Jesus sitting alongside Muslims reminds me of the Christmas card I once sent out, a Middle East nativity scene with minarets in the background. Jesus was not interested in outsiders. If we assume Jesus was born and lived near Sepphoris, and was a builder, he'd have spoken common Greek as well as Aramaic, and he may well have learnt some of the ideas of Buddhists coming down the Silk Road (500 years old faith by then) and some say he nicked some of their concepts. But his whole focus was on Jews, and even in the Gentile-biased gospels he at best lacks pastoral skills with Gentiles, at worst ignores them and learns to do better as a result of encountering with them. This is my argument on my blog against Changing Attitude - whilst I agree with them, there is no purer non-doctrinal Jesus that is suddenly discovered to be all inclusive. Indeed, on divorce, the Church is far more inclusive than Jesus.

I guess all emulation is parody as all artistic works are plagurism, that is until one has internalized the core emotion which encapulates the process through which it is expressed.

It is the emotion which gives the opening to receiving the spirit, and the social circumstances that Charles Dickens was part of became so painful that parody may have been one way of covering up the personal helplessness that he felt living "amongst"such dire social circumstances. Humour is a great tool for coping, but i have learn the hard way sometimes that humour does not always travel comfortably between status and international barriers.

It is always funny to laugh at yourself when you struggle to manage on a physical emotional and financial and spiritual level, however to laugh from a position of privilige is not very wise. But there we have it because with Jesus there is no status barrier, there are no creeds "and the creed and the colour and the name wont matter" that is another one of those choruses that if as i am you are part of a multicultural family it matters..or if you are poor.

There is no competition with Jesus only people working and striving to be their best.

Pluralist has a good role model in terms of living his own life and taking a little from each belief to fulfill his needs, but in terms of life and death how does he say he believes some christianity but not believe in Jesus as Saviour. Christianity is all about Jesus as saviour, Jesus also would have eaten alongside Buddist Hindus and Muslims and other religions and he would have prayed for them.

Angela

Perhaps I should concede the point, Angela. My paternal grandmother had a picture of Jesus Christ on her wall where the eyes followed you around the room. Also, they never went to church.

Their religious influence on me? Somewhere near nil. Parents: that's different, of course. There was no churchgoing in my family, though mother had earlier experiences. I went myself, coinciding with my research. So I read plenty of theology and later did a course, the consistent discovery being that theology isn't quite like as told in churches and there is a kind of believers' duplicity going on.

This has nothing to do with ancestors.

Please feel free to disagree, of course. I thought that was the point.

Pluralist

Ultimately I could lead a selfish life, but it is not a very communal life, and when I'm dead and completely as if never alive there will still be a globe spinning for a few more billion years with evolving life on it. That's worth a little help.

Or not, as strikes the fancy of the man in question.  One decision carries just as much significance as another.  And that's my point.  The man who sees the future as "worth a little help" is morally indistinguishable from the man who does not.  The man who "helps" the future by pushing unwanted populations onto cattle cars is no different from the man who tries to get them out.  Both decisions have equal moral weight - that moral weight being zero.  You cannot even say that the joy and happiness produced in the dipossessor is less significant that the sorrow and suffering inflicted upon the dispossessed.  You may have your preferences about the matter, but those preferences have no tangible existence outside your mind, and they all die with you. 

Now that's all easy to accept if you happen to be a safe well-fed citizen of a first-world country.  But if you had been (say) a Ukrainian peasant in the winter of 1932-33, and you were watching your children starve to death in a man-made famine, you might have a different view of the matter.  Who vindicates the dead?  No one.  Who lifts the murderer from the grave and holds him to account.  No one.  What difference then does it make that he was a murderer?  It makes no difference at all.  Except that he lived a comfortable long rich luxurious life because of his murders.  Such joy and happiness he found.  And now he is safely in the ground where he does not expect to ever have tp say "Mountain, fall on me.  Earth, cover me up."  A modern life well lived.

carl

Angela-- Ebenezer Scrooge and I have little in common, but Charles Dickens and I agree more all the time. I used to think that Dickens was a parodist in that passage, but as the Lesser Depression continues and I hear thoroughly dickensian things being said about it, I am realising that he may have been a better listener in his day than I had guessed.

Pluralist

I appreciate your dialogue, and with no reflection on your character at all , i feel it is right for me to disagree with you again. I disagree with your statement "that your ancestors have nothing to do with Jesus" Now even if your ancestors were of another faith or belief or no belief, Jesus would have played a part in their history if only as an object of rejection.

This would have followed through all the generations of your family..

Peace

Angela

I'm a pluralist still but moved a little from my non-realist position. I do think evidence-based thinking is important. I'm not anti-pluralist because I value insights from Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Humanists and so on, and indeed both value and use religion. I concede the possibility of transcendence. The religious side of me includes the importance that the other person doesn't feel pain, and that there is an optimistic way of getting on together. I'm not wedded to positivism but nor do I think every story has equal validity nor that every story can be judged by a central value system.

But if you want Christianity as a kind of story, that's fine, but if you claim some sort of causal equality with say evolution or chaos-systems, then I'm going to get critical. Evidence based thinking is important for evidence claims. The overall guiding narratives may surely change, but the evidence bit by bit is important. A resurrection is a lovely story but it is a cultural phenomenon and not an alternative science. If you suggest it as an alternative science I shall compare it with astrology. I concede that some people use astrology to shape their lives and it works on a particular level, but not on how Jupiter affected me as I came through a birth canal. Nor do bodies restore to life once dead.

Ultimately I could lead a selfish life, but it is not a very communal life, and when I'm dead and completely as if never alive there will still be a globe spinning for a few more billion years with evolving life on it. That's worth a little help. No, there are no ultimate sanctions (Carl) but that's because the ones people say exist are as speculative as the next. Greed is often undermined by transience, as is power, so it is better to come to terms with transience and see what values, what joys, can so emerge. That makes me quite Buddhist.

But my 'tag' Pluralist comes from the trend I would associate with within the Unitarians. It used to be narrowly religious humanist but broadened and is now more pluralist in terms of influences.

Hi Pluralist. Why do you describe your position below as "pluralist" when it (a) insists on the truthlessness of a particular religion (e.g. the comments below) and (b) does so from a privileged epistemology (e.g. logical positivism of the 1930s)? "Pluralism" has varied expressions, of course, but all have as their starting point the impossibility of eliminating or establishing any religion from some presumably secure point of view. Comments like those below clash directly with that starting point. Yours is not a pluralist position.

Which is not at all to say that there could not be several genuinely pluralist critiques of the way villagers conceive of their "splitting" and "eternal consequences." Pluralists of varying stripes might discuss how one negotiates irreconcilable differences given their inevitabllity, how other religions view similar things, how a belief comes to make (or lose) sense in a given life, etc. But none of these is a claim that a system of meaning cannot be valid because it cannot be proved from another preferred system that one just knows is the right one. Pluralism arose in our culture to challenge precisely that sort of thinking, which many see as a dead end.

To be clear, the dead end is not believing something rather than nothing. Believing per se has never made more sense. But the usefulness of the idea that there exists an inevitable standard for reason that can be used to sift evolved worldviews seems exhausted.

That is why, given the needs of a national church in a postmodern society, the Church of England has long offered guidance both on how Christians can affirm their faith in public settings where others will express other faiths, and also on how they can be gracious hosts of those who, having rich religious traditions of their own, cannot fully agree with ours. Similarly, as a missionary church with an obvious stake in the mutual respect of religions in places where Christians are a minority witness, the Church of England has a keen interest in global inter-religious pluralism. The recent report Generous Love continues that tradition. These efforts exemplify several of the varieties of postmodern religious pluralism, though further creativity is doubtless possible.

Now, yes, "a rose by any other name..." of course. And I've obviously nothing against very old ideas, provided that they are being reargued in a current way. Moreover, I generally like open windows. Nor would I be sorry to meet "Nihilist" and "Positivist," should they someday visit the village. But I think that if you described your position as "Antipluralist" it would make more sense of what you actually argue below. And I wish that we had a few real pluralists in the village for you, and any others of somewhat absolutist convictions, to argue with from time to time, because, for the reasons just mentioned, that discussion would be invaluable to evangelicals who want to renew the evangelical centre.

Bowman Sat 21st July 11-43ish

I take it you wont be applying to be a Samaritan then ?

Charles Dickens said a lot of things, but was he a good listener?

Angela

Well, if I have the habits of ancestors, it has nothing to do with Jesus. He is just a rabbi of a time and place and, other than in fiction, without children of his own apparently.

But then I don't think we do anything other than learn from parents and grandparents certain behaviours, and this is rather simpler to explain than the existence of some spirit world or force that is passed on.

The only force I see is the push for life that suggests strongly life evolving in different and harsh conditions as well as good (like the comparatively stable earth). So that which is spiritual is our own reflection making as conscious beings, story creating and the rest.

The purpose of religion is... Determined how?