Holly (she’s no dumbass) sent me an op-ed piece at CNN entitled Believe It, or Not and it discusses the shift in American Christian faith (including Catholics, mind you) where more and more Christians believe in the idea of the Virgin birth and that God is the only key to morality (among other things).
As the author Kristof states: “The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time.“
Man, that worries me quite a bit. People that don’t know why they should believe what they believe. I know the word is “faith”, but damn! There are ridiculous numbers of pieces of evidence that state that the Bible isn’t “the word of god”, but a constantly edited piece of literature. Many things that are the bedrock pieces of the faith are later “add-ins” by the clergy. (The “why” of that is another argument all together).
I don’t intend to impugn religious beliefs here but faith is indeed turning away from the hard texts and more into an almost oral tradition of mysticism and mythology. Know your faith, and question it. Know more, assume less.
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The excerpt cited seems to imply this “shift” is sudden and clearly delineated from the norm. I’ve been a Christian for a long time and the concept and belief in the immaculate conception is pretty old as is the belief in it. The exceprt from the article seems to look at this as being startling and new.
In my opinion, its like – Duh, a lot of Christians have believed that for a long time and it is a point of contention within the faith – especially between denominations.
If this was slashdot.org – someone would have posted a “is this really news” comment by now.
Very true, Gary about the American part. However, I think it is interesting the contrast with Europe. Honestly, I did not know that this was not official Catholic dogma *until the 50s* before I read this article. While there is a “duh”-ness to it, largely until now it’s mostly been the academics in the ivory tower talking about it. Not CNN. So, for me, it was like “okay, my suspicions are confirmed by a mainstream organization”. Bringing it into the mass consciousness is very important, in my opinion. Editorials don’t always have to be news, per se. Sometimes they are last-ditch efforts to stop a fast-moving train of idiocy. And they don’t work on everybody, but *someone* will learn something.
I think that what this article illustrates well is the emphasis in Christian “faith” on dogma, as opposed to the heart of it, so to speak. For example, it is considered more blasphemous now to say that maybe Jesus was not the actual *begotten* son of God, than to say “treat others as you would like to be treated” is a load of bunk. And that’s very sad to me. If this interests you, check out “Beyond Belief” by Pagels. Don’t read this book b/c it’s a good, easy read, but rather b/c it’s an important one. It talks about how the divinity of Jesus as some sort of demi-god was not introduced until some 60-80 years after his death and only became dogma when it eventually received the backing of Constantine in the 400s at the Council of Nicea. That “constantly edited piece of literature” Ben was talking about…
I’m definitely going to have to pick up that book Holly mentioned. Ever since I was a little kid, going to church multiple times a week, I’ve had serious problems buying into the whole mystical aspect of religion, and Catholicism specifically.
My Grandma, a devout Catholic, is bigtime into the mysticism. She’s got dirt from the hill at Medgagoria where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to some kids. She also has a rosary that supposedly turned to gold while she was there.
That’s a little off-point, but it illustrates the lengths people are willing to go to have some sort of evidence that these magical belief structures hold water.
To me, it’s enough to know that Jesus was an incredibly important teacher. It doesn’t matter to me if his mom was “touched” by the Holy Spirit, leading to her pregnancy. Nor does it matter to me if Jesus was ‘Devine’, because what difference would that make, really?
Oh, and religion is messed up.
My first impression of this article was indeed “duh…”, but the same thing hit me as Holly with the adoption of that dogma from the 1950′s. It underscores the fact that religion is being sculpted even in our day and time, and that it soon becomes an accepted part of the mythology. These dogmatic beliefs are then followed by the fellowship — and I find this very odd and rife with hypocrisy as to many faiths, the idea that we should worship ourselves (man) is blasphemous!
But, therein lies the meaning of “faith”.
Ben’s comment about religion being sculpted is very much right at the core of this whole freight train of thought we have going here.
Religion, all religions are continuously being scuplted over the course of human history. Its almost like some kind of wacked-out open source project really.
One of the things I realized a while back was that the Divine, is… well… Divine. Perfect in every way. Religion however, is a man-made artifice used to recognize and worship the Divine. And thusly, religion – all religions – is subject to total imperfection as we as a race, are imperfect.
However, I’d like to say that we’re wonderfully imperfect. Despite the fact that at times, we’re just about at horrid as can be.
Such is the duality of the human condition.
I also think Jesus was made divine by certain followers, chiefly Iraneaus, out of a sense of “oh we could never hope to be *that* good, so let’s just make him divine so the pressure is off”. Mind you, I don’t think they actually thought that out, but I think it was subconsciously there.
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Gary. My new mantra, even, is “blissfully flawed”.
And I’ve said many times that I think whatever delusions we suffer from in regard to the divine, the divine suffers from none about us. :)