You've every cause to doubt me

[sovay]

So . . . despite getting up for it at six-thirty this morning, we still don't have a bed. We have part of it upstairs. After several phones calls to the delivery service and the company we ordered it from, we are waiting for the rest. And hoping. And very tired. If we slept a combined total of three hours last night, I'd be surprised. I have said I'll be at home, awake, and near my phone until this situation is sorted out, however, so I think that's the rest of my day.

Some other things make a post.

1. Auditions! Upcoming! The Post-Meridian Radio Players are holding theirs next Monday and Tuesday for Tomes of Terror: Nevermore and Theatre@First at the beginning of September for The Trojan Women. Do you like Edgar Allan Poe? Do you like Euripides? I am afraid I cannot offer a crossover, but you could audition for both shows and it would almost count. Seriously, sign up now. Theater in Somerville this fall is going to be great.

2. Can I get someone with a liberal Christian perspective on this issue? (Called to my attention by shirei_shibolim, who wanted to double-check the Latin for "argument by shrimp." I believe we settled on argumentum a squillis.)

3. Robot Hugs says intelligent things about harassment. Also about scheduling and identity, but I kind of want to see the harassment one reblogged everywhere as a PSA. Also, because it never gets old: Cativan.

4. It wasn't on the dollar rack, but the Harvard Book Store has now furnished me with a used copy of M. John Harrison's Viriconium (2005), the omnibus. I faintly feel ashlyme was responsible.

5. Thanks to the AV Club, I am intrigued by the pilot of Outlander. Cunnilingus in a castle.

There had better be a bed and some sleep soon. I am tired of making lists.

Comments

[rinue.livejournal.com]

You are religiously mansplaining at me.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I have no knowledge of what you know and don't know, and was attempting to say I don't speak for everyone. I grew up Presbyterian but also sometimes attended Methodist churches and eventually converted to Episcopalianism, but am atheist (in the sense that I don't believe in a theistic God) while still self-defining as Christian (because it is a way for me to express wonder at the universe). Within each of these traditions, I have gravitated toward more politically liberal churches (ones which were part of the civil rights struggle, or which were female-led, or which had significant gay membership).

My comment about "bigger split" is not around a difference of doctrine but in the nature of "who do we sit around and complain about." The vast majority of people at my church would rather, from what I can tell from how they behave and what they say, hang out with mainstream jews or buddhists than with Evangelicals, and are generally more admiring of those faiths than they are of, for instance, Catholicism. It's kind of this attitude of "here are people who see the truth through a different lens" (Judaism, Buddhism) versus "here are people who are saying offensive nonsense (Evangelicals).

Similarly, speaking of the development of the early church, what I'm saying is it doesn't affect my faith at all and if I asked most people who identify as Christian whether they cared about, like, the text of the Edict of Nantes, they wouldn't. Or they might know about what stuff came from Mithraic cults instead of probably the teachings of Jesus, but they're not going to take it any less seriously for knowing it. Christianity is not, in my experience, a law-bound religion, and that's not a radical thing to say.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I hope you will apologise for the mansplaining comment, by which I mean the literal words I said: this is something I hope. Not because you're obligated to but because it would mean something to me.

I am not a man and was not assuming superior knowledge based on gender but because you asked for a liberal Christian to talk about liberal Christianity from a personal perspective, such that it's very reasonable for me to be uncertain of what you know.

From my perspective, I thought it would be very rude of me to assume "well everybody knows lots about Christianity and know about each of the sects and diocesian disputes within those sects! It's the only normal valid background to have!"

It may not have read that way to you, but I was trying very hard to reach out in friendship and helpfulness during what is a not-good time for me.

[sovay]

It may not have read that way to you, but I was trying very hard to reach out in friendship and helpfulness during what is a not-good time for me.

I am very sorry that things are not going well for you. I did not intend to imply that everything you said in this post was without value or already known to me—I would not have asked for a liberal Christian viewpoint if I were able to supply one myself and I do not discount your experience of the religion within which you live. It was the assumption specifically that I had no idea that there were different kinds of Christianity that made me feel talked down to. I think of that as a very basic religious fact, patent from daily experience in this country and any amount of history. Even if I cannot myself describe the theological reasons that Methodists aren't Presbyterians aren't Episcopalians, I am aware that they differ from one another and that the reasons for it exist. It seemed already implicit in the conversation that I wasn't asking, "Hey, so why do all you Christians think . . ." Hence the feeling of being told, as if I'd never heard of it, something I had already made clear I knew: hence "mansplaining." I do not believe you were talking out of a gender-based assumption of stupidity on my part. I don't have a better term for being told things I know and take for granted from context that other people know I know. It surprised me.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

From my perspective, I'm not trying to say "you don't realize they're different." What I was tryiing to point to is the distinction between the ministerial experience of Christianity and the laity. Ministers and people who mount doctrinal defenses are drilling down into the details of whether a given branch embraces, for instance, Calvinism, and if so, in what way. These are relevant to doctrinal defenses of homosexuality.

However, those distinctions are not directly relevant to a lot of churchgoers. A lot of people choose their church based on whether the choir is good, whether they like the hymnal, and whether they like the specific preacher. Most christians do not stay in one denomination their whole life; I'd say staying in one denomination is pretty uncommon. They couldn't tell you what their given denomination thinks of various heresies, only what they think Jesus would want. And it's the body of the church that tends to pressure the higher ups to change how they're reading the bible. It's very analogous to representative democracy, and how people moving from one state to another state then vote in that state.

Meanwhile, again very much like state politics, there are severe divisions even within churches. For instance, there are major splits in the Episcopal church right now over homosexuality and over the ordination of women. The lefty American churches have broken with the Church of England. the righty American churches have broken with the American bishopric and some of them now report to a bishop in Africa. There's a similar split between Scottish Rite Presbyterians and non-Scottish-Rite Presbyterians. I think it's only recently that the Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists/Anabaptists reconciled, although I think some of the Southern Baptist churches switched to being Pentacostal. (I could be wrong; I'm not as up on the status of Baptists.)

As a churchgoer, those splits only sort of influence me, because if I was going to a church that ended up on the wrong side, I'd just swap churches, like you swap candidates. What I'm trying to get at about Evangelical christianity being really by the book -- it's weird. It's not my experience of Christianity, which is almost alarmingly a la carte.

[sovay]

I have no knowledge of what you know and don't know, and was attempting to say I don't speak for everyone.

See below above, which I answered first because that's what I saw first when I got back to LJ. I appreciate the attempt not to talk over my head, but it backfired and left me feeling that because I was asking for information in a specific field, you assumed I was wholly ignorant of the field in question.

My comment about "bigger split" is not around a difference of doctrine but in the nature of "who do we sit around and complain about."

Understood. Bracketed between comments about the importance of salvation and the conflict over regeneration, it looked like a doctrinal statement and left me wondering seriously if it was some kind of devil's advocate argument or whether you meant it as a straightforward equivalence of religions. You had just described Protestant Christianity as a "church of one," with the individual choosing which portions of their tradition are meaningful to them and which they feel no compunction to observe. Reform Judaism emphasizes personal autonomy over the binding nature of halakha and mitzvot; each person is encouraged to interpret Jewish law and custom for themselves, holding to or discarding observances as appropriate or necessary. You could very honestly have been telling me that you thought Reform Jewish beliefs and practices were more like the beliefs and practices of non-evangelical Christians than those of non-evangelical Christians were like those of evangelicals, with the same going for Buddhism, in which case I disagreed: and would have felt comfortable explaining why I disagreed in terms of Judaism, but I knew I didn't have enough background in Buddhism to argue point-by-point if you meant it.