Ron: I think people in the modern era fall prey to a nationalized Christian faith. Few Christians that I personally have run into Seldom read, question or even discuss the Bible or morality. Interestingly enough Platt brought up a great point that has relevance to the political Situation faced today. Hitler nationalized Christianity at the Beginning of his reign. http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
But you bring up great points about the message of Jesus and I agree, [Krimel] Part of the problem in "nationalizing" Christianity would be deciding to whom to award the franchise. Christians have never and I mean never found common ground in the scriptures. Much like the arguments over the MoQ there have always been disputes over meaning. At least the MoQ has a single author in the New Testament it is clear that the authors of the various books are not in agreement with each other. Compare the Gospel of John to the other three gospel writers and there is little common ground. Look to the history of disputation between the first church fathers and Paul as outlined in Acts and Galatians. All of that is inside the cannon. Bart Erhman has done an excellent series of lectures and a book entitled Lost Christianities in which he discusses extra-canonical writings from the first and second century. It is the lie of agreement on a particular interpretation of the Bible that is at the root of problem with fundamentalism in Christianity and I suspect this applies to Islam as well. The newsletter of the Jesus Seminar is called the Fourth R and the goal of the organization is to increase religious literacy. As you point out ignorance is rampant in the pews and that suits some just fine. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
