Category: religion

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religion

Are churches "feminine?"

I was chatting with my friend Dana last night and I mentioned that I was going to start going to a book club in an Episcopal church. She said, “Good, we need more men.” By “we” she meant the Episcopal church. I’m not going to become one BTW.

I’ve never felt right being in church and I’ve never figured out the appeal. I’m not alone either, churches are predominantly attended by females. Would you believe mother’s day is the day with the highest attendance? Not Easter, not Christmas, mother’s day… It seems that that is the one day that women can reliably drag their husbands off to church.

I wonder why this is? I mean, I don’t know why anyone goes to church, but why are more women drawn to it than men? Is there something inherently feminine about church? Or is there something that inherently appeals to women? I don’t really know, think I’ll do a little digging around and se if anyone has any theories. But first of all, I have to get some sort of idea as to why people go to church in the first place…

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christianity religion

Reading

I brought “The Logic of Political Survival” along with me to the beach house. I haven’t touched it though. Instead, I have been listening to “Orthodoxy” by Chesterton. It was one of two books that I downloaded from emusic when they started their audiobook service. The other one was “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

In any case, I hadn’t listened to either of them yet. Mom offered me the use of her iPod (I should get one of those at some point) and I’ve been listening ever since. I had been expecting something about Eastern Orthodoxy, but it is simply Christian apologetics. He does a good job, good enough that I’m still listening to it. It’s been a long time since I have delved into any philosophy, so it is a bit hard to get through at times. It does help to be familiar with Plato, William James, and several other, mostly materialistic philosophers for the first part of the book to make any sense.

So far, there are two things that have stood out to me. The first is how he made clear the difference between things that must be true vs. things that happen to be true. The essence of that distinction is that in one case, we cannot imagine it being any different and the other we can. For example, 2 plus 3 is 5. There is no imaginable alternative to that outcome (assuming base 10). If I say that she is my mother, it always means I am her son. Contrast that with the idea that grass is green. It’s easy to imagine an alternative to that. How about the idea that if you snip an apple off of a tree, it will fall. Maybe, if it were on a satellite, it would just hang there…

The other, less pedantic, idea that really resonates with me is how Christianity is built upon paradoxes. This is in fact a strength, not a weakness. I’m in the middle of his explanation, so I’ll report back if it is explainable in a way that I can handle.

This is slow going stuff, even for me. I usually will listen for 20 minutes or so and then switch over to music while my head explodes. Of course then Cara (one of my nieces… step nieces?) wants me to read a book to her. I can do it, but going from religious philosophy to talking about colors under the sea gives me extreme intellectual whiplash. We’ll see what I get out of the first run through of this…

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christianity religion

I’m surprised

I was doing a little reading about the differences between the Orthodox churches and the Catholic ones here and I found something that really surprised me. They do not believe in the concept of original sin! They believe that all things are born innocent and without sin. That has some bearing on how they view Mary, but I think that it’s a bit of a minor thing (as a non-Catholic).

I have to say, I think that it’s rather refreshing to hear that there are Christians that believe that we are born without sin. Are there any other churches that believe that? The article also does a good job in communicating the different “feel” to the theologies. I’m not sure which one I find more compelling, but it’s nice to see it explained so well. I wish the Orthodox were better known here in the states, I think that it’s a church worth looking into.

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christianity culture religion

The Bible

One the things I enjoy when I come back to Gloucester is talking with one of my friends. G. is a super good guy and is the one that turned me onto the advantages of considering oneself a Christian. He’s a very genuine guy and we can stay up to all hours talking religious stuff. I feel a little bad in thinking this, but I also like the fact that he goes a little further into the deep end with the stuff than I do. I don’t feel quite as crazy…

Anyway, he does make me think quite a bit, and that’s a good thing. The only trouble I have is that he’s one of those people that believes that the Bible really is the “Word of God.” I have some issues with that (read about them here if you’re interested) perspective. The Bible was constructed folks, it was put together by men. Men wrote it, men put it together, and it was men that said that it is word of God. The Bible never says that it is the definitive anything, let alone the word. How could it? The Bible didn’t exist until well after all of those books were written. I’m not saying that the Bible isn’t worth reading or that you can’t learn a great deal from it, but I am saying that we don’t know who wrote those books or how “accurate” they are. I’m not even going to get into the various issues with translations…

If you’re really interested in what the Bible means, you should go and talk to the organizations that put it together. The church that put that together already had its beliefs hammered out for the most part, and the Bible they constructed reflects those beliefs. The Orthodox and Catholic churches now argue over which one is more authentic, but either of them will give you a much more fleshed out, more nuanced view of what the Bible means than any protestant church or Bible study ever will.

The difficulty is that the people that believe in sola scriptura (like my friend) are constitutionally unable to go to the churches that could help them the most. There is a totally unreasonable hatred of anything Catholic in protestant circles. The Orthodox is mostly unknown here, especially in the south, but a casual protestant observer would be forgiven for mistaking them for Catholics.

I can understand not liking the Catholic church, but why deny the history? Why try and reinvent the wheel? If you believe the Orthodox churches, they’ve been at this for 2000 years. What are the odds that someone in a mega church is really going to add a lot to what has already been gone over before? Or for that matter, why do people think that they can take on a book like the Bible on their own and understand it better than a church that had a hand in making it?

Isaac