I only skimmed the article you linked, but as a liberal Christian, this stood out to me:
In this formulation, even if there are Jews still observing their commandments, they are simply doing so in the mistaken belief that the covenant in which the commandments were made is still operative when in fact it is not, Christ having done away with the law. There’s no doubt that liberal American Christians, who have led the way in initiating interfaith dialogues with American Jews, do not mean to suggest this.
On the contrary, we absolutely mean to suggest this. It's central to protestant theology. If we didn't believe that, we'd be Jews.
Christianity doesn't exactly say the old commandments are wrong, but it does say they're mostly irrelevant compared to "love each other." We have been forgiven. As long as we admit our mistakes and try to correct them, we're ok.
Leftist modern Protestants acknowledge that the writings of the bible, although they may have been divinely inspired, are not the word of God and were filtered through the time and the people writing them (much as believed by Reform Jews), and distinguish themselves from Evangelicals in that they/we tend to emphasize a relationship with the holy spirit rather than the notion of "salvation only through Christ" (which isn't something Christ pushed, particularly).
In terms of interfaith dialog, most of us respect Judaism, and follow a "judge me by my works" standard of whether somebody's a good person (instead of the aforementioned Evangelical wing's "salvation only through Christ," which incidentally means that even though I'm a Christian I'm not "saved" according to the Evangelicals). Thus we work in interfaith groups because we have a lot of overlap, and because Jesus was Jewish and if you're trying to understand what he said and how the early church developed, you need to know that context. We're pretty thumbs down on the whole "Jews killed Jesus!" notion, because Jews also supported Jesus and anyway it was destined by God so what else could happen.
(I'm not exactly explaining my personal views here; I'm explaining the mainline Christian attitude.)
We also, as protestants, believe in a personal relationship with God, without the intermediary of a priestly class, which actually means we can ignore anything and everything in the bible as long as it feels right to us. (Which, I know. But that's the thing. We are each a church of one. And we're not a chosen people; we believe God has this relationship with everyone, although some of them might not know it.)
Obviously, it's a really annoying thing to say to someone "you don't know it, but you're secretly Christian," but it's definitely something that's central to the liturgy. It's kind of this very practical, well, believe what you want to believe, you're a good person and God loves you no matter what. Because there's not a seperate Jewish god or Hindu God or atheist space where God is not. That's the Christian definition of God. Immortal, invisible, all seeing, all knowing, and everywhere.
Essentially, I would say our position on the shellfish thing is that if you want to do it and it brings you closer to god and your faith and makes you more aware of morality, great. But if you want to say that everybody needs to do it because of the Bible, that's silly.
no subject
In this formulation, even if there are Jews still observing their commandments, they are simply doing so in the mistaken belief that the covenant in which the commandments were made is still operative when in fact it is not, Christ having done away with the law. There’s no doubt that liberal American Christians, who have led the way in initiating interfaith dialogues with American Jews, do not mean to suggest this.
On the contrary, we absolutely mean to suggest this. It's central to protestant theology. If we didn't believe that, we'd be Jews.
Christianity doesn't exactly say the old commandments are wrong, but it does say they're mostly irrelevant compared to "love each other." We have been forgiven. As long as we admit our mistakes and try to correct them, we're ok.
Leftist modern Protestants acknowledge that the writings of the bible, although they may have been divinely inspired, are not the word of God and were filtered through the time and the people writing them (much as believed by Reform Jews), and distinguish themselves from Evangelicals in that they/we tend to emphasize a relationship with the holy spirit rather than the notion of "salvation only through Christ" (which isn't something Christ pushed, particularly).
In terms of interfaith dialog, most of us respect Judaism, and follow a "judge me by my works" standard of whether somebody's a good person (instead of the aforementioned Evangelical wing's "salvation only through Christ," which incidentally means that even though I'm a Christian I'm not "saved" according to the Evangelicals). Thus we work in interfaith groups because we have a lot of overlap, and because Jesus was Jewish and if you're trying to understand what he said and how the early church developed, you need to know that context. We're pretty thumbs down on the whole "Jews killed Jesus!" notion, because Jews also supported Jesus and anyway it was destined by God so what else could happen.
(I'm not exactly explaining my personal views here; I'm explaining the mainline Christian attitude.)
We also, as protestants, believe in a personal relationship with God, without the intermediary of a priestly class, which actually means we can ignore anything and everything in the bible as long as it feels right to us. (Which, I know. But that's the thing. We are each a church of one. And we're not a chosen people; we believe God has this relationship with everyone, although some of them might not know it.)
Obviously, it's a really annoying thing to say to someone "you don't know it, but you're secretly Christian," but it's definitely something that's central to the liturgy. It's kind of this very practical, well, believe what you want to believe, you're a good person and God loves you no matter what. Because there's not a seperate Jewish god or Hindu God or atheist space where God is not. That's the Christian definition of God. Immortal, invisible, all seeing, all knowing, and everywhere.
Essentially, I would say our position on the shellfish thing is that if you want to do it and it brings you closer to god and your faith and makes you more aware of morality, great. But if you want to say that everybody needs to do it because of the Bible, that's silly.