tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-878914472051909043.post6529697612951929824..comments2024-01-12T12:39:47.241-08:00Comments on The Christian Monist: Church - The Great Alienation - and ChurchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-878914472051909043.post-46307695122788965252010-04-21T12:26:58.996-07:002010-04-21T12:26:58.996-07:00Have you ever read William James' Varieties of...Have you ever read William James' Varieties of Religious Experience? I'm on thin ice here, because it has been many years since I read it, and I didn't make it all the way through at the time. James (early 1900s?) was writing about (American?) religious expression in general ... not Christian in particular... and, if I recall, I don't think he identified himself as Christian. (I think he was a psychiatrist? And brother of the James (Henry?) who is a famous novelist.) But, I remember that the first 2 chapters (or sections) set up two basic approaches to religion that he observed. As I recall (all this is a paraphrase based on reading it years ago), the first approach was that if you believed/thought the right way, then life would turn out. The second was an approach that said "But that obviously isn't true! Life is complex! There's suffering, pain, grief, death! The meaning of salvation has to be much deeper than just believing the right thing hard enough." To which the first way of thinking would reply "The problem is you. You obviously aren't believing the right things or aren't believing them hard enough. Once you see the light, all your angst will go away."<br /><br />Personally, I'm definitely temperamentally in the second camp (what about pain, suffering, grief death?) At the time I was reading the book I was at a church that had developed an infatuation with prosperity/word of faith thinking (definitely the first approach.) So I was very interested to read this 100 year old book that described some of the tensions I was feeling.<br /><br />Sounds similar to the dichotomy you are describing observing, as well.Beckynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-878914472051909043.post-78227375081897672472010-04-21T11:51:40.478-07:002010-04-21T11:51:40.478-07:00I read somewhere that the Victorian Social Gospel ...I read somewhere that the Victorian Social Gospel was "a Gospel without personal salvation." The 20th Century reaction to that was a Gospel of Personal Salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation.<br /><br />And the Navs, the Wretched Urgency Evangelicals, and the church circles you run in are firmly out-of-balance in the latter direction. Redemption is individual, not social. "Christ as MY PERSONAL LORD and Savior," Redemption Personal to Me and Me Alone. As for the others...<br /><br />"Let 'em all go to Hell, Except Cave Seventy-Six!!!!!!" <br />-- The First National Anthem, according to Mel Brooks' "The 2000-Year-Old Man"<br /><br />Vertical Only, No Horizontal.<br /><br />Now you'd think that a church that's just an accidental grouping of such atomistic "I'm Saved"s would be completely anarchistic, right? With no link at all between all the Solitary Saints? Each to his own Personal LORD and Savior, with no horizontal connection to other mortals? <br /><br />Yet that type of Independent church is often THE most Utterly Conformist and Forcibly Controlling of all, on a level with North Korea or the Taliban. (Remember the Navs, JMJ?) The only anarchy comes on the macro level, as these One True Churches go for each others' throats in constant anathemas and "DIE, HERETICS!"<br /><br />And Redemption becomes something to be hoarded inside the four walls of your church, in your own Personal Relationship to your Personal LORD and Savior and nobody else. "Us Four, No More, Amen."<br /><br />Headless Unicorn Guy<br /><br />You've read my stuff; you know how spacy I can get. I even have a burden for imaginary critters, of all things. Why can't Redemption be extended to these imaginary critters? Such as a Unicorn guillotined as unworthy of existance in The Age of Reason? Or an elegant Cobra in a White Dress whose artist/creator couldn't think outside the box of his own sexual fantasies and turned this Daughter of his Imagination into just his personal imaginary sex slave?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com