At 5:40 PM -0500 11/17/04, Jim Guinee wrote:
> If I remember correctly, the church was originally focused on getting
 members, so accepted a number of different behaviors - sort of a Hey, you
 are already celebrating X - let's just call it Y instead and it means this
 now. Loads of examples exist, such as Easter (focus on life and rebirth),
 the birth of a child from a virgin, Christmas (and the lights), etc.
 Christmas used to be so bad (drunkenness and so on) that it wasn't
 celebrated in parts of America.

No offense, but this response demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of early Christianity.

Early Christians were generally perseceuted for being so exclusive in
their beliefs.

That this changed later may be true to some extent.

My suggestion is to read the writings of early Christians and get a better
handle on how things started.

Which ones?
If by 'early' you mean the first century or two, there was a lot more variety of opinion in the movement than there is now.
As in most movements, the winners got to write the (official) history.
--
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Department 507-389-6217 *
* 23 Armstrong Hall Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* http://www.mnsu.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *


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