Re: The Future of the Community of Christ (RLDS)
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:56 pm
MsJack, I find myself with a couple of little puzzles. Both ELCA and PCUSA would be to my knowledge relatively conservative groups compared to what sounds like Unitarian universalism in Alphus and Omegus discription. The groups are liberal compared with fundamentalist groups but they hold basic Christian doctrines and dogmas. Your observation that tolerance and freedom from dogma is actually not much of anything makes sense to me. Perhaps I am wondering more what you have in view for more demands to make a difference. My wife spent years in the past with conservative evangelical groups. lots of hours going to church for prayer group, Bible study etc. She wondered, and I do not blame her, is this all there is to it?MsJack wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:57 pmI don't doubt that there are appeals to liberal / mainline traditions, and I know many fine practitioners of these traditions. I myself got my religious start, for the most part, in a branch of the PCUSA. One person I know who converted from Mormonism is now a minister in the ELCA; she performed my second wedding.Alphus and Omegus wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:19 pmI think this is being rather unfair to theologically liberal denominations. People from more liberal faith traditions see no value in the factual claims of the Bible, since they really don't stand up. They see moral value in at least some of them.
More importantly, they value the universal connection you can get once you break free from dogma. It not only allows you to better relate to others outside your background, but also inside of the congregation since there's no "correct" way to believe or interact. Additionally, there's something to be said about a more streamlined theism which does not pretend to have knowledge about who or what God is. It's more humble as well.
These traditions are much more philosophical and community-centric rather than dogma-centric so that aspect can be burdensome or irritating to some people, it would seem.
But Finke and Stark cover in The Churching of America how the more costly religions that place more demands on their members are, paradoxically, the ones most likely to generate growth, and how this has been the case for most of American history. There's nothing wrong with generic universal connection in principle; there's also hypothetically nothing wrong with "Don't believe in that crap in the Bible? We don't, either." The problem is, if that's the main product that a church is promoting, it's one that a person can get almost anywhere: from a yoga class, from a favorite podcast, from a book club on Meetup. Why go to church for that? Every church has to have a product or a message that it promotes, one that makes a case for itself in the market, and plenty of people are already selling tolerance, understanding, and freedom from "dogma." In my view, many liberal / mainline churches simply never figured out what they were offering beyond that (although, social justice and attention to poverty was a strong attempt in this direction).