Fredl

I've tried to read all the responses to this issue, but found my eyes glazing over as I did and unable to read everything carefully. However, I will say what occurred to me as I read the question:the thought that immediately occurred to me was, "Why would anybody want to?" My take on Fundamentalists is that they, just like everybody else, have Human needs that they try to satisfy as best they can. They find shelter in their religious beliefs just as many others do. If someone else has a better solution for their needs than Fundamentalism does, I'm sure they'll recognize and act on it, just as many other former Fundamentalists have done. I just don't think that when it comes to Religion, "One size fits all" and I think it's presumptuous to imagine that we have what they need and something must be WRONG with them if they don't recognize it. Maybe they are all as dumb as fenceposts. If so, is it not likely that folks as dumb as fenceposts need something different from what the intellectual elite need? Maybe they have come from disfunctional families; well, is it not likely that they have special needs? And, so on. There is a reason that people turn to Fundamentalism and it is just as valid a reason that others turn to other religious persuasions. In these kinds of Forums, I have found myself, more than once, defending Fundamentalists. Once, as a kid, I found myself turning in rage on a group of my friends who were taunting another kid who was mentally deficient. It enraged me to see their treatment of this fellow human being. Taunting, ridiculing, baiting of Fundamentalists never fails to create this very over-emotional response in me. Which on 2 or three other forums had the effect of me being branded as a Fundamentalist myself. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fred

First, let me say how appreciative I am that a couple of you here picked up on the significance of the tribal mentality and the signficance it has to Jesus and the birth of Christianity. I have enjoyed very much the comments on that subject. Tribalism has been a HUGE issue in my personal life and I experienced the most important breakthrough in understanding my wife in our entire 20 years of being married when I came to understand the significance of the destruction of tribal societies and the effect that it has had on the survivors of shattered cultures. The gradual breakup of such cultures in the Philippines and the cataclysmic destruction of tribal societies in North America were enormously powerful and unrecognized influences on the two of us. My coming to understand this probably saved our marriage. Which is another story. Anyway, about my present interest in Christianity: I have come to recognize that I am, for the most part, a "Cultural Christian". Though, only on my Father's side, really. I'm not sure that my Mother's side of the family was ever really "culturally assimilated". But, as a kid I pretty much thought of myself and my family as culturally, if not religiously Protestant. My Mom was 3/4 Cherokee, a fact she kept quiet and that I didn't really know until fairly late in life, after the Mormons got me working on Geneology. My dad was a rather outspoken Agnostic, but we still thought of ourselves as Protestant. Soooo, I've been thinking lately about a church which honors the Protestant tradition and the key figure in the Christian tradition but recognizes the importance of intellectual freedom and our modern Scientific understanding of theUniverse and Mankind's place in it. Could this be "Progressive Christianity"? Fred

Well, thanks for the kind responses. Fredp, yours was right on the money. For many years I was, indeed, a Unitarian but, as time went on, I bcame increasingly uncomfortable, not with Unitarian doctrine but with Unitarian Culture, particularly with the establishment of what amounted to a Church Political Position. When I joined the church in my college days I was intensely proud of it. That was 50 years ago and, at that time much of the 18th Century Liberal view survived. I was proud of the church's stand against racial prejudice before it became popular and the church's acceptance of even religious skeptics before religious skepticism became the prevailing attitude in the church. I was a huge fan of early Unitarian Transendentalism and am still a great admirer of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I also thought highly of the Universalists and welcomed their merger with the Unitarians. I would not consider the UU church today. It reminds me of a friend I had in college, Rubin R. When we were fraternity brothers at Rutgers, Rubin was an editor of the college newspaper and I was on Student Council. Together, we took some very unpopular positions at the time, such as not allowing fraternities on campus if their national or local charters discriminated against any racial (Blacks) or Ethnic (Jews) groups, making ROTC voluntary and against the local barbershops refusal to give Black Sudents haircuts. Well, Rubin today is a college professor: fat, pompous and immensely self satisfied. While I am just as fervently against racial discrimination as we both were back in our college days, I am slender and as much a seeker as I was then. And dramatically different in my political views, having come to understand why Free Market Capitalism works and other Economic Systems don't. Pretty much one of those rarest of political animals: A Liberal Republican. Anyway, before I drive the discussion even further off the track, let me promise to answer the question regarding why I have an interest in Progressive Christianity soon and sign off for now. Fred

Gosh, thanks all for the very friendly and encouraging replies. May I ask another question? As I mentioned, I consider myself a Pantheist at this time or, if we want to get really fancy, a Panentheist. To tell the truth, as a practical matter, I consider this to be what my lawyer friends term a distinction that does not amount to a difference. I suppose the religious text that I revere most would be Homer's Oddesey. I find inspiration in many New Testiment passages, but consider The Old Testament to be pretty much a self serving history of the Jews. I consider it actually pretty horific, what with God commanding frequent genocides, fathers to sacrifice their sons to prove their devotion, and branding marriages between different ethnic groups illicit (my wife is Filipino and not that long ago that was strongly disapproved of by Mormon authorities). And the whole notion of Jesus having to die to save me, I just can't get my head around. Despite hearing people advance this idea for the last 60+ years of my life, I still can't see the connection. So, with my general indifference to ideas Christian, could I slide by in Progressive Christianity just based on my acceptance of the idea that Jesus was a revolutionary thinker who paved the way for the Western World's break with Tribalism in favor of Modern Western Individualism, which I regard as perhaps the single most important development in the history of Mankind? Fred

Hello! Seveal months ago, I left the Mormon Church. I wasn't mad at anybody and told my Bishop that I wished to be considered a friend of the church and attend from time to time with my family. There were two problems: First, I did not believe the Book of Mormon to be true, at least in the usual sense of the word. Second, I had decided to accept a rather large financial burden on behalf of my wife's relatives in the Philippines and this had brought the matter of the lack of transparency of handling funds within the church, a matter that had bothered me for a long time, to a head in my mind and I no longer wished to pay tithing. We were friends before we talked and still are. This has brought me to a period of extended consideration of what I DO believe. I think the individual whose religious position I admire the most would be Benjamin Franklin. Skeptical, friend of all that was beneficial to mankind, generous with all the congregations in Philadelphia, good humored, especially about himself; I wish I could be more like him. I also love greatly Emerson, Spinoza (though I'm not crazy about his Determinism - I guess he lived too early to understand Quantum Mechanics), the Teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. I have great reverence for Jesus and his teachings, but no more than for certain other Great Souls who have walked among us here on Earth. I have come to consider myself a Pantheist. But, a special sort of Pantheist. I believe in the presense of Deity in ALL things: War as well as Peace, Conflict as well as Tranquility, Tragedy as well as Joy, Death as well as Life, Pain as well as Pleasure, the Works of Man as well as the Wonders of Nature, a fetid open sewer in a 3rd World Country as well as in a sparkling Mountain Stream. I also strongly believe that I will never accept any church which denies the understandings of Modern Science. Organic Evolution stands out. I feel the function of religion is to reconcile us with the many unhappy facts of the real world, not create a system of denial to use in coping with it. Politically, I believe in Free Market Capitalism with minimal government intervention, tolerance without encouragement of abortion and homosexuality, the War to free Iraq and consider George W Bush a fine man and good president doing his best in a very difficult world. OK, my question is, "Am I in the right place here? Fred