t know, but, rationally, I think not. Does that mean I don’t believe Jesus was the Son of God? I believe he was the most perfect human being who ever lived, but that may just be a prejudice left over from childhood.

is a pretty big part of Christianity.
But if you have doubts about the details and specifics, are you required to quit calling yourself a Christian? and Why?
If you don’t really believe in the science of transubstantaition, but believe in the “belief” of transubstantiation, must you stop being a Catholic (which is a different question, of course, since “the rules” trump the “the word” in many ways).

I think Diana Butler Bass explained it the best, in balancing the question of reliability and provability as it relates to the resurrection.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/04/diana-butler-bass-believing.html

Jesus said if we loved one another then all men would know that we were His disciples. Most Christians, me included, find this too difficult a standard and so look for other measures to define who is in or out. Or we redefine what “love until its scarcely recognizable.
I must say, though, that the Unitarian minister had a good point about the writing of Hitchens, et.al., they criticize a very narrow form of fundamentalist Christianity and then turn and around and act like their critique applies to all Christianity, or even to all religion in general.

Why is it that y’all suddenly have a problem with Unitarians when they also self-identify directly as liberal? The major point you’ve all picked on is lack of belief in the trinity – but Unitarians have been around for awhile and identified as Christians. So why only now are you raising a stink?

All this in turn begs the question of where the much-maligned concept of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” begins. Because it is easy for atheists, in debates, to ask their religious opponents–as Bill Maher puts it–”if they believe in the talking snake,” and just as easy for the religious to say, of course not, that’s an allegory or a metaphor or not the really important part of the faith. Well, how much of the literal gets turned into metaphors or ignored altogether before someone can just call you MTD–trying to be good because of some vague “religiosity-ness”?

Paul said that without the resurrection our faith was in vain. He has a point. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, then why bother with any of it?

Because Hitchens’ dispute is with a Unitarian minister. But look, this post is not about bashing Unitarians; it’s about how we determine what it means to call oneself a Christian, or a member of any particular religion. As Frank Beckwith said, everybody is exclusivist at some level; what matters is where the line is drawn. Remember the Episcopal priest in the news a couple of years ago because she declared herself both an Episcopalian and a Muslim? No one could possibly take her seriously, because any serious version of Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive.
Moreover, while some people believe these lines are drawn only for the purposes of exclusion, orthodox religious believers view religion as a path disclosed to us through revelation (Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc.) to help us achieve holiness. For some believers, notably Christians and Muslims, our eternal destiny depends on not deviating from this path. So it’s eternally important to stay on the path. Which is why doctrinal questions are so important. Now, we are reminded by St. Paul that love is the main thing. One may hold all the correct opinions about the faith, and still be very far from God if one does not love. That said, St. Paul did not say that love was the only thing. He laid down the law quite clearly on many occasions.
I can see why, if you do not believe religious claims intend to be objective statements about the world, you would insist that exclusive religious truth claims are only made for the purposes of excluding an out group. But you should try to grasp what it looks like to we who believe that religious claims have objective content, or at least are intended to. It matters enormously whether or not Jesus arose from the dead, because if he didn’t, why be Christian? I can think of other philosophies that make more sense, and are easier to live by. I’ve never heard a better line about this question than that put to me by a priest friend, who heard it in his seminary class. The professor asked the seminarians what they would do if the bones of Jesus were discovered. One of the men said, “I’d go out and get laid.” That might strike you as a glib response, but to a young man who is preparing to sacrifice sex, and in turn family life, for the sake of serving as a priest of Jesus of Nazareth, it’s enormously important that Jesus was who he claimed to be, and not a false messiah.

Hitchens is right.

I agree with Mark (the poster that is): The minimum is that *Jesus is Lord*, with the hope being for the Kingdom of God.
I also think that that minimum does, and always will, confuse and expose both atheists and organized religionists as substituting their will for the Will of God.

Dharmashaiva wrote, quoting me:
“1. Trinitarian
2. Belief in the full divinity and humanity of Christ
3. Belief in full incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection
4. Belief in the providential nature of Jewish and Christian revelation, and their interconnectedness.”
Of course, none of this excludes, for instance, a simultaneously held belief in Muhammad’s prophet, or Buddha’ awakening to Nirvana.
To which I reply, it certainly does not exclude Buddha’s awakening; but the specifics of Islam’s claim to being THE fulfillment of Christianity or the correction of Christianity at least make Islam’s case a little more involved, with more explanation needed.
But I’d agree with the general point that believing the Christian positive dogmas does not automatically preclude fitting them into some larger understanding. This can be anything from some vague sense or some (to me) flakyish New Agey notion, to pretty rigorous ideas on how historical revelations might fit into some larger pattern.

“It matters enormously whether or not Jesus arose from the dead, because if he didn’t, why be Christian?”
Fascinating!
This makes me think several things.
It matters enormously whether or not Jesus arose from the dead, because if he didn’t, why love thy neighbor as thyself?
If I love my neighbor as myself, does it matter whether or not Jesus arose from the dead?

“Remember the Episcopal priest in the news a couple of years ago because she declared herself both an Episcopalian and a Muslim? No one could possibly take her seriously, because any serious version of Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive.”
Exactly. Christianity entails the belief that God has acted in a decisive and definitive way on behalf of all mankind in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Islam entails the belief that God has revealed himself in a decisive and definitive way on behalf of all mankind through the revelation to Muhammad. Even if God was at work in both men, his work cannot be decisive and definitive in both of them. If they are of comparable significance, or if the differences between them are a matter of relative degree, then neither is decisive and definitive, and neither Christianity nor Islam is true.

“If I love my neighbor as myself, does it matter whether or not Jesus arose from the dead?”
“Love your neighbor as yourself” is important, all right. So is “If any man will not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” Whether Jesus rose from the dead is of infinite importance to one contemplating taking up his cross and following Jesus.

Rod writes:
“I can see why, if you do not believe religious claims intend to be objective statements about the world, you would insist that exclusive religious truth claims are only made for the purposes of excluding an out group.”
I think that Rod’s observation here about religious claims could be expand to include the kinds of moralistic political claims that function for secular left-liberals in the same way that religious claims function for people who are religious.
If religious claims are merely emotive statements applicable only to the individuals for whom they offer therapeutic comfort, statements which also serve to sow social division by excluding those not offered therapeutic comfort by those claims, then isn’t one required — for consistency’s sake — to regard the moralistic political claims of left-liberals in just that same light … i.e. as merely emotive statements that are “true” only in so far as they provide therapeutic comfort to those already inside the exclusive in-groups that choose to profess them.
In other words, there aren’t *really* “human rights” or “civil rights” in any objectively true sense that anyone who is not therapeutically comforted by those moralistic political claims is required to recognize, as opposed to being coerced into observing by force of law.
In other words, women aren’t *really* equal to men, homosexuals aren’t *really* equal to straights, blacks aren’t *really* equal to whites.
Left-liberal claims that they are aren’t objectively *true,* anymore than the moralistic claims made by Christians or Jews or Muslims or HIndus or Buddhists are objectively true.
Instead, they are merely therapeutically-comfortable fictions that any smart and well-educated and ci and enlightened and civilized person ought to recognize as such, as opposed to objective statements of absolute and binding truth.
And, that being the case, left-liberals must also recognize not only that, say, Fred Phelps has every bit as much basis for describing himself as a gay-friendly Liberal Christian as, say, Vicky Gene Robinson or Mary Glasspool, but also that Phelps has every bit as much (or every bit as little) basis for holding that his moral claims are objectively true as Robinson or Glasspool do.
Finally, left-liberals must also recognize that — on their own logic — there is really no reason to favor Robinson’s or Glasspool’s moral claims over Phelps’s claims … that is, on any grounds except that left-liberals happen to find Robinson’s and Glasspool’s moral claims therapeutically-more-comforting than Phelps’s moral claims.

The validity of images flows from the incarnation, but denying them does not automatically involve denying Christ as human and divine.
My priest disagrees with you…

My priest disagrees with you…
You priest doesn’t get to play bouncer on the Christianity velvet rope, except for you and your fellow believers in you specific branch of Christianity, despite what you may think about being the original church.
While I realize Rod was trying to be “hip” by using the term “pwn,” I think it underscores the problem with Hitchens argument. Athiest fundamentalists love to say they “pwned” Christians when they poke holes in the arguments of Christians. It’s what makes fundamentalists like Hitchens so annoying.
But it’s no less annoying when it comes from orthodox believers who think they “score points” by poking holes in the arguments of liberal believers. There is no velvet rope in Heaven where you are quizzed on whether you actually believe Jesus was resurrected or whether you see it as a more transformative story of faith.

You never do love your neighbor as yourself. Which is why it is so important that Jesus not only arose from the dead but also died.

I have trouble with the question, because Christianity is not primarily a set of principles or beliefs, but a man: Jesus Christ. Whether or not one is a follower can be pretty squishy. As others have pointed out, actions speak louder than words, and at some point if you are walking in a different direction, it gets difficult to still say you are a follower.

Peter,
“There is no velvet rope in Heaven where you are quizzed on whether you actually believe Jesus was resurrected or whether you see it as a more transformative story of faith.”
Does the velvet rope metaphor have any value, other than to snark at any form of non-universalism? Either everyone is saved, or not. If not, then some are in and some are out, and whether we express that reality with a velvet rope metaphor or in some other way doesn’t seem to advance the discussion.
There are significant indications in the NT that we are judged by our deeds. There are also significant indications that belief makes all the difference.
You say “a transformative story of faith.” Faith in what? In a dead man? In his timeless teachings? In a God who doesn’t do miracles?
Is your faith about something that has happened in the world — something decisive and world-changing? Has mankind’s status toward God changed in some decisive way? If so, how?
If the question is who is on which side of a velvet rope in Heaven, we are all at a loss. If the question is about the historical shape of the Christian religion, there is much more that can be said.

Ross Douthat has an interesting take on the symbiosis of “fundamentalist” Christians and the “New Atheists.” In a discussion of the Haiti earthquake, he argues that there is a connection between Richard Dawkins and Pat Robertson, and attempts to offer another theodicy and account of divine judgment that is “orthodox” (i.e., not “liberal Christian”) without being fundamentalist.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/fundamentalists-and-the-atheists-who-love-them/

Hitchens’ definition is pretty good. Dreher’s summary at the end lacks Hitch’s “by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven,” or maybe that is part of Rod’s megillah, or the ellipsis. In which case the most important stuff is in the dot-dots, as the kids call them.
I like the Nicene creed, but it falls into the trap of too much detail — must I vilify Pontius Pilate to be forgiven for vilifying Pontius Pilate?
Now I’m embarrassed for elevating Hitch over the Nicene creed. But sometimes less is more.

“must I vilify Pontius Pilate to be forgiven for vilifying Pontius Pilate?”
The point of the credal clause is not to vilify Pilate, but to locate Jesus’ death in actual history.

If the question is about the historical shape of the Christian religion, there is much more that can be said.
Sure there is, but it doesn’t define who is Christian. That Hitchen and Dreher think Unitarians or even moderate Christians aren’t Christian because they have doubts about the resurrection and voice it seems to be the issue here.
If Templeton is about science and religion and the resurrection story defies science and scientific understanding, than Templeton’s mission of bridging that gap becomes harder and harder if people who raise scientific doubt are cast out of Christianity.

“Sure there is, but it doesn’t define who is Christian.”
Christians are those who adhere to Christianity. Christianity is a religion with a historical shape about which meaningful things can be said. Those who do not adhere to core elements in the historical shape of Christianity may be called “Christian” in some adjectival, mushy moral sense, but they are not Christians in the noun sense in which the term was first used in Antioch, and was used among the early Christians.
“That Hitchen and Dreher think Unitarians or even moderate Christians aren’t Christian because they have doubts about the resurrection and voice it seems to be the issue here.”
If they have doubts about the resurrection, I would say they have doubts about Christianity. If they reject the resurrection, I would say they reject Christianity.
Pushing the question back a step, if they doubt or deny that God has acted definitively and decisively on behalf of all mankind in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, then very clearly they doubt or deny the Christian faith.

But read how Bishop Corrigan approaches it, which is not from a “scientific truth” perspective, but from a more basic view of what it means for Christians who may doubt the “scientific truth” of the resurrection.
Bishop Corrigan’s comment – a comment upon which I have mediated for some dozen years – points to a different way of embracing, of believing, the resurrection. His answer both defies the conventional approach to the resurrection (as a scientifically verifiable event), and maintains the truthfulness (the credibility) of the resurrection as historically viable and real. The resurrection is not an intellectual puzzle. Rather, it is a living theological reality, a distant event with continuing spiritual, human, and social consequences. The evidence for the resurrection is all around us. Not in some ancient text, Jesus bones, or a DNA sample. Rather, the historical evidence for the resurrection is Jesus living in us; it is the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, bringing back to life that which was dead. We are the evidence.
Whether it really, actually happened the way they say in the Bible is really besides the point unless you are a Biblical literalist. The words of the Nicene Creed, should you recite them in those Christian sects that do, don’t lose their meaning even if you don’t believe the scientific story of the resurrection.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/04/diana-butler-bass-believing.html

“Whether it really, actually happened the way they say in the Bible is really besides the point unless you are a Biblical literalist.”
I’m sorry, but speaking as a non-literalist, I have to say this is a ridiculous and even arrogant claim. You can say it’s beside the point to you, but you can’t say it’s beside the point to anyone who is not a biblical literalist. You can’t tell me what is beside the point to me.
I say it is most material. I say it is the difference whether the Christian faith is good news about a revolutionary, eschatological act of God on behalf of man or whether it is only the inspiring story of a divine teacher and the timeless truths he taught.
“The evidence for the resurrection is all around us. Not in some ancient text, Jesus bones, or a DNA sample. Rather, the historical evidence for the resurrection is Jesus living in us; it is the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, bringing back to life that which was dead. We are the evidence.”
One question (for Bishop Corrigan, you, or anyone else who wishes to make this assertion his own): Is it your contention that this “evidence” is demonstrably of a type not to be found prior to the coming of Jesus? If not, then aren’t you really saying that nothing actually changed, that Christians have no news?

I wonder if there is an objective view of christianity vis a vis other religions.
This challenge is particurly important for Christians. Are they the followers of christ? As the son of god but also a man, Christ was capable of anything and with the likely power of an ego to match. Is that what Christ has given to Christians?
I don’t recognises the charachters mentioned and I doubt it will change my life when I am informed. Pragmatically, these would not be facts I should hunt out to make my life and my fellow man’s life better. The stories and the charachters may differ but the essence is the humanity of those prepared to listen.

There is not an open franchise on the word “Christian,” the claims of the Protestant “reformers” notwithstanding. The franchise was entrusted to a Church, which subsists in the Catholic Church, but which is also fully present sacramentally in the Orthodox Churches. Therefore, a “Christian” is one who subscribes to the Creeds shared by Catholics and Orthodox, especially the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

I think Rod’s question had to do with whether we thought that religion describes the “objective” world with statements that are objectively true (“Jesus Christ rose from the dead”, etc.) or whether it describes an inner, subjective reality. Either view functionally excludes the other.
Jesus himself bridges this gap when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus is objectively real, but the real finds itself in the personal reality of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just “know” the truth, he is the truth, the logos. This takes more than a combox to explicate, but allow me to suggest that his statement is a rather remarkable one, and perhaps the key to resolving the differences. In the personal reality of Jesus, the objective and subjective meet.

Oh, I cry “Uncle!” What the deuce does “pwn” mean, how is it pronounced, what’s the etymology and why for crying out loud is it missing a vowel? We aren’t using Serbian or Georgian. English words make liberal use of vowels, and in fact require them for a syllable to be complete. (End of Rant)

Jon,
From Wikipedia:
Pwn (below: Various pronunciations) is a leetspeak slang term derived from the verb “own”,[1][2][3] as meaning to appropriate or to conquer to gain ownership. The term implies domination or humiliation of a rival,[4] used primarily in the Internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., “You just got pwned!”).[5] It was popular among Counter-Strike gamers before spreading through the more general Internet world.[6] The past tense and past participle, pwned, may also be spelled: pwnd, pwn’d, pwn3d, pwnt, poned, pawned, or powned.

Peter,
If no one gets define what Christianity is and is not or who is and is not a Christian, then again, I ask — does that kind of seemingly infinite conceptual malleability apply to anything else, perhaps to *everything* else, alongside Christianity?
For example, can Sara Palin’s worldview be regarded as an alternate form of “liberalism” or “progressivism” equally as valid as Barack Obama’s own … in the same way that the Christianity of Hitchens’s Unitarian interlocutor can be regarded as being equally as valid as, say, Rod Dreher’s own?
Or is it the case — as I suspect — that with with left-liberals and liberal Christians it is only the Christian part of liberal Christianity that is conceptually malleable and up for negotiation and not the liberal part.
In other words, the real “solid rock” on which liberal Christianity is built is liberalism and not Christianity.
Liberal Christians are Christian only to the extent that Christianity and liberalism overlap, as opposed to be liberal only the the extent to which liberalism overlaps with Christianity.
When liberalism and Christianity fail to fit, what liberal Christians choose to subject to alteration is Christianity and not liberalism.
Which leads one to wonder why they bother with Christianity at all, since it seems mostly to be an eternally square peg whose sharp corners they are having to file down again and again to fit the ever changing holes the left-liberal fashion yields up as its seasons change.

By that standard, clearly he’d think an atheist who gave away all his worldly possessions and devoted his life to helping the poor, who turned the other cheek, who loved his enemies, etc., was much more of a “Christian” than someone who asserted the truth of all the various items of jibber-jabber mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but who didn’t walk the walk in any significant way.
C. S. Lewis spoke to this–he said this is using “Christian” to mean what in the deepest, truest sense a follower of Jesus must be. The problem, as he points out, is that removes the usefulness of “Christian” as a descriptor, since by this definition many people in Christian churches are not Christians, and many in other religions are, and most are of a status we can’t discern. So, in this situation, it would be better to say that the atheist lives a more truly Christian life and may be more acceptable to God, but is still not a Christian; whereas the Christian was a CINO (Christian In Name Only), and perhaps unacceptable to God, but still a Christian. See?
Why is it that y’all suddenly have a problem with Unitarians when they also self-identify directly as liberal?
Not all Unitarians do self-identify as Christian–in fact, if you read Unitarian-Universalist material, they are explicit that they are not Christian as such, with many UU groups having Pagan, Buddhist, or other focus. Now there may be individuals within the UU Church that self-identify as Christians; and there is a more conservative Unitarian branch that broke off from the UU’s not long ago, on the grounds that they wanted to have an exclusively Christian (though non-Trinitarian) focus. However, regardless of self-identification, Christianity has generally been understood to be Trinitarian, by which criterion any form of Unitarianism is not Christian, technically.

“If I love my neighbor as myself, does it matter whether or not Jesus arose from the dead?”
Absolutely!
I’d add, why does it matter whether someone is called a Christian or not? What do people want to use that label for, that they would fight over whether or not they get to claim it?
For myself, I think labeling myself as ‘christian’ would only reduce my status in the eyes of the people I care most about – both christian and non-christian — because of the negative connotations of making a big deal about the label. Yet I’ve also heard a lot over the years from those same people about ‘reclaiming’ the term, as if they thought it would be useful to them, once the slime had been properly washed off it.
Before fighting over who gets to use a term, I want to know whether it’s good for anything in the first place.

Which leads one to wonder why they bother with Christianity at all, since it seems mostly to be an eternally square peg whose sharp corners they are having to file down again and again to fit the ever changing holes the left-liberal fashion yields up as its seasons change.
Because they don’t think the hole is all that round or that they are so square. They aren’t ready to concede Christianity to the most fundamenalist view of it and, because, it is doubt that makes faith stronger. It’s hard to fathom faith and belief without doubt.

When the thief on the cross begged Jesus to remember him, Jesus replied, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Contrition, the receipt of God’s forgiveness and the turning away from sin are the beginning of our reconciliation with our Heavenly Father. It’s the fruit of our lives from that point forward which indicates our seriousness as Christians.
That said, I find great comfort on the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. It allows me to be at peace with the “good people” around me and with those who have died; believing that there is a place in the hereafter – a second chance of sorts – for those who now see things more clearly by death.
The scriptures record that Jesus went into Hell to preach to the “unsaved”. I’m happy to let him determine who that is.

To be a Christian, one must minimally:
-Believe in the Bodily Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ
-Believe in the Holy Trinity
-Believe in the pre-Christ Virginity of Mary
-Believe that the purpose of existance is ultimate reunification with God
However, to be a Christian in the fullest sense, one must also be united
(visibly or invisibly) to the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, namely
the Orthodox (or Oriental Orthodox) Churches and working towards
the ultimate reunification with God: theosis. Papists, Assyrians, and Protestants may belong to the True Church invisibly, but the extent to which their church/congregation adheres to the Fulness of the Faith is questionable. However, the Papist and Assyrian Churches are far closer to the Truth than the Protestant Congregations, including the former Anglican Church, now anglican congregations, as they have foresaken the ordained priesthood in favor of “woman priests.”

Paraphrasing Peter Kreeft: The Bible doesn’t claim to be a myth, it claims to be Truth. Jesus didn’t claim to be a prophet or teacher, He claimed to be the Son of God. If it wasn’t true, He’s not a prophet or teacher but a lunatic or a liar. If the Bible is true, it’s not a myth but a fact. If it’s not true, it’s not a myth but a lie.
Wishy-washy “Christians” like the quoted Unitarian confuse interpretation with belief.

“If I love my neighbor as myself, does it matter whether or not Jesus arose from the dead?” Yes. 1) You have not, do not, will not, and cannot love your neighbor as yourself (and even if you claim otherwise, you certainly do not love your neighbor as yourself completely, all the time, in all ways) so the “if” qualifier is always negative, which disqualifies the entire question, leaving the question moot. 2) Salvation does not come from loving your neighbor as yourself. (Which is a very good thing, in light of #1 above!) Salvation comes not from your righteousness, but from the righteousness of Christ, imputed to you, by God, through faith. Your belief (in Jesus, His sinless life, His death, His resurrection, His words, His teachings – the whole package) is imputed to you as righteousness. Romans Ch 4. 3) Jesus’ resurrection was indeed a glorious thing, but as you say, “does it matter?” How does it benefit us? I think it was Jesus death, not his resurrection, that makes His substitutionary attonement possible. It was His payment of the penalty for our sins – through His death, not His resurrection – that matters most to us, because by it we are freed from paying that penalty. (Of course Jesus’ resurrection does give us hope, for if God did not raise Jesus from the dead, what makes us think He would raise us from the dead? What matters to us (you, me) is not so much whether Jesus rose from the dead, but wether we will raise from the dead, right?)

I met an Episcopal priest in a bar a few weeks ago. I asked him about his faith. I wanted to know if he believed that Jesus was his lord and savior. He began with a long weellll…and went into an explanation about his interpretation of Christianity. I really couldn’t tell what he actually believed, since he just talked about what he didn’t believe.
As a questioning agnostic, it was not very inspiring. I figure if I’m going to do religion, I would have to actually believe it to make it worth my while. Isn’t that the whole point of religion afterall?

This may be the best, most thoughtful thread to a blog post I’ve ever read. Great question, Rod!
Count me among those who believe that belief in the statements of the Nicene Creed is what you have to believe to be a Christian.
The church is a living, organic entity, and back in 325 is when it stated, clearly, what it is we believe as Christians.

I think this kind of question is pointless…trying to reduce Christianity to a formula.. entirely ignoring the dynamic and transforming work of the Holy Spirit in ones’s life. In the ‘conservative orthodox Reformed’ circles I used to frequent, they loved to endlessly discuss what was proper and what was not. You could be an obnoxious, dull, incompetent, incoherent uncaring boring preacher or elder, but if you could mumble the right formula, you were a triple-A Christian. But someone who the Holy Spirit took in an untraditional direction, and who (gasp) might even be a female teacher — over the line. I am far more interested in the Fruit of the Spirit that you display (Gal 5:22 ff) than in your favorite formula.

“I met an Episcopal priest in a bar a few weeks ago.”
Any story that begins with this sentence is bound to be a great story. Or at least an amusing one.

Coming in late and without having read everything above.
The problem I find with Hitchens and others like him is that they are as fundamentalistic as the inerrant literalists. I’m constantly told what “Christians” believe only to find that it violates the teaching of the Orthodox Church, which arguably represents the tradition of those who were first called Christian.
That said, I really liked John’s statement that Jesus is where the objective and subjective meet. The truth is not a set of ideas and tenets, but rather a person. I AM WHO AM is the ultimate statement of reality and mystery.

The definition of who a Christian is is quite simple. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life, NO ONE can come to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 If you don’t believe this, you are not a Christian.

“I think this kind of question is pointless…trying to reduce Christianity to a formula.. entirely ignoring the dynamic and transforming work of the Holy Spirit in ones’s life.”
You’re strawmanning. I don’t see anyone here either “trying to reduce Christianity to a formula” or “ignoring the dynamic and transforming work of the Holy Spirit in ones’s life.”
“In the ‘conservative orthodox Reformed’ circles I used to frequent, they loved to endlessly discuss what was proper and what was not.”
That’s an interesting commentary about your personal history, but not everyone is like your conservative orthodox Reformed friends.
“You could be an obnoxious, dull, incompetent, incoherent uncaring boring preacher or elder, but if you could mumble the right formula, you were a triple-A Christian.”
I have no idea what a “triple-A Christian” is. But I happen to think Jesus loves obnoxious, dull, incompetent, incoherent and boring people same as everyone else. Uncaring is a problem, but there’s grace for that too, same as anything else.

Peter,
As a grad student in the hard sciences, let me say that Christianity is always going to be _outside of_ (which is not the same thing as _against_) science. Science proceeds on the assumption that things proceed according to comprehensible natural laws. Christianity is based around a series of miracles, which by definition are contrary to natural law. That doesn’t mean that they are in conflict: it means they don’t have all that much to say to each other.
If you doubt the idea that miracles ever occur, then you doubt Christianity. To gut Christianity of its essential core in order to make it compatible with science is to do a favor to neither science or religion.
Elizabeth,
I assure you, that priest wasn’t speaking for the entire Episcopal church, and if you want to talk to an Episcopal priest who actually believes the basic articles of his faith, then I can point you to plenty.

If you don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and you don’t believe that he rose from the dead, and you don’t believe that he died to absolve our sins…. what exactly DO you believe?
There are plenty of people who feel that Jesus was a great man with a great philosophy, and that we should learn from his words and follow his teaching, and that he was not God and that he did no miracles. That’s fine, but it is not a religion. It is a philosophy class.
If you have a heartfelt belief in a higher power, one capable of working miracles on earth, that’s a religion. And if you believe in a higher power who is able and willing to intercede in the workings of the world that we live in, then there is no particular reason to doubt the miracles in the gospel stories. Causing a virgin birth, transforming water into wine, and resurrecting a dead man should not be any big trick for a being that we would call a God.
If you are one of the many people who do not believe that the miracles happened because science cannot explain them, but you find Jesus’s teachings to be compelling and useful, I think that is fine. Just don’t go around pretending that you are religious when what you really are is philosophical. If you don’t believe in an almighty, or if you believe in some impotent and/or apathetic “God” who has no interaction with life on earth, then you may be a well intentioned, good hearted, productive member of society who would make a good neighbor or a fine dinner companion, but you are not in any meaningful sense a Christian.
And there isn’t anything wrong with that, is there? This is America. Nobody is trying to force you to be a Christian (or at least no one ought to be). I just question why you would pretend to be a Christian when you don’t really believe in anything other than the merit of Christ’s message.

Jesus said that “all the law and the prophets” hang on two commandments. The short versions are:
Love God.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
That being straight from the Master’s lips, or at least the Founder’s, I would say anyone who accepts that pronouncement, and that it is authoritative because of who said it, is a Christian. That includes trying to live up to it of course.
All else, as Hillel said, is detail. Go forth and learn. Yes, a Jewish rabbi said it before Jesus did, so some who adhere to this prescription may not be Christian. Its funny how “My ways are not your ways saith the Lord.”
Personally, I have difficulty with the “Son” concept, but God had to try to present in human terms what no human could fully comprehend. I have a sense that God had to infuse a drop of himself into a human context in order to communicate directly with the poor hairless bipeds he cares so much about, and Jesus was the result. Salvation by grace alone? Naturally — how could we “earn” anything to transcendent? Sin? Separation from God, being in a state of imperfection, not some kind of inheritance for some ancestor’s stupidity. If you believe differently, whatever brings you closer to God. I won’t argue about that. But Jesus said, ALL the law and the prophets hangs on two commandments…

Now, let me get this straight, for some of you, it’s okay for one to maintain that all religions are mistaken (Hitchens) but wrong to maintain that all religions are mistaken save one (Dreher). So, in one of the most perverse applications of egalitarianism imaginable, it is better to think that all religions are equally false than to think that some are more true than others.

Peter,
Orthodox Christianity predates left-liberalism by something like 1,700 to 1,800 years and essentially it predates liberal Christianity by something like 1,977 to 1,980 years — depending on whether one reckons the start of Christianity to be the start of Jesus’s ministry or the date of His Resurrection — since liberal Christianity changes from day to day in accordance to whatever the four Gospel authors (John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow) have had to say the night before.
I think it ought to pretty clear to anyone with any intellectual honesty or rigor at all that Christianity and left-liberalism per se — let alone tomorrow’s Daily Kos (Old Testament) and Huffington Post (New Testament) — are a peg and a hole respectively that were made for one another from the start.
If nothing else, such a view would have to account for why — if left-liberalism and Christianity were all-but-synonymous right from the start — there was no left-liberalism at all for the first 1,700 to 1,800 years of Christianity.
That would be quite a task, even for someone with as little intellectual rigor or honesty as you appear to have, at least based on your posts here so far.

Where Hitchens has a point is, to me, not in the idea that someone who doubts the Incarnation can not really be called a Christian.
Rather, it is in attacking the dogmatism of some liberal Christians, who have replaced an attitude of healthy skepticism with a sureness that they know “what it all means.” So, Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, it’s a metaphor. Jesus is the Son of God only to the extent that we are all children of God, just like him. When he speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven, he’s not talking about some Heaven in the future, but about the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. These sorts of liberal certainties about the meaning of Christianity are the ones I find off-putting, which is why I consider myself to be more of an agnostic. What do we really know about God, after all?
I like Garry Wills’s approach, because he criticizes both the literalism of fundamentalists and the literalism of the Jesus Seminar folks.
As I said above, I don’t believe the Bible was “written by God,” but that it tells the story of the human search for God. But, I’ve also studied religion enough to get an inkling of how profound it can be, which I don’t think someone like Hitchens gets.
Reading about the Puritans for instance, they were all amateur theologians, they knew the Bible backwards, forwards, and inside out. Or reading about the back and forth between the idea of an imminent God that intervenes in history and has characteristics humans can identify with and a transcendent God that is beyond human understanding.

Crusty, when you can write a post without using the term “left-liberalism” in every paragraph, I’ll respond. Otherwise, you are just doing partisan bloviating.

Depends on what you mean by Christian. I know people who have a list longer than than the Bible of what you must believe to fit their definition. As an agnostic who has loads of believing friends and can at least state what I see as common among them, I’d go with:
Belief in the divinity of Christ
Belief that he saved us from sin/judgement by his sacrifice
Belief that he was resurrected
If you believe those things, I’d consider you a Christian.

The Trinity;
The Incarnation;
The Virgin Birth;
The Divinity of Christ;
The real, physical Death and Resurrection of Christ;
That, by Christ’s Death and Resurrection, sin and death have been overcome;
The Final Judgement and the Resurrection of the Dead into eternal Life or eternal Damnation at the End of Time.

Several of you state that a Christian must love others as one loves oneself. But what does Christianity believe “loving oneself” mean? So many people seem not to love themselves: I do not think that it can be taken for granted that all people love themselves. And if a Christian does not love himself or herself, how can that Christian love others?

“Jesus said that “all the law and the prophets” hang on two commandments… All else, as Hillel said, is detail. Go forth and learn. Yes, a Jewish rabbi said it before Jesus did…”
The law and the prophets, yes. Not Jesus’ own teaching as represented in the Gospels. There we find a lot of things that no other Jewish rabbi ever taught. “Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.” “No man knows the Father but the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” “I am the vine, you are the branches … apart from me you can do nothing.” “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Etc.
Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth has some good stuff to say about how Jesus puts himself at the center of his own teaching. See especially B16′s commentary on Rabbi Neusner’s A Rabbi Talks With Jesus.

The early Christians summarized their belief very briefly in Greek as Iesys Christos Theou Uios Soter. This makes the acronym ICHTHYS, “fish”, hence the fish symbol. I would suggest that this very simple and original statement of faith gives us the parameters of Christian belief.

Religion vs. Spirituality… no contest!

Peter,
I’ll take that as an admission of defeat on your part — I’ll take it as a white flag of surrender.
And btw, please note that I’ve written two whole paragraphs here without using that word which you — who have been here all of a week — claim that I can’t write without using, and am now no longer allowed to use, now that *you* are here.
On behalf of everyone here — all of whose heretofore dulls wits have been sharpened for the very first time by your boundlessly “smart” and “well-educated” and “non-partisan” presence — let me say thanks (for nothing).

I am fascinated by the exclusive focus here on defining Christianity in terms of intellectual content rather than ontologically.
What about a Christian is someone who has accepted being claimed by Jesus of Nazareth in His new creation by baptism of water, desire or blood?
I’ve never thought of Unitarians as Christian as such (the Universalists who were merged into Unitarian-Universalism were a Christian sect, and the tensions remain in some places), but a belief system that is derived in part from Christianity. The status of Christian Science and Mormonism can be a separate flamefest….

“I am fascinated by the exclusive focus here on defining Christianity in terms of intellectual content rather than ontologically. What about a Christian is someone who has accepted being claimed by Jesus of Nazareth in His new creation by baptism of water, desire or blood?”
Theologically quite correct, and a valuable and necessary corrective to the discussion to date. (I would only add the qualifier “baptism by explicit desire.” E.g. a Muslim claimed by Christ through baptism of implicit desire might be a new creation in Christ, and Karl Rahner might call him an “anonymous Christian,” but I don’t think even Rahner would call him a “Christian” in an unqualified sense.)
From that perspective, the question under discussion might be recast not so much as who counts as a Christian, but what counts as Christian faith, or who can claim to believe the Christian faith. (A baptized baby is a Christian ontologically, but does not yet believe the Christian faith. If he grows up and embraces Unitarianism, I would not call him a Christian, even on the supposition that he was in the state of grace.)

Well the far more interesting question, of course, is about all of the Christians who claim to believe all of the Bible as true, and yet, the lives they lead, they way they treat other people, especially the disadvantaged, the sick, the poor, their loved ones…
I’m looking at you Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich…
Sorry, but I don’t see how believing something makes you anything at all.
Living it is all that matters.

Somwhere in my notes I have a discussion I found on the word “Christian” and the word “Catholic.” “Christian” was first used as a pejorative by Romans outside the Church, while those within the Church called themselves “Catholic” from the beginning. Christ founded The Church; outside of it was everything else. He spoke of The Church, not of Christianity, and not of the churches.
As for how little we can get away with believing, that is not of real interest. I count the Eucharist as a central doctrine taught by Our Lord, seven sacraments, and on and on. It is an error, I believe, to think that Christ founded and appluaded conflicting and contradictory churches. He founded The Church; it you consult The Church, you find what it means to be fully a follower of Christ.

Before the so-called “orthodox” church came about there were many competing versions of Christianity. The one version that so many of you adhere to based on the Nicene Creed was the one that won out over and against its rivals because it was adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who allegedly “saw” a cross in the sky with a voice telling him, “by this sign you shall conquer.” He needed a new religion to replace a failing polytheism to hold his empire together and found it in a sect called Christians that had many branches of belief. Constantine used the power and wealth of Rome to declare what was “orthodox” and what was not and to enforce his “orthodoxy” on his subjects, using forced baptisms, and create the institutional Catholic Church that eventually divided into its Western and Eastern versions.
You can read about this history of Christianity in the book ”When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome,” by Richard E Rubinstein.

Perhaps we should employ the term “Christiness” in reference to the relationship to Christianity possessed by those groups which call themselves, in some sense, Christian, without, in fact, being so.

“And btw, please note that I’ve written two whole paragraphs here without using that word which you — who have been here all of a week — claim that I can’t write without using, and am now no longer allowed to use, now that *you* are here.”
Crusty, many of us here would appreciate your retiring the use of the phrase “left-liberal.” Your posts make much more sense when you’re not engaging in that childish “us versus them” political rhetoric. I can always tell the difference between when you’re being a whiny baby and when you’re being thoughtful.
Trying to apply your whiny rhetoric (you went too far with the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert remark) to this debate makes no sense. One can be a “leftist” and be an orthodox Christian. (Little “o” orthodox Christian being someone who believes in the Nicene Creed)
While I do not believe that someone who rejects the Creed is a Christian, I don’t think it does much good to tell them that they aren’t a Christian. Obviously their definition of Christian is different than mine. I know mine is right but I can’t force them to accept my definition. And to be clear, before I’m accused of relativism, this isn’t the same as saying that we’re both right. Relativism teaches that opposing ideas can both be true.

“Sorry, but I don’t see how believing something makes you anything at all. Living it is all that matters.”
Socrates
Actually, according to John 3:16, you’re wrong. Believing it is what matters. Of course, those who truly believe it will try to live it, but will always fall short. (And some of us will fall shorter than others.) Those who truly believe will bear “fruits of the spirit,” but again, those fruits stem from their belief. Works flow naturally from faith. This is not to say those without faith are without works. There are plenty of good people who don’t believe. But they’re not Christians.

“Perhaps we should employ the term “Christiness” in reference to the relationship to Christianity possessed by those groups which call themselves, in some sense, Christian, without, in fact, being so.”
Why do we need to call them anything? A few years ago, an Orthodox priest on the infamous Indiana list coined the phrase “Roman Catholic Religious Organization,” RCRO for short. He thought he was pretty clever. I’m Orthodox but I thought he was being a jerk. I understand and largely agree with the theology behind his “clever” little phrase but didn’t agree with his motivation which wasn’t love. Of course he kinda veered into heresy because it should have been “Roman” (not really Roman because the real Romans are the Byzantines so it needed to be in quotes) “Catholic” (not really Catholic – the reason should be obvious) “Religious” (there is only true religion so can it be “religious?”) – Organization is fine.
In my long online experience, “you’re not a Christian”/”you’re not a Catholic”/whatever thing is rarely motivated by love so it’s pretty worthless. “You’re not a Catholic!” is pretty standard for St. Blogs (do they still call it that?). Why not just shut up and quit judging the guy in the pew next to you? Let your priest decide whether or not he should come to communion. That’s a pretty radical concept for St. Blogs.
There was a guy on an Orthodox blog who claimed that if someone asked him where the closest Catholic church was located that he would send them to an Orthodox church because it’s really Catholic.

Rod’s initial question was, “How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian?”
First, I think the most important question to ask in response is, “According to whom?” To Orthodox Christians? Roman Catholics? Unitarians? Atheists? I ask this because each group will answer differently. As many Christian sects as exist, there will be equally varying answers to this question. The com boxes have shown just this! However, I feel that only the Orthodox answer is the one that gives a satisfactory response.
Rod’s question in itself tends towards a western, post-scholasticism mindset and leans towards legalism. His question asks a question of law: How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian? Specific boundaries must be drawn in the sand, and specific requirements must be met. However, the Orthodox Christian mind does not approach questions in this manner, because it is not about MINIMALIST qualifications, like “what is the LEAST I can do to… [fill in the blank],” rather, it is about the FULLNESS of the faith. Orthodox Christianity is about embracing the entirety of the Christian faith, and believing as St. Irenaeus of Lyons famously wrote, “what has been believed at all times, by all people, everywhere.”
Secondly, it is important to point out that the intellectual part of “believing” cannot be separated from the active participation in the Faith, such as prayer, giving alms, fasting, etc. So what if we agree in our mind that Jesus rose from the dead. It means nothing unless it moves us to action. It is this synergy of our minds and hearts together leading us to action that is at the core of believing in Christ. One part cannot be isolated from the other, because without the other [or even the mention of it], we fall into a dangerous trap of legality, and a separation of things which cannot be separated. So you believe in the Resurrection, but you don’t pray? Orthodox response: You are not Christian. So you pray, but don’t believe in the Resurrection? Orthodox response: you are not Christian.
And what does it mean to be a Christian? To have the mind of Christ, and to be His hands, His feet, doing His work in the world, seeking in every moment to be more like Him. We are to be, for lack of better words, “little Christs.” We are to be like Him, and in becoming like Him, we are deified. Labels fall away as the light of Christ shines out from within.
Take for example an icon of a saint–the saint is not usually depicted as he or she truly looked in their life here. Rather, the saint is depicted as they are now–glorified in Christ. The icon serves to reveal the true image of a person–at peace, radiant with love for God, their hands held up in blessing, enlightened.
How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian? Not how much, but instead, how well? And that answer will take everything we have and more!

Of course, Hitchens would love it if he could convince the world that the only way to be Christian is to believe in things that (apparently) violate reason and good manners.

Tikhon: Rod’s question in itself tends towards a western, post-scholasticism mindset and leans towards legalism. His question asks a question of law: How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian? Specific boundaries must be drawn in the sand, and specific requirements must be met. However, the Orthodox Christian mind does not approach questions in this manner, because it is not about MINIMALIST qualifications, like “what is the LEAST I can do to… [fill in the blank],” rather, it is about the FULLNESS of the faith. Orthodox Christianity is about embracing the entirety of the Christian faith, and believing as St. Irenaeus of Lyons famously wrote, “what has been believed at all times, by all people, everywhere.”
Well, that doesn’t get us very far. I’m not asking “what’s the minimal requirement for being a Christian” in the spirit of wondering what’s the least one has to do to be considered a Christian. That would be a highly inappropriate question from a pastoral/behavioral point of view! I’m asking where the line should be drawn beyond which one cannot meaningfully claim to be a Christian. The atheist Christopher Hitchens draws it pretty clearly, and I think he is more correct than his interlocutor. It seems from your point of view, Tikhon, that the only people who could claim to be Christians are Orthodox Christians. I don’t think that’s what you mean to say (though if you do, please correct me). I don’t know if many Orthodox would say that all people who claim to be Christian but who are not communicants of one of the Orthodox churches are actually fooling themselves. I certainly don’t believe that. So, where do we draw the line? If you were conducting an ecumenical conference for Christians, whose application to attend would you deny, on the grounds that despite their claim to be Christian, you don’t recognize them as authentically Christian?
That’s the spirit in which my question was intended.

A recent PBS religion news show talked about a survey done in an Indian city. Only 1% (or fewer) of respondents identified as Christian. However, 10% of respondents named Jesus Christ as the god they worship.
I’m wondering how people here interpret this? Is this a cultural phenomenon, or?

Belief systems, as it were, in India defy neat Western-style categorization. Even “Hinduism” as Westerners first tried to package it is a bit of a miss.

Elizabeth,
Briefly, Hindus believe that God has incarnated himself multiple times. The cannonical number is nine (with one yet to appear at the end of the world) but some Hindus believe in other incarnations as well, and some of them add Jesus Christ to the list.
‘In Hinduism, Avatar or Avat?ra (Devanagari ?????, Sanskrit for “descent” [viz., from heaven to earth]) refers to a deliberate descent of a deity from heaven to earth, and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation”, but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.[1]
‘The term is most often associated with Vishnu, though it has also come to be associated with other deities.[2] Varying lists of avatars of Vishnu appear in Hindu scriptures, including the ten (Da??vat?ra) of the Garuda Purana and the twenty-two avatars in the Bhagavata Purana, though the latter adds that the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable.[3].’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar

Hector, so what you are saying is that an Indian who worships Jesus may or may not be a Christian?

Your Name,
I’m sorry if it will disappoint you for me to say so, but my posts here are all of a piece — as much thought goes into what you regard as my “crazy” posts as goes into what you regard as my “thoughtful” ones and as much “craziness” (if craziness it be) goes into what you regard as my “thoughful” posts as goes into what you regard as my “crazy” ones.
As for the word that Peter won’t allow me to say, it’s a useful and necessary descriptive term of art — one that in my usage generally has less to do (and oftentimes *nothing* to do) with politics than is has to do with culture (with which it oftentimes has *everything” to do).
Now, granted, it is one of the peculiarities of the demographic that I describe using the word that Peter won’t allow me to say that that group tends to see everything — including Christianity — through a political lens and to subordinate everything — including Christianity — to politics.
Again, I do think it *is* the case — and therefore that it’s fair to *state* the case — that for the demographic group in question when conflicts arise between Christianity and the body of opinion and attitude personified by Stewart, Colbert, Olbermann, Maddow, Kos, and Huffington (among others), the members of that demographic group are far, far more likely to pick fights with Christians and with Christianity in the name of Stewart, Colbert, Oldermann, Maddow, Kos, Huffington and their like than they are likely to pick fights with Stewart, Colbert, Oldermann, Maddow, Kos, Huffington and their like in the name of Christ, Christians, or Christianity.
If self-described liberal Christians were half as willing — in fact, if they were *ever* willing *at all* — to critique and demand alteration to and revision of the complex of cultural attitudes to which I affix the word that Peter won’t allow me to say as they are willing to critique and demand alteration to and revision of Christianity itself, I’d cut them some slack.
I’d be the first to offer an atta-boys and atta-girls to self-described liberal Christians who got as busy evangelizing the members of the group whose name Peter says I can’t use on behalf of Christianity as they get busy evangelizing Christians on behalf of the complex of cultural attitudes to which I affix the word that Peter won’t allow me to use.
Let me know if that ever happens. I won’t be holding my breath.

Your Name,
The problem with recognizing anyone who calls themself Christian as in fact being Christian — as opposed to merely being engaged in which I suggest we might call “Christiness” — is that such recognition has the effect of altering one’s own Christianity itself.
If a group of, say, Baal-worshippers insists on calling themselves Christians, one can’t recognize them as fellow Christians without malforming Christianity itself in such a way that Baal-worship comes to be regarded as just as Christian or just as valid a part of Christianity as anything else.
Suppose that instead of denying, say, the Resurrection, some group of putative “Christians” denied, say, the golden rule as a valid moral teaching of Christ, and insisted instead that the core of Christ’s moral teaching was a Nietzschean imperative for the strong and healthy to impose themselves mercilessly on the weak and sick.
Are you trying to say that even self-described liberal Christians would have no problem with that, and that they would be perfectly happy to accept Nietzscheans or Baal-worshippers as fellow Christians whose Christianity was every bit as legitimate and valid as their own liberal Christianity?
If so, I really want to come over to your place sometime and try some of that bud you pack your bowls with and listen to your old Grateful Dead soundboard tapes.
We can order a pizza and then maybe have some ice-cream.
Dude, that would be so cool. I’m totally stoked.

If you firmly believe everything in the Nicene creed but lie, cheat and steal, are you a Christian? And are you more of a Christian than someone who does his/her best to imitate Jesus, but does not believe in resurrection or virgin birth? I think our acts are more important than whether or not we believe in the truth or falsehood of particular stories about the past.

That’s a great question, Mark

Mark,
For pete’s sake, “Good Person” and “Christian” are not the same things. It’s perfectly possible to be a Christian and a horrible person. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with the skulls of miscreant priests.
Being a good person has a lot to do with whether you will make it into heaven, but it doesn’t have much to do whether you are a Christian.

Elizabeth,
Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it. It depends on what your definition of ‘Christian’ is, which begs the whole question of this thread.
I don’t know the study, or the people involved in it, so i’m not going to presume to say what they did or did not believe. It’s possible they believe in the basic articles of Christian faith, but simply didn’t like the term ‘Christian’. It’s possible that they wanted to be classified as Hindus for political purposes, like access to affirmative action quotas for Scheduled Caste Hindus. It’s also possible they viewed Jesus as one divine incarnation among others (many Hindus hold this view), which would certainly make you a follower of Christ in some sense, but not a believer in the section of the Nicene Creed which calls Jesus “the _only_ son of God, begotten of the Father before all the worlds.”
So I don’t know if I would call the aforementioned people Christians or not, what seems clear however is that they didn’t call _themselves_ Christians.

“The problem with recognizing anyone who calls themself Christian as in fact being Christian — as opposed to merely being engaged in which I suggest we might call “Christiness” — is that such recognition has the effect of altering one’s own Christianity itself.”
You’re missing the point. I am not advocating “recognizing” Mormons, Unitarians, etc. as Christians. They’re not Christians according to my definition of Christianity in that they do not accept the Nicene Creed. But I’m not going to invent some “clever” little term to denigrate them. How does that bring them to the truth? Further if I was to do that I would know that my motive was not to “convert” them but rather to taunt them. So I think I’ll leave my interactions with Mormons, Unitarians, etc. to “how’s the weather today?” and “what grade is your little one in?”
Take Mormonism, for example, a truly bizarro religion. They call themselves Christian…so what? If they join my Church, they have to get baptized because they’re not Christian. They’ve probably already “baptized” all of both of our ancestors but again…so what? I don’t think their ritual means a darn thing so frankly I don’t care if they “baptize” my dead grandfather.
That’s co-existence. Fine…do your thing and I’ll do mine. Not relativism because I’m right and you’re wrong. But…”how’s your job going” and “how’s your son’s soccer team doing?”
“If a group of, say, Baal-worshippers insists on calling themselves Christians, one can’t recognize them as fellow Christians without malforming Christianity itself in such a way that Baal-worship comes to be regarded as just as Christian or just as valid a part of Christianity as anything else.”
We’ve already got this figured out. If a member of this hypothetical Baal-worshiping group decides to convert to my Church, they must be baptized. No need to invent some clever name for them.

“Now, granted, it is one of the peculiarities of the demographic that I describe using the word that Peter won’t allow me to say that that group tends to see everything — including Christianity — through a political lens and to subordinate everything — including Christianity — to politics.”
And they’re unique in this? Both sides of the spectrum are guilty of this. Everything in this country is political. Or did you not see Colbert last night? The number 6 is liberal. LOL. (And if you can’t see the cleverness in The Daily Show and Colbert even though you disagree with their politics then you are guilty of seeing everything through a political lens.)
And drop the “Peter won’t let me say left-liberal” shtick. It’s petulant.
“If self-described liberal Christians were half as willing — in fact, if they were *ever* willing *at all* — to critique and demand alteration to and revision of the complex of cultural attitudes to which I affix the word that Peter won’t allow me to say as they are willing to critique and demand alteration to and revision of Christianity itself, I’d cut them some slack.”
Who are we talking about here? Who are these “liberal Christians?” Are we discussing people who are theologically liberal or politically liberal?

Hector, if it’s so easy to be both a Christian and a horrible person, then what would you say is the point of being a Christian? This question has often puzzled me and I would be interested in your answer. People here have argued that atheists have no basis for morality. If Christians have a theoretical basis for morality, but can’t be expected to behave any better in practice than anyone else, then I don’t see what use their vaunted morality can be.
And Crustacean says: Suppose that instead of denying, say, the Resurrection, some group of putative “Christians” denied, say, the golden rule as a valid moral teaching of Christ, and insisted instead that the core of Christ’s moral teaching was a Nietzschean imperative for the strong and healthy to impose themselves mercilessly on the weak and sick.
LOL . . . there actually have been quite a few Christians of note who did, effectively, deny the golden rule. Many of them are running around carrying signs at tea parties even as we speak. Self-described Christians helped Hitler. Self-described Christians (may I call them SDCs?) formed the Mafia, the Falange (both the Spanish and the Lebanese versions), and carried out murders and torture in the Balkans and throughout Latin America. SDCs ground the faces of the poor during the Industrial Revolution (and thought highly of themselves for doing so) and slaughtered and robbed the indigenous people of Latin America and Central America. SDCs carried out the massacre of the Albigensians. They committed anti-Semitic atrocities. They used poison gas, napalm and nuclear weapons on their fellow human beings. They burned people at the stake, drowned, hanged, tortured and raped them during the religious wars of post-Reformation Europe. And yet . . . NONE of these groups were expelled from Christendom.
But you want the authority to read people out of Christianity over your own interpretation of their words. Well . . . knock yourself out. In the end, you can bluster all you want, but you can’t actually stop anyone from attending your church. People whose beliefs don’t come up to your standards are all around you, and you not only can’t throw them out, you don’t even know who they are. In fact, I could be right next to you, receiving the sacraments of your church, and you wouldn’t be able to stop me. In theory, you could put my face on a “NOT Wanted” poster, and send it to Fabian Bruskewitz, but even that wouldn’t be a serious impediment unless I went to Nebraska, which is not likely in the foreseeable future. You give me renewed encouragement not to take my name off the church rolls . . . if only to annoy you and people like you. It must be very exasperating to be surrounded by undercover infidels. Sux to be you! All ur base are belong to us! Bwah ha ha haaa . . . .

Your Name,
No one — least of all me — is suggesting that either Mormons or Unitarians be “taunted” by being charged with what I’m calling “Christiness” as opposed to Christianity.
I do however think that “Christiness” is a fair enough term to assail a certain kind of self-described “liberal” or “progressive” Christian with — the kind intent on running each and every mainline Protestant denomination into the ground and the kind intent on making as much mischief as possible inside the Roman Catholic Church, which, fortunately, they are in no position to run into the ground.
If, for example, “liberal” or “progressive” Episcopalians — at the point when they concluded that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, was not God Incarnate, did not die for our sins, and/or was not raised from the dead to bring the rest of us the prospect of eternal life … at the point, in other words, that they decided the Christ was merely an agreeable moral exemplar near to hand, one whom one could (mis)construe as being more or less indistinguishable from any garden-variety contemporary left-liberal one might encounter at a Howard Dean meet-up — if, at that point, “liberal” or “progressive” Episcopalians had opted to do the decent thing and simply leave the Episcopal church and form their own congregation, no orthodox Christian either inside or outside the Episcopal church would have given them much grief, even if they had persisted (incorrectly) in calling themselves Christians. What they chose to do instead, however, and what opens them up to the charge of “Christiness” is to stay inside a formerly orthodox Christian demonination, while denying all the central tenets of Christianity, even — bizarrely — as they continue to affirm their belief in them each Sunday as part of the Anglican liturgy. It utterly perverse, utterly bizarre, and utterly daft and it merits a terms far more derogatory and harsh than “Christiness,” and not only when Episcopalians engage in it, but Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, et al.
It’s also worthy pointing out the sort of self-professed “liberal” or “progressive” Christians have no shortage of nasty names for those orthodox Christians who have the temerity simply to affirm what 99% of all Christians globally and historically have always believed, terms which long, long predate “Christiness” — terms like “fundie,” “thumper,” “clinger,” “holy-roller,” and most recently, courtesy of Rod’s good buddy Bareback Andy Sullivan, “Christianist.”
When I say “liberal Christian” I mean “Christians” who are *theologically* liberal, though such
“Christians” are all but invariably politically and more importantly morally and culturally left-liberal as well. If you can give me an example of a publicly-known, theologically liberal Christian who is anything but left-liberal politically, morally, and culturally, I’d be glad to know whom he or she is, because I certainly can’t think of anyone myself who fits that bill.
As for Stewart and Colbert, I really, really beg to differ — if one doesn’t share their extremely pedestrian left-liberal politics and cultural knee-jerk reflexes, they are each about as “clever,” as “witty” and as “intelligent” as Rush Limbaugh (i.e. hardly at all) and far less honest about what it is they are up to. I doubt if I’ve ever seen anyone in public life with less of a sense of irony and and less of an ability to laugh at themselves than those two, who are just about the most humorless prigs I have ever observed on the pundit scene … Sean Hannity not withstanding. One truly has to be an ideologue or a bald-faced liar who’s desperate not to get kicked out of the White People’s club to feign that either one of those creepy losers merits even the little bit of attention I’ve paid to them here in taking them to task.

A conservative Christian is only a Christian to the extent that Christianity overlaps with conservatism. Is that a fair and balanced statement?
Unitarians began as Unitarian Baptists, as distinct from Trinitarian Baptists, but they were still baptized, presumably as commanded by Jesus Christ. That was mostly in New England, but the southern colonies were converted from Anglican to Baptist by Baptists missionaries from New England, if you go back far enough. There were also Unitarians in Bohemia and Moravia, but it was more dangerous there, you could get burned at the stake by the Catholics and the Lutherans.
Finally, when Jesus said “all the law and the prophets” he was answering a question about “what must I do to be saved?” So don’t write it off, because Jesus said it was important. That is, if you call yourself a Christian.
But here is something for all American Christians to consider, remembering that an American is only a Christian to the extent that Christianity and America overlap:
http://aleksandreia.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/learning-from-a-muslim/

Siarlys,
No, actually, it’s not a fair and balanced statement.
A *theologically* conservative Christian is one who thinks he or she is broke and needs fixing, but not Christianity. He or she is someone who tries to reshape himself or herself to fit Christianity.
A *theologically* liberal Christian is one who thinks Christianity is broke and needs fixing, but not himself or herself. He or she is someone who tries to reshape Christianity to fit himself or herself.
Theologically conservative Christians may be politically and culturally liberal *or* conservative, and ought to be some of both.
Theologically liberal Christians — for whatever reason — are all but invariably politically and culturally liberal and all but invariably *not* politically and culturally conservative.
A theologically conservative Christian’s “solid rock” is Christianity itself, which trumps politics and culture when the two conflict, as they frequently do.
A theologically liberal Christian’s “solid rock” tends to be left-liberalism, which tends to trump Christianity when the two conflict, as they frequently do.

sigaliris,
There are doubtless plenty of Christians now and in the past who have *disobeyed* the golden rule. It’s jejune of your (surprise suprise) to point that out, since absolutely no one disagree.
There are, however, no putatively “Christian” schools of thought that have ever tried systematically to argue that the golden rule was one of Christ’s essential moral teachings, that ever tried to argue that recognition of the golden rule was “inessential” to Christianity, the way one putatively “Christian” school today — the “liberal” or “progressive” school — tries to argue that the existence of God, and/or the divinity of Christ, and/or Christ’s resurrection are “inessential” to Christianity.
In any case, even if Francisco Franco or whomever had outright denied the necessity of affirmation of the golden rule to Christianity, what problem would that be for you? Wouldn’t it just be “fundamentalism” to insist that Christians must affirm the golden rule, just as it’s merely “fundamentalism” to insist that they affirm the existence of God and/or the divinity of Christ and/or and/or Christ’s resurrection? You’re theologically so loosie-goosie on everything else, why be such a tight-*ssed, bitter, Bible-thumping, backwoods “fundie” when it comes to the golden rule? Stop “clinging” to “(guns and) religion” and get with the program, woman — the seas have begun to subside, the earth has begun to heal, when ya gon’ getcha head screwed on straight?

Crustracean, that’s the truest thing I’ve read in this entire thread… Except for maybe this:
Thanks for putting it so well.

LOL. I tried to use the italics function, and instead deleted my quotes. (How the heck do y’all italicize around here?) Crustracean, your comments that I found extremely insightful are as follows:
“Theologically conservative Christians may be politically and culturally liberal *or* conservative, and ought to be some of both.”
And…
“A theologically conservative Christian’s “solid rock” is Christianity itself, which trumps politics and culture when the two conflict, as they frequently do. A theologically liberal Christian’s “solid rock” tends to be left-liberalism, which tends to trump Christianity when the two conflict, as they frequently do.”

Thanks, MargaretE — the complement means a lot, especially considering its source.

Aw, Crustacean… I’m your number one fan. You take a lot of grief around here, but you’re one smart guy… and ‘neath all the “crustiness,” I detect a heart of gold

“It’s also worthy pointing out the sort of self-professed “liberal” or “progressive” Christians have no shortage of nasty names for those orthodox Christians who have the temerity simply to affirm what 99% of all Christians globally and historically have always believed, terms which long, long predate “Christiness” — terms like “fundie,” “thumper,” “clinger,” “holy-roller,” and most recently, courtesy of Rod’s good buddy Bareback Andy Sullivan, “Christianist.”"
Typical whining….”they’re so mean to me!!!” Take “fundie,” for example. Why do you assume that a “fundie” affirms “99%” of historical Christianity? Fundamentalism is not historic Christianity. It’s something that was invented during the Protestant Reformation and has no place within orthodox Christianity. Historic Christianity can only be found in the Orthodox Church or traditional circles of Roman Catholicism.
“When I say “liberal Christian” I mean “Christians” who are *theologically* liberal, though such
“Christians” are all but invariably politically and more importantly morally and culturally left-liberal as well. If you can give me an example of a publicly-known, theologically liberal Christian who is anything but left-liberal politically, morally, and culturally, I’d be glad to know whom he or she is, because I certainly can’t think of anyone myself who fits that bill.”
I consider most modern American Protestants (fundamentalist, evangelical, mainstream, whatever) to be “theologically liberal.” They don’t accept historical Christianity so they are “theologically liberal.” Many of these people are not what you would call “left liberal.” And as names…how about Pat Robertson, James Dobson, etc.
“As for Stewart and Colbert, I really, really beg to differ — if one doesn’t share their extremely pedestrian left-liberal politics and cultural knee-jerk reflexes, they are each about as “clever,” as “witty” and as “intelligent” as Rush Limbaugh (i.e. hardly at all) and far less honest about what it is they are up to. I doubt if I’ve ever seen anyone in public life with less of a sense of irony and and less of an ability to laugh at themselves than those two, who are just about the most humorless prigs I have ever observed on the pundit scene … Sean Hannity not withstanding. One truly has to be an ideologue or a bald-faced liar who’s desperate not to get kicked out of the White People’s club to feign that either one of those creepy losers merits even the little bit of attention I’ve paid to them here in taking them to task.”
Gosh I am so OVER the “white people club.” It was clever about 3 years ago. Move on.

Crustacean, in the instances I cited–and many more–we’re not talking about occasional individual peccadilloes, which the sinner recognizes as sins and repents of. We’re talking about pragmatic denial of the teachings of Jesus on an institutional scale. When Crusaders cry “Deus le vult!” as they sack and slaughter innocent people, is this not a verbal denial of the Golden Rule as well as a practical one? To say “God wills it” of the killing of innocent women and children is a very specific denial of those statements of Jesus on the subject of what God wills us to do.
Matthew 7:12: So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the Law and the prophets.
Matthew 19:19b: . . . love your neighbor as yourself.
It is clear from the actions of the institutional Church that there have been many occasions on which they judged observance of the Golden Rule to be “inessential.” John Paul II came within a hairsbreadth of acknowledging this outright. It is “jejune,” as you put it, to try to evade this acknowledgement with verbal gymnastics.
I can think of no more effective denial of the message of Jesus than to systematically deny it with one’s actions. You appear to privilege words over deeds. “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. . . . You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?”

Your Name,
We’ve been round and round this same block again and again. I can only reiterate my earlier advice that if my posts are as obnoxious to you as they seem to be, then you should simply elect not to read them. I tire of being asked to apologize to you for each and every thing I say, everyone of which abrades your exceedingly thin skin and subjects your fragile constitution to the vapors. I don’t want to be responsible if you suffer a heart attack someday from hyperventilating so hard over something I’ve said. I doubt either or our insurance plans or even Obamacare would cover such a contingency, and — at any rate — while you clearly detest me, I have nothing at all against you and wish you all the best and none of the worst. So, please, why don’t we just stop doing this? I’m selective in which posts on these threads I elect to read, and you could be too. I tend not to read posts by regulars here whose posts I’ve come to learn tend to cause me displeasure that outweighs any benefit they might contain. And I when I do elect to read them I take responsibility myself for whatever consequence my choice may have. Contrary to what you seem to think, I never “whine” about what others have to say here. I disagree, and I say so, sometimes in pointed terms, but not in ways that abrade anyone’s skin as consistently as your own exceedingly thin kind or subject anyone’s constitution to the vapors as consistently as your own exceedingly fragile kind. Whining is your speciality, not mine. Your accusations of whining against me really ought to go down in a psychology textbook as a case-study in projection.
Anyway, as for the term “fundamentalism” or “fundie,” I don’t disagree with you that “fundamentalism” in its precise and correct sense is consistent with historic, orthodox Christianity and nothing I’ve ever written here has given any cause whatsoever why you ought to think that I do equate “fundamentalism” with historic, orthodox Christianity.
That said, I do object — as does anyone with theological literacy and/or common decency — to the intellectually ignorant, theologically illiterate, and uncommonly indecent pejorative use to which the term “fundamentalism” is indiscriminately put by assorted bigots — many but not all liberal Christians among them — as a stick with which to beat historic, orthodox Christianity.
As for modern American Protestants — of whom neither James Dobson nor Pat Robertson is particularly representative and certainly not synecdochic — do they or do they not affirm the existence of God, do they or do they not affirm the divinity of Christ, do they or do not affirm Christ’s crucifixion as a means to humanity’s salvation, and do they or do they not affirm Christ’s resurrection as offering the prospect of eternal life? Now, granted, none of those affirmations are ones that you seem to regard as “essential” to authentic Christianity, whether, historic, orthodox, or liberal. Which begs the question why — and on what basis — you take such issue as you seem to do with modern American Protestants in general or with James Dobson or Pat Robertson in particular? If “authentic” and “essential” Christianity is capacious enough and/or malleable enough to accommodate the liberal Christianity of, say, a John Shelby Spong, with its denial of the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the crucifixion as a means of salvation, and the resurrection as a promise of the prospect of eternal life, then why shouldn’t it be capacious enough to accommodate modern American Protestantism in general and “even” the particular variants thereof represented by Dobson or Robertson? Why, that is, except that American Protestantism — correlating fairly strongly morally, culturally, and politically with conservatism, economically with the lower middle class and working class, and ethnically with African-Americans and Scots-Irish-Americans — is Stuff White People Don’t LIke? The difference between you and those of us here critiquing liberal Christianity is that while you are every bit as “exclusive” as the rest of us, in terms of being willing to write certain Christians out of “authentic” or “historic” or “orthodox” Christianity, you are not willing to supply the criteria — theological or otherwise — by which you do so. And I suspect that’s because (a) your criteria aren’t theological at all and (b) because they are instead political ones and ones derived from a class-based and ethnicity-based social bigotry of which you are quite right to be ashamed, through quite wrong not to acknowledge in yourself, to confess, and to make amends for.

sigaliris,
Christianity (unlike left-liberalism) begins with the acknowledgement of the problem of sin, which it (unlike left-liberalism) endeavors to solve or at least to mitigate (as opposed to exacerbate).
So it is absolutely consistent with Christianity that Christians (like everyone else) are sinners and likewise that Christianity itself (like everything else) would be sinful.
In any event, you yourself have rejected “the message of Jesus,” so why do you care?
You fall into the same trap that Rod once identified John E. as falling into — the same trap that many if not most of the left-liberals here fall into — the trap of trying to be more pious in Christian terms than Christians themselves and of ending up instead being far more sanctimonious and self-righteous than even your own most bigoted, vulgar, and malicious stereotypes and caricatures of Christians and of Christianity.
I’d reiterate to you in particular what I wrote to Your Name above, if Christians here and elsewhere are such a bunch of *ssholes as you take them to be, then why do you spend all of your time getting up in their grilles? And if Christianity is such a bunch of bullsh*t as you take it to be, then why do you spend all your time sticking your nose into and rooting around in that aforementioned big fat steaming patty of bullsh*t? Don’t you have anything better to do? I think I know the answer, but I’m still afraid to know … and really, really sorry for you.

“do they or do they not affirm the existence of God, do they or do they not affirm the divinity of Christ, do they or do not affirm Christ’s crucifixion as a means to humanity’s salvation, and do they or do they not affirm Christ’s resurrection as offering the prospect of eternal life? Now, granted, none of those affirmations are ones that you seem to regard as “essential” to authentic Christianity, whether, historic, orthodox, or liberal. Which begs the question why — and on what basis — you take such issue as you seem to do with modern American Protestants in general or with James Dobson or Pat Robertson in particular?”
The doctrine you mention above is not enough for “authentic” Christianity because it ignores the necessity of membership in the Church and of the Sacraments.
“The difference between you and those of us here critiquing liberal Christianity is that while you are every bit as “exclusive” as the rest of us, in terms of being willing to write certain Christians out of “authentic” or “historic” or “orthodox” Christianity, you are not willing to supply the criteria — theological or otherwise — by which you do so.”
It’s a simple criteria. The Orthodox Church and Pre-VII Roman Catholic Church represent authentic, historic Christianity. (I won’t venture into the Orthodox versus RCC debate here.) What is little “c” catholicism? What Christians everywhere have always believed. Protestantism doesn’t meet the criteria. I won’t go so far as to say they’re not Christians although I think the argument could be made that they are not. I am comfortable saying that they are “theologically liberal” Christians in that they accept the orthodox understanding of who Christ is and what He accomplished but not the authority of the Church.
The irony of American “conservatism” is that there is very little that is conservative about America. Not our religion (Protestantism), our economic philosophy or our system of government. America represents the destruction of the old order. Your argument that “left liberalism” is connected to “theological liberalism” is valid. My issue is with what you consider to be “left liberalism” and “theological liberalism.”

Crustacean, I appreciate your attempt to feel for me, but must decline to accept it. Empathy seems to be in short supply for you, so I would prefer that you spend it on others in your life who may need it more. You’re systematically wrong in your assessment of my position and where I’m coming from. Clearly you haven’t been paying attention, so there would be little point in explaining it again–you’ve described yourself as selectively oblivious to what people say here, and I think that’s accurate.
I am going to try once more, however, to point out the difference between individual “sin” and a systematic, persistent, institution-wide, rhetorically self-justified disregard of the stated founding principles of the institution. Look up “Iron Law of Oligarchies” if you want to see what I think has been going on the Church for most of its existence. The prestige and power of the institution and its leaders have taken precedence over behaving in accordance with the teachings of its founder, and this has so permeated the fabric of its teachings that people like you see no essential difference between the teachings of Christ and “Christianity” as a tribal in-group. This, I think, is a genuine tragedy, but one to which your lobsterish hide seems impervious, alas.
You are one of the foot soldiers of tribalist Christianity, and I, in turn, feel sorry for you. You can’t see that you are helping to destroy the very thing you say you love. But you’re certainly not the first, and you’re not to blame for the teaching that made you this way. You are fortunate in that the liberalism that you despise will prevent you from committing the excesses of violence that, if your theology is correct, brought many of your predecessors before the Throne to receive judgement from the one you call “Lord, Lord” without doing his will. The ascendance of secular law and the liberal trend in the churches will prevent you from subjecting such as me to the Inquisition, so you won’t have that on your conscience. You’ll have to content yourself with your impotent attempts at pity.
I ask you the same question I asked Hector: if Christianity as an institution can’t be expected to do better than other institutions, and Christians as individuals are to be excused for behaving as badly as any other group of human beings, then why should anyone care if Christianity survives or not? You can’t have it both ways. If there is something inherently better about this institution, then we have a right to expect to see that demonstrated in action. If every atrocity committed by Christians is to be shrugged off with “oh, well, we’re just sinful people like everyone else” then I think we have a right to discount the truth claims of your theology accordingly.

sigaliris,
Your refusal to answer here and elsewhere ever to answer the kinds of putatively coruscating questions that you yourself are so very fond of demanding that other people answer for you is the reason why neither I nor very many others here ever bother even reading your posts, save when we ourselves, in particular, specifically, and by name, are the ones whose big fat steaming bullsh*t pies of Christian existence are the ones into which you have chosen on that occasion to insert your nose, with its infinitely nuanced sensitivity to the most subtle strains of stench wafting from Christian bullsh*t pies.
Would that there really were “a way-back machine,” like the one on *Bullwinkle and Rocky,* so that you could go back in time and stick your nose into Jesus Christ’s own primordial bullsh*t pie and set Him … I mean *him* — straight.
Likewise, would that there really were “a way-back machine” so that you could go back to the point at which God was still sweeping over the waters but had not yet actually bullsh*tted the world into existence. Then, you could have told Him … I mean *him* … that he needn’t bother and that if he really wanted to do some good he would hang up his rock and roll shoes and let *you* — sigaliris — run the universe the way that it ought to be run.

sigaliris,
PS: The fact that you *don’t* like me is as much of a complement in its own way as the fact that MargaretE and others here *do.* So, thanks — as with MargaretE’s like, your dislike is really gratifying to me, considering the source.

Your Name,
Have I anywhere said that either the Orthodox or Roman Catholics are obliged to regard each other or Protestants as Christians?
Virtually all of them do — and I appreciate that — but the fact that I’m not asking them to makes your attempted “gotcha” here fall flat.
The Orthodox believe the Roman Catholics are in error and Protestants even more so.
Roman Catholics believe the Orthodox are in error and Protestants even more so.
Protestants believe a variety of things, but generally they tend toward believing that the Orthodox are in error and Roman Catholics even more so.
Overall, though, it’s not, in general, the case that the Orthodox regard Roman Catholics and Protestants as non-Christians or that Roman Catholics regard the Orthodox and Protestants as non-Christians or that Protestants regard the Orthodox and Roman Catholics as non-Christians.
What is, in general, however, the case — unfortunately for you — is that 99% of all Christians globally and historically have not and do not regard those — like some liberal Christians and perhaps like yourself — who deny the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the crucifixion as a means of salvation, and the resurrection as a promise of the prospect of eternal life as being Christians or as participating in Christianity, as opposed to what one might call “Christiness.”
Sorry, but that’s just how it is. If your rather unhinged enmity toward me is any indication of how you feel about the rest of the 99% of Christians globally and historically who disagree with you and who agree with me where this matter is concerned, then one can’t help but wonder why you bother with them at all and why it is so important to you to get the acquiescence of people seemingly so horrible for your affirmation that John Shelby Spong or whomever is every bit as Christian as — or perhaps even more Christian than — St. Paul.
As for the various different connotations the word “liberal” can take on in various contexts, I think I’ve made it amply clear already that “liberalism” and “conservatism” too are not only relative *to* particular contexts but also relative *within* particular contexts.
Scandinavian Social Democracy is to the left of where the U.S. is politically and to the right of where the Soviet Union was.
Nikita Krushchev was to the right of where Joseph Stalin was and to the left of where Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy were — albeit that Kennedy, while to the right of Krushchev, was to the left of Eisenhower … albeit to the right of Krushchev.
As far as Christianity goes, I think it’s pretty self evident that a putative Christian who denies the existence of God, denies the divinity of Christ, denies the crucifixion as a means of salvation, and denies the resurrection as a promise of the prospect of eternal life is to the left — theologically speaking — of a Christian who affirms those things and has made a more liberal assessment of how malleable Christianity is and how how much and what kind of doctrine it will accommodate.

Um, Crustacean, the Wayback Machine was on Peabody and Sherman, not Rocky and Bullwinkle. If you’re going to be smug, at least be accurate.

Um, Brett, Peabody and Sherman was a segment on Rocky and Bullwinkle. If you’re going to be even more smug than me and try to make me stand corrected, at least be correct yourself.

Proves my point. You couldn’t resist correcting me, could you? You can never resist. How many times today did you check this thread, waiting, just waiting, to pounce on Sig or Your Name or whoever else says anything about you? Crustacean FTW!

Dear Crusty, I see I’m going to have to correct you once again. I don’t actually dislike you. I don’t even know you. I’m often irritated by the way you choose to state things, but that’s a far cry from personal dislike. So, if you were taking pleasure in my perceived animus against you . . . get used to living with disappointment. ; )
As for your “putatively coruscating” questions . . . say whaaat now?! I looked it up to make sure I had it right: these would be questions “commonly accepted, on inconclusive grounds, as sparkling.” I really don’t know what kind of point that’s supposed to convey.
I reviewed your comments to see if you’d asked me any questions deserving of an answer. There weren’t many questions at all–and such as there were, appeared to me to be rhetorical rather than serious. Perhaps it was your overheated manner that gave me the impression you were talking mostly to hear yourself talk, rather than seeking actual communication.
Here’s one question you asked me: In any event, you yourself have rejected “the message of Jesus,” so why do you care? I let that go unanswered, because to reply, I would first have had to correct your erroneous assumption–that I have rejected the message of Jesus. That would depend very much on what the message of Jesus is seen to be. I think I’ve answered the question of why I care already, but I’ll spell it out for you again.
I devoted myself to following and propagating the message of Jesus for many years. I was a faithful member of the Church for many years. Possibly longer than you’ve been alive–since I hope, for your sake, that you are still relatively young, with time to become a wiser crustacean. You, and people like you, have helped to make me an exile from the spiritual homeland of my youth. You are helping to destroy an institution that I once loved and had hopes for, and that I still care about. You are in danger of making the name of Jesus stink in the nostrils of the world, by plastering it like a bumper sticker onto your political causes of the month. I think that’s sad.
I have not, as far as I recall, used intemperate, vulgar, or insulting language on you, but you have felt free to heap quite a bit of it on my head. Is that what you consider observance of the Golden Rule? Or are you saying that, when talking to people who disagree with you, it’s “inessential”? “Blessed are the peacemakers . . . Bless those who are against you; bless, and do not curse. . . . If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” Possibly you’re the one who, in this case, is rejecting the message of Jesus.

A theological Crustacean is one who believes he can define for others what a theological “conservative” is and what a theological “liberal” is. I prefer to believe that a theological conservative is one who has the humility to understand that only God can really judge these things, while a theological liberal is one who has the infernal gall to understand that all other Christians have to accept his personal talent or torment as the essence of true Christianity. But that’s just the way I see it. God knows what the true answer is, and he isn’t telling. I don’t think God really cares much about conservatives and liberals anyway.

Christopher Hitchens is 100% correct about the belief portion of being a christian. The works portion is acting out this belief in your life. Which is why Jesus’ sole commandment was “29…’Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12)
This commandment(s) makes belief and action two sides of the same coin. There are some athiests who shame christians by their charity and service. We would do well to spend our time loving each other more rather than picking nits.

If you believe Jesus Christ died for your sins, ask Him to forgive your sins, and have a personal relationship with Him through this action and belief, you ARE a Christian AND you should KNOW TRUTH! He also said, “What do light have to do with darkness”? and “Come out and be ye separate” among many, many other wonderful things to show us how we are to be salt and light, but SEPARATE; so why do you think you have a need to “know” anything from Muslims, atheists, etc who are “professing themselves wise but become fools”? READ the Holy Bible, THAT is where we, as Christians are to get what knowledge we need, period!! We SHOULD spend our time “loving each other” and there are non believers who do great “charity and service” BUT that just shows some Christians will answer for their actions (or lack of) and also, many who profess as Christians are NOT! I think we (as Christians) would do well to be busy about the Lord’s work witnessing to a lost and dying world; some may see this as “picking nits” but mostly I say it’s that true Christianity is just repulsive to many and the world is looking for anything to give it a bad name.

“After all, one can be a perfectly orthodox Christian and profess socialism as a political doctrine.”
I dunno about this actually. Socialism is completely inimical to the dignity of the human person and Christianity in general. Popes have gone so far as to say “No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist.”
Pius XI, Quadressimus Anno (1931)
So no, there comes a point where the positions of liberalism are in opposition to human dignity as defined by the church and by God. We can deny it all we want, but that does not change revelation.

I thought the Nicene Creed, was the primary statement on what constitutes a christian. I wont bother posting it…
But you have to beleive in the trinity, virgin birth, salvation on the cross, jesus was gods only son.
Jesus never was clear about the issue, didnt he say himself, ” blessed are the “so-and-so”, they shall go to heaven”?, so I figure its not important.

“He’s right, of course. Now, I bring this up not for purposes of a culture-war exchange of fire, but to instigate a theological discussion around the following question: How much do you have to believe to qualify as a Christian?”
## Hitchens is mistaken. And he is in very good company.
A Christian is not a believer in the atonement; belief in the atonement and the resurrection and the Trinity are perefectly compatible with hatred of Jews, blacks Catholics,liberals, homosexuals, Protestants, etc. – you can believe in every doctrine in the catechism, and still be no Christian. Jesus didn’t say “Believe the Bible is absolutely free of error in all respects, or be cast out of the Church” – one can believe the Bible has the historical value of a Superman comic, and still be a Christian.
Christianity is nothing to do with dogma, nothing to do with being the One True Church, nothing to do with having the “right” kind of ministry or sacraments or discipline.
A Christian is someone who does the will of Jesus’ Father in heaven. Someone who loves his neighbour as he loves himself. Some who shows this love by doing the “works of mercy” (as they are called by the CC) in Matthew 25.31ff. The
source for this answer ? What Jesus himself is represented as saying. Bible-reading, Church-going, praying the Rosary, memorising portions of the Bible – all of those can be done by the “goats” of the parable.
ISTM that love of neighbour is important for a very simple reason – my neighbour is the nearest I will have in this life to encountering God. So perhaps the answer to “how do we carry out the first and great commandment, of unreserved love of God ?” is the second that is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Anyone can do that – including non-Christians. Without even knowing the phrase, they are bringing in the “Kingdom of God” which was the good news preached by Jesus.
So an atheist who shows love in practice for his neighbour is a Christian, and a believer in the Trinity and all the doctrines about God & Jesus who hates his neighbour, is not a Christian – he does not love God Whe he cannot see, as he hates his neighbour whom he can see. As St. John says in his First Letter.

@Rod Dreher:
“It matters enormously whether or not Jesus arose from the dead, because if he didn’t, why be Christian? I can think of other philosophies that make more sense, and are easier to live by. I’ve never heard a better line about this question than that put to me by a priest friend, who heard it in his seminary class. The professor asked the seminarians what they would do if the bones of Jesus were discovered. One of the men said, “I’d go out and get laid.”"
## But, that implies that Christianity is morally superior to its competitors. Not only is that highly questionable, given the very seamy history of the Churches; it also treats all the philosophies of antiquity as though they encouraged “getting laid” and similarly self-indulgent behaviour. Which is not true, and is profoundly unfair – Stoicism is at least as moral as Christianity; maybe those who malign unbelievers as immoral one and all need to read Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero’s “Nature of the Gods”. Cicero strikes me as infinitely more morally attractive and virtuous than a host of the noisy Bible-thumping, foul-mouthed, hate-filled Christians we hear today. A legislature and executive full of Ciceros & Marcus Aureliuses would mean a very healthy country. a version of the Golden Rule appears in a Babylonian text centuries before Christ.
So Christianity is entirely unnecessary if one wishes to have good morals; & does Christianity help people to be moral ? No more than some other ways of life – it gives knowledge of duties, but no power to dothem; it is as external as the Law of Moses, and as death-dealing as Paul said the Law was (Romans 7). Pierre Bayle 300 years ago has much to say on the badness of believing Christians, and the admirable & heroic conduct of atheists.
If people behave well only because they believe in God, instead of behaving well because that is the right way to behave no matter what, they are condemning themselves as very base people. We should do good because it is good to do what is good. To do good rather than evil *only because* God will get you if you don’t do good instead of evil, is immoral. Evil is to be avoided because it is evil – not because God will get us, if we do evil. If Christians need to be given promises of rewards to induce them to do good, and need threatening with punishment to turn them from doing evil, and would do evil if they thought they could escape the eye of God, then their morals are based on nothing but selfishness – is that Christ-like. The very heathens knew better than that. As do many today.