AnnieG

That depends on who and where they are...... The New Zealand Prime Minister recently drew criticism for a (to him) humorous description of a radio commentator's clothing as a 'gay red top'. (Red being the color of the political opposition.) I thought he was using 'gay' in the old-fashioned sense of bright/ cheerful; he clarified that he meant 'gay' as in 'weird', which seems to be common useage by NZ and British children. Supporters of gay rights then organised 'Gay Red Top Day' to reclaim the positive connotations of gay. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=10846243

George, I know very little about evolution. Is the idea that variation makes a wider and therefore more healthy gene pool?

This chapter presents six claims based on research findings, in support of the proposition intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. 1. Brains evaluate instantly and constantly Affect: “small flashes of positive or negative feeling that prepare us to approach or avoid something.” Affect equates to Haidt’s ‘elephant’; thinking is the ‘rider.’ 2. Social and political judgments are particularly intuitive Partisans “have acquired the right set of intuitive reactions to hundreds of words…you find yourself liking and trusting the people around you who sway in sync with you” 3. Our bodies guide our judgments “Immorality makes us feel physically dirty, and cleansing ourselves can sometimes make us more concerned about guiding our moral purity”; moral judgment is more intuitive than rational. Eg. a ‘fart spray’ experiment showed people standing next to a foul smell made harsher judgments on moral issues. 4.Psychopaths reason but don’t feel Psychopathy seems to be genetically heritable, creating “brains that are unmoved by the needs, suffering and dignity of others”, although capable of reasoning in service of their desires. The results can obviously be tragic. 5. Babies feel but don’t reason By six months, babies seem to be watching how people behave to each other, and are beginning to prefer nice people; ie make simple moral judgments, without the ability to reason. (This conclusion was drawn from observing reactions to a puppet show featuring a good guy and bad guy. 6. Affective reactions are in the right place at the right time in the brain Brain damage to emotive areas in the brain affects moral competence; brain scans taken as people process moral dilemmas or issues generally show rapid activation of emotive centers. The elephant makes instant judgments. It is “sometimes open to reason” - especially when there are positive feelings towards those supporting a conflicting stance. But the rider’s strongest tendency is to look for ways to support the way the elephant leans. ……………………… *Can you share any examples that seem to support or contradict any of the six points? *Can you think of a time when your rider successfully guided your elephant away from an intuitive judgment? *Any questions or comments?

George I didn't manage to post last week, but I'm still interested. I'll do a summary of chapter 3 over the next couple of days. Annie

Randall, Welcome to the forum. Your essay sounds interesting. I also grew up attending a conservative Presbyterian church. If you want to share your writing, you could maybe put a link in the 'resources' section, or excerpts in the 'personal stories/ journeys' area. Annie

Donald, Interesting! You may be interested in Jim Burklo's webpost "The Varieties of God" (october 18), in which he describes many ways people understand God/god/g-d/the gods.. http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/ Annie

Hello and welcome. I also came to this site while searching for like-minded community. I don't attend a church, but I hope to give a new church a go when I return to my country in a couple of months. Like you, my husband is not impressed by PC. His interest is in enlightenment through meditation (without reference to Christianity). I look forward to hearing more from you. Annie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVom0VibsRk&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1 I hope it's available for watching outside Korea. On my screen there's a blue bar in Korean script you have to click to watch the movie. Then the subtitles toggle appears at the bottom of the screen. Warning: the English synopsis gives away too much of the plot, IMO.

Donald, I'd like to add my welcome too. It's very nice to learn that I have something in common with an opera singer (our appreciation of Bishop Spong, sadly I can't claim any talent for singing.) I wonder if you also perform sacred music? In my case I clung to recordings of baroque and classical sacred music when I was letting go of fundamentalism. Annie

‘The Evergreen Tree’ is a classic movie set in the impoverished countryside of Japanese-occupied 1920’s Korea. I admire the zeal of the two main characters, who pass up college graduation to begin what they see as more pressing work in rural development. Yeongshin starts a school in a village church. Dongheok, who has fallen in love with her, returns to his family farm and sets up a farmer’s guild. The harsh realities of colonial government, poverty and individual frailty slow the progress of the two idealists. The isolation and hard graft Yeongshin imposes on herself affect her health. Yet had she agreed to marry Dongheok and work alongside him, there would still have been awful challenges ahead; Dongheok’s married friend deserts the guild because of the anguish of seeing his wife and children short of food. The full movie was put on YouTube by the Korean Film Archive. Thankfully, English subtitles are available.

I totally agree. Learning about the circumstances of one woman's choice to have an abortion made me realise how complicated the issue is. In brief, her husband had become abusive and she had extremely little social or economic power. I can not say I am 'for' killing any human, including a foetus, but I am definitely against the social factors that led her to make this decision. Had I known before rather than after the procedure, I wonder what I would have and should have done. Condemnation without practical offers of help adds cruelty to an already cruel situation. I'm glad people are discussing the topic rather than simply voting. 0

clinen said: Being in a relationship with someone of a very different outlook and background, I tend to look wistfully at couples who look more unified... As for moving children from one church to another, it could actually be preferable to the other options. Children are exposed to the diversity of modern society in other areas from an early age, and knowing about different faith traditions is hopefully part of the path to greater tolerance. Learning that Mom and Dad have different beliefs, but still love each other and their kids, is part of this too. I hope you and your family can find a good solution.

Myron Thanks for the link. Yes, I agree that discussing psychological theories, which tend to lead to deeply personal reflection, is not easy - particularly in an open forum such as this. And yet psychological growth seems to go hand in hand with spiritual growth.

Myron, I wanted to know more about Family Systems Theory, and found a good intro to Murray Bowen on Wikipedia. Thanks for the introduction. I can see how trying to put his theory into practice would be very challenging, particularly in the relationship between adults and their parents, where ways of avoiding emotional 'danger' can be deeply entrenched. Annie

George wrote: These [food] taboos, of course, have an evolutionary basis. Imagine if each child had to learn for themselves which things are nutritious and which are poison through through reason. We probably wouldn't be here today as a species. I agree reason has its limits here too; being told 'vegetables are good for you' rarely if ever convinces a child to eat them. But we don't seem to have evolved to the point where we instinctively know what we should be eating to maximise our chance of survival. The curious infant may experiment with dirt, a bottle of pills... Individual differences in food taboos, even within one culture, and the way these taboos change over time for each person, are curious things too.

Ch 1 discusses food taboos, an interesting topic. I remember enjoying some 'Hawaiian style fish' prepared by my aunt as a child. My siblings and I were shocked to be told later that it was raw fish - we would never have eaten it if we had known. Nowadays I can bring myself to consciously eat raw fish (the area where I live in Korea is crowded with restaurants specialising in it), but still prefer not to. In Korea I've encountered many new foods but many I've only looked at - I'm generally only willing to try them on the recommendations of others, and sometimes refuse. As I understand Haidt, in his terminology the intuitive elephant is running away from threatening or confusing sights /smells and the evidence that other people happily consume these foods is not sufficient to entice me to follow. Another factor is that I identify as 'foreigner' and am probably willing to 'reason' along the lines that Korean people eat these foods, but I don't have to.

Today we booked our tickets back to New Zealand. I enjoy living in Korea, but I'm excited about returning home to live. We're going in January, from winter to summer.

That's fine with me too.

Paul's suggestions about the ways non-religious may fill the gap political activism sport other recreational activities war eastern and other foreign traditions are interesting. To a list not specific to any country I would add *the arts and *experiences of nature For myself, I wonder if I would have gravitated towards PC if I hadn't attended a church with my parents (from 0 to around 20). I think it'd be much less likely. Not only did I feel the loss as I left behind a familiar routine, belief system and crowd, I was tuned in to the power of the symbols and stories of Christianity. My friends raised in secular households who are still 'nones' have found diverse routes to connecting with like-minded communities and with their spiritual side, for example in volunteering, paid work, hiking and long-distance running.

http://www.geonius.com/ocd/religion.html could be a good starting point to looking into this topic, with links to the connections between ocd and different religious practices. from the introduction: "Religion is an important or the primary factor in many people's lives and, not surprisingly, the same is true, with a twist, for many who suffer from OCD. For some, unfortunately, their religion is an integral part of their obsessions (e.g., scrupulosity) and/or compulsions. For others, fortunately, their faith provides a means of dealing with and/or overcoming their OCD and its attendant problems." Martin Luther, John Bunyan and Saint Teresa have all been labelled as 'having ocd', although of course this is applying a psychiatric term developed in a very different social context to those in which they lived. I have thought before that pre-modern society offered a stronger refuge for certain types of people we are inclined to label as mental health sufferers today. Maybe it's more accurate to say that people whose 'visions' fit within a religious framework have the benefit of social support denied to those whose 'hallucinations' are dismissed as symptoms of a disease.

I'd like to join in too. I will get an e-book so won't need to wait for delivery. Annie

In my (mild) resistance to the name 'PC', I know part of the issue for me is my difficulty in standing up for what I believe when I know others strongly disagree. As has been said elsewhere on the forum, it pays to pick your battles.

Thanks for your comments. This quote from the wikipedia article on PC seems somewhat in agreement with my concern. Mind you, I totally disagree with the second sentence! "The name "Progressive Christianity" is seen by some[who?] as a misnomer that it is also inflammatory, suggesting that those who hold a more traditional view are not forward looking. They would hold that Progressive Christianity would be more accurately labelled as "regressive", as they perceive it as seeking to bypass the cross." *George mentioned the liberal political movement. Maybe the choice of 'Progressive' was loosely related to shared sympathies with the progressive social/political movement in the US (a movement I don't know much about.) *Dutch, thanks for the link above - 'convergence' sounds interesting This forum seems to show that denominational lines, and also church-goer / non-church goer status, needn't interfere with meaningful dialogue and don't prevent us from finding a lot of common ground. *Christian humanism (thanks, NeonGenesis) is also a term I like for its inclusivity. *Joseph, I enjoyed looking through that thread.

To me (and of course many others), 'Progressive Christianity' really represents progress, ie something better. So why I am hesitant to embrace the name? Given that religious beliefs span a huge spectrum, I feel calling myself ‘progressive’ has a touch of arrogance. Other movements of change such as ‘reformed’ and ‘protestant’ don’t contain that hint of ‘our beliefs are better than yours’ stemming from the base word ‘progress’. This hint seems particularly unfortunate given the welcome respectfulness of PC towards other viewpoints. I’ve recently become aware of the terms /descriptions ‘emerging’ and ‘evolving’ Christianity. I feel more comfortable with these. Can anyone fill me in on the background to the term ‘Progressive Christianity’? Any other thoughts on this label?

This part stood out the most for me: "Sometimes we are able to widen our circle of compassion, to include more and more people under one God. Sometimes life is so frightening that God’s commandment to love one another reaches only a tight circle of friends" It is easy enough to be compassionate in the abstract. But actively expressing compassion beyond my "tight circle of friends" and people I meet through work or through introduction is definitely a challenge. Internet communications are a way forward: there's more thinking time, and I can even hide behind a powerful avatar. I can look at my honesty in a written message and work on getting closer to genuine communication and compassion in the 'real world'.