Short post today - just a personal gripe. One of the most common "popular" arguments against religion in general is to complain that no "free thinking" person would believe in it. The insinuation is that people of a religious bent are not free thinking, but are "indoctrinated" by institutions that "control" what they are allowed to say or believe.
In contrast, the "free thinker" is liberated from these institutional controls to pursue truth wherever reason or science or whatever truth-mechanism they follow would lead them.
This shows up in television (shows as different as House or Battlestar Galactica), and in real debates (it was forwarded as an argument against a Jesuit professor by an atheist scientist on "60 Minutes" just a few months ago). The implication is that institutional bias compromises religious thinkers and therefore makes their beliefs (including their religious ones) untenable, at best, if not laughable.
Showing posts with label Secularism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secularism. Show all posts
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Presenting the Faith to Non-Christians
Orthodox Christianity in the Americas has grown significantly in the last few decades. We have, however, seemingly done so by primarily recruiting mature or near-mature Christians from other traditions. Ex-Catholics and ex-Protestants abound in parishes today (alongside cradle Orthodox), but the ex-Pagans, ex-Muslims, ex-Atheists, etc. are a bit harder to find. They ARE there, but are fewer in number than we would like.
In particular, Orthodox Christianity seems to have found a niche recruiting theological conservatives who have become disillusioned with liberalizedWestern mainline churches - in particular, we do well recruiting intellectuals who are willing (and capable) of questioning the normative terminology of the faith around them. Given that we use a lot of the same words in slightly different ways (even with just slightly different connotations), this can be an intellectually demanding conversion process. Those of us who are converts may then struggle to present the faith effectively to, as my spiritual father calls them, "Joe Lunchbox." Given the intellectual gymnastics we had to undergo in our own conversion process, phrasing this stuff in ways accessible to someone who doesn't have the time or desire for that sort of thing becomes increasingly difficult. It remains, however, necessary.
The ether of our society brims with ready-made cliches and simple language suited to presenting the Evangelical perspective on the Gospel. We're saturated in it (to the point that even non-Christians in America will tend towards symbolic views of the Eucharist, iconoclasm, and assumptions that Christianity is about God forgiving our sins because we prayed a sinner's prayer). Roman Catholics run into difficulty with explaining the nuanced differences between Catholicism and Evangelicalism - Orthodox even more so.
So when someone who is untrained in Christianity (i.e. casually secular agnostic) says to you, "So... tell me about this Orthodoxy thing," what do you say?
In particular, Orthodox Christianity seems to have found a niche recruiting theological conservatives who have become disillusioned with liberalizedWestern mainline churches - in particular, we do well recruiting intellectuals who are willing (and capable) of questioning the normative terminology of the faith around them. Given that we use a lot of the same words in slightly different ways (even with just slightly different connotations), this can be an intellectually demanding conversion process. Those of us who are converts may then struggle to present the faith effectively to, as my spiritual father calls them, "Joe Lunchbox." Given the intellectual gymnastics we had to undergo in our own conversion process, phrasing this stuff in ways accessible to someone who doesn't have the time or desire for that sort of thing becomes increasingly difficult. It remains, however, necessary.
The ether of our society brims with ready-made cliches and simple language suited to presenting the Evangelical perspective on the Gospel. We're saturated in it (to the point that even non-Christians in America will tend towards symbolic views of the Eucharist, iconoclasm, and assumptions that Christianity is about God forgiving our sins because we prayed a sinner's prayer). Roman Catholics run into difficulty with explaining the nuanced differences between Catholicism and Evangelicalism - Orthodox even more so.
So when someone who is untrained in Christianity (i.e. casually secular agnostic) says to you, "So... tell me about this Orthodoxy thing," what do you say?
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