I suspect most Protestant denominations do have more robust doctrine and hierarchies than you think, but I don’t know that for sure. The Presbyterian Church of America has a well defined system of church governance and clearly spelled out doctrine. The PCUSA, the more liberal branch of Presbyterianism we split off from years ago, I imagine has at least a very similar hierarchy of church governance. Southern Baptists have their annual convention, and I just sort of assume that’s the norm for most Protestant denominations.
Now how well or how frequently the individual churches explain those systems to their congregations must vary considerably, and there are tons of non-denominational churches who by definition don’t have any shared governance or anything like that. It’s hardly “all Protestants do X…”, but I do suspect there’s more to it that would be obvious if you’re not a part of one of those denominations.
Yes, all mainline Protestant denominations have a series of doctrines and beliefs but in the modern USA i suspect 99% of people choosing which denomination is which today have little to know interest in those beliefs - it’s one of the causes of the rise of evangelical non-denominationalism, since the average church goer today can’t even tell or even cares what those paper differences are. It’s also clear from my limited experience (i’m not attending a different service in different churches every Sunday or anything) but that these doctrines don’t obviously manifest themselves in sermons. The only thing they still have a bit of is the flow of service and the occasional doctrinal recitation which everybody says and nobody things about.
Y’all are getting your religion in my 2021 WTF topic!
I grew up not going to church and that’s how we raised our kids, so we’re all a bunch of heathens. And we like it that way!
Oh, certainly there are official stances and doctrines for a lot of the Protestant churches, no doubt. Growing up in the South, though, at least there each individual say Baptist church or Methodist church often had its own way of looking at things, which at the level of the average congregant may or may not have had much to do with the national church’s ideas.
I think that part of this is inherent in Protestantism and its history. Once you reject a one size fits all Christianity, and set about building your faith on the basis largely of individual relationships with the divine and individual or congregational readings of scripture, you are bound to reap a harvest of diversity the likes of which will boggle the mind.
Every member of the LDS I’ve met has been really nice, I gotta say. Had some neighbors in Virginia, very nice family. Even the missionaries I’ve run into–including in the silted-up port of Jacmel in Haiti!–have been pleasant and generally nice to talk to. As far as I can tell, their doctrine is sort of an extension of traditional Christianity rather than a replacement, at least that’s one way of looking at it. But yes, later revelations are always an issue. In modern Judaism, there is a lot of tension between the newer flavors, like Reform, Reconstruction, Conservative, etc. and I guess you could say traditional Orthodoxy, though even that is filled with divisions. New is not good in religion for a lot of people!
To me, that depends entirely on what flavour of Islam we’re talking about. Sufism? hell yeah baby, those guys are awesome. Salafism? Fuck off with that mediaeval bullshit.
Amen brother, preach! (though I must admit, I do admire church/mosque/synagogue-goers I know for their sense of community and belonging)
I do too! The Catholics especially seem to have a grand time. When four or more are gathered in His name, there is a fifth!
Oh, it’s not a personal preference or anything. It’s just Islam, like Judaism, is removed enough from Christianity for me to feel very comfortable with them as faiths. They share roots and similarities with Christianity, one coming before, the other coming after (but not acknowledging that Jesus was the Son of God, instead of a Prophet) that it all kind of jives.
And then you have Mormonism, which keeps the Son of God Motif, but now you have a new prophet and rules and stories about Jesus.
I don’t believe Islam has any new stories about Jesus, but continue on with a new prophet.
So, yeah, Mormonism seems similar then veers off in an odd direction that Islam doesn’t.
Funny, over here Catholics are mostly boring conservative old people.
It’s the sufi muslims that I find really rock the joint with their vibe.
But then, a client I worked for is a devout wahabist (yet another flavour of Islam), pretty darn conservative, but I found his sense of righteousness quite inspiring and his hospitality overwhelming.
Islam got a lot of shit in .nl over the past 30 years from the (extreme) right, and in a sense, rightly so (because fuck the way the more conservative muslims think about women, gays and such subjects). But there’s a lot to like about Islam. If I had to choose a way to serve God, that’s how I’d go about it. Smoke some good hashish, dance my ass into a trance, read mindblowing poetry about the greatness of creation and be a good little socialist otherwise.
The unstructured thing @TheWombat describes here is definitely happening in Islam as well.
Combine that with the fact that exiles often tend to drift towards extremism, and you get some wtfugly interpretations of the thing. Salafism for example. A bit like how a couple hundred years extremist protestant groups got exiled from Europe to commit a nice little bit of genocide and landgrab to found a little nation called USA and ended up with happy little churches like that bullshit flavour with the telepreachers and trumpist christians.
I see what you did there. Cheers!
That’s an interesting point, I generally assume that the Amish etc. are fairly traditional in the religious sense but obviously pretty extreme culturally. Mormons and JH are both, with some odd cultural things as well as a pretty divergent interpretation of scripture. Amish just feel old school, not weird, but then I grew up around a bunch of them. I’d take them over the snake handlers, for instance.
I think the WTF 2021 for July is how this thread has become some sort of religious discussion.
Well, there is pizza heresy, after all.
Seriously, why is New York pizza even a thing? It’s like the Folger’s Coffee your dad grew up thinking was what coffee is supposed to be like. ducks
At least food is a universally shared interest, it’s not like we get a lot of “take this shit over to P&R&F, I don’t want to see pancakes!” or something.
Those are just pancakes with a syrup trap.
They’re cold, dry pancakes with a syrup trap. Blech.
