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

[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.