Muffles I do think that authority has always been problematic within humanity . But at the same time there must always be rules and regulations in place for a society or religion to function properly as a whole. As there be many lawless ones in the world that the bible does warn us about. But of course we also know that leadership within religion itself is not exempt from corruption and power cravings. But we do have the bible as a guide to lead us into all truth. That does put all on notice and also equal standing as to what God requires including church leadership. I guess it comes down to evaluating whether your minister is a shepherd or in your case maybe a drover with a stock whip at the ready. Our Lord did only ever use the whip against his enemies like the money changers and never apon his flock.
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Christian Church Attenders - Denominational Authoritarianism
- Thread starter Muffled
- Start date
Samantha Rinne
Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
Well, the thing is, I've left many a church. I oppose all authoritarianism, especially when churches try to sell it as humans being rebellious, and they need to trust God's authority and follow the rules. No. They need to trust God's love, and understand that the biggest rebellion is worship of human authority and control freakishness.
I can also safely tell you there is no THE church. There is only THAT church. What was true of one church was not necessarily true of another, even of the same denomination. It depended on the priest, and the congregation.
Or, at least that's how things were before COVID-19. Now, it seems like many corrupt bishops have come out of the woodwork, and alot of them are deadset on handing down edicts from the state. Honestly, right now, Baptists, Pentecostals and nondenominationals have it slightly better, as they don't have fake bishops telling them closing is morally right. What is morally right is for the priest to make their own call. Not to be bullied into Operation Lockstep, where everyone thinks the same, believes the same, and behaves the same.
The following is a somewhat older movie but it's actually dystopian religious film. Most people watching this don't get it, because they think it's history or something. But it actually describes a Vatican IV or so (I think we're on Vatican II or III today), where basically the most remote monastery gets called out on being behind the times, and being like "You WILL worship this way." Unfortunately , that's no longer a far-off notion, so I actually can't watch this myself. But this is kinda how I feel right now. Some churches told their people what to do. Now people from the state are telling nearly all churches what to do (either using weasel bishops to coerce them, or the actual police in the case of Baptists/nondenominational).
I fully support people who afraid to go to church right now. What I don't support are mandatory anything: masks, vaccinations, etc. What YOU feel like doing ought to stop with you. That goes for your beliefs, and it ought to go for how the church is set up. There ought not to be laws that tell the church how to act, that violate their own principles (as in, both the church and the state agree that murder is wrong, but suppose a sufficiently evil government said murder of children was good and priests must do it whenever the state tells them to?) but instead laws that protect religious objections to unjust laws.
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
You know in the book of Galatians 5,
Disciple Paul speaks about this very thing,
about church doctrines.
Paul ask the Galatian people
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage"
This being entangled with man made doctrine
and by-laws of a church.
Christ set us free from these things..
Wherewith the Pharisees had people in his time all entangled up by the Pharisees doctrines and by-laws..
In the church of Christ Jesus there is no set doctrine or by-laws..
The true church of God's only goes by the
Bible/Scriptures as their source of information is all the church of God's needs..
Back in the day of Jesus Christ and the disciples all they used was the Scriptures as their guide.
No man made doctrines or by-laws.
All the churches of to day have gone out of the way..to setup man made doctrines and
and man made by-laws.
The true church of God's only goes by God's word as their guide.
Disciple Paul speaks about this very thing,
about church doctrines.
Paul ask the Galatian people
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage"
This being entangled with man made doctrine
and by-laws of a church.
Christ set us free from these things..
Wherewith the Pharisees had people in his time all entangled up by the Pharisees doctrines and by-laws..
In the church of Christ Jesus there is no set doctrine or by-laws..
The true church of God's only goes by the
Bible/Scriptures as their source of information is all the church of God's needs..
Back in the day of Jesus Christ and the disciples all they used was the Scriptures as their guide.
No man made doctrines or by-laws.
All the churches of to day have gone out of the way..to setup man made doctrines and
and man made by-laws.
The true church of God's only goes by God's word as their guide.
The ironic thing about this is though, that what Westboro says, is that same thing, about letting God take control of our lives. I hear what that means also to me, to let go and allow God. I certainly do. But it means something very different to me, than it does to someone like Fred Phelps. It's the same words, but understood in radically different ways.
I have thought of this very thing about everything that Jesus says. I had come to a place in my path, that realized it is like this watershed point, where the words drop from God, as it were, but in one set of ears it means something open, inviting, gracious, non-judging, loving. But another set of ears hears something on the other side of the divide. What gets put back out through their ears is fearful, threatening, judging, condemning, and hateful of others. The same scriptures get used. But their meanings are a continent apart.
I would completely agree it's "becoming more like Jesus". But whose vision of what Jesus is? We all have different ideas of what "God's will" means. And as you know, everyone can find support for their vision of Jesus in the Bible, in one way or another. I am often amazed when I hear very legalistic believers, see a legalistic Jesus in the Bible. Yet to me, everything Jesus taught was to take people spiritually beyond legalism, to see beyond the letter of the law, ink on pages, to understand the heart of Spirit; not add another layer of authority to it. Yet, they are there, and quoting scriptures to support that version of Jesus.
So the question is then, when someone says "more like Jesus", that can mean you look more like the Phelps family, complete with their Bible verses to support their hatred of others. It could mean you look like a Pat Robertson, whose idea of Christ sends hurricanes from his throne in heaven to New Orleans because they held a gay convention. All of those of course are projections of things in themselves they wish to disown and project onto others as an evil of some sort to fight against. These are their shadows.
But aside from those extreme examples, the same thing applies to a lesser extent with those who identify as conservative and liberal. How we see Christ, will reflect the values we hold, shaped by the culture we grew up in, family beliefs, personal experiences, economic situations, and our stage of spiritual development, or stages of faith.
For example, when a rural person who grew up in a traditional-style home, extended family, church on Sundays, women had their place in the home, the man was the head of the house, and laid out strict, by the rules structure in the house, with a father who didn't spare the whip, that person's vision of Jesus will naturally reflect all of that. Obidenice, and fear of punishment, are strong motivating factors to live up to God's expectations as a good, obedient child. Their vision of "family values" is that. And as in the previous examples, they find their support for themselves in scripture. And it is no longer, what they value, but what God values. To be outside that worldview, is to be outside of God, to be "in sin", or in error.
Now you can contrast that with someone growing up in a more modern, suburban culture with parents whose style of raising children were more about nurturing and supporting their individuality and creatives, as opposed to fitting into a strictly define role with stern expectations. This is a different reality, and a child who grows up in that environment, assuming of course they are now healthy, happy, and relatively well-adjusted people, will see God as reflecting the more nurturing parent, who gently corrects, while teaching forgiveness and compassion. And they have their supports as well from scripture.
So the question is, that good work that has begun, and that God is able to accomplish in us, is it with an eye to them growing beyond these different ways of thinking about God? Is it to see the conservative God, and overcome the error of the liberal perspective of God?
Would you as a pastor consider someone as a conservative, who moves more towards liberal or progressive ways of thinking, as going the wrong direction? Is the right direction of faith, towards what is reflected in the conservative perspective? Now I know a response could be, that it's about the "biblical perspective", but that perspective itself is what the person reading it sees, like Fred Phelps seeing a God of hate in scripture. So that would not be a very satisfactory answer.
Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if all who call themselves Christian followed that? It would be wonderful if all humans, of all religious backgrounds followed that same rule that is found in each of their religions. Yet, when people make it about themselves being right and the other wrong, that's no longer obeying that rule. This why is disturbs me so much to hear the us-versus-them rhetoric from so many religious pulpits. That's about ego, not about loving others.
Getting baggage unloaded, takes a lot of personal courage, and faith. The first release of it, can be quite liberating, and in some cases profoundly spiritual. It's an existential release sort of thing. But my personal experience has gradually taught me that is just a taste, but you've got to do the actual work, face those inner darknesses and gradually be freed from them. A peak experience, is not the work transformation. But it certainly sets the Goal. God doesn't make it go away for you. I'm sure you agree.
I'm going to pick up the rest in the next post:
continued from previous post...
A note to these developmental stages first, is that later stages are predicated upon early stages. Later stages, follow earlier stages. There's no skipping stages. So someone at a higher stage, will understand what it is to be an early stage, because they can personally identify with it in their history. But someone at an early stage cannot relate to or empathize, or see through the set of eyes of later stages. They have no experience with it.
This is no different than a child doesn't not understand what it is to be an adult by reading about it. But once they are an adult, living as an adult, they do know what it is to be a child, because they experienced it, and it is part of themselves today. They "transcend but include" the beneficial stuff of those earlier stage, while discarding what no longer is needed.
When I read Romans 14, I see that model being demonstrated right there in Paul's instructions to the church. This might be difficult to explain if you're not familiar with Fowler's work, but I'll take a stab at it. In the earlier stages, those who need milk, using Paul's language, the meaning of the symbol, and the symbol itself are fused together. Without the symbol, they cannot see the meaning. To question the symbol, threatens the meaning. So when Paul talks about those who get "hung up" on days of the week that are all-important, he would be addressing those who are at Fowler's Stage 2 faith.
That also carries into Stage 3 faith, which is more your traditionalist views which Fowler calls Synthetic-Conventional. "This is the way of things, and how things are supposed to be done", my take on it. It's very much just settled into "this is the way we believe" style of living, and there is a great sense of meaning derived from the predictable nature of this. A great many people live their lives out at this stage.
When someone hits Stage 4, that's when they start to question everything. Doubt and conflict push through to larger perspectives. The meaning of the symbol at the stage undergoes a separation of sorts. One can look at the meaning of Holy Communion, and see the same meaning contained within Native Totem rituals, for instance (I think that was Fowler's example, actually). My view of this stage is where a lot of Neo-Atheists find themselves in the earlier stages of that stage. They're still deconstructing the symbol. But not everyone at the stage goes that path into Atheism, unless they need to for their own individual reasons.
At stage 5, and this is going somewhere
, this is where having undergone this previous stage 4, there may be a reclaiming of the symbol and the meaning from the earlier stages, yet with a much deeper understanding of the nature of symbolic truth. The Christ, at stage 5, is seen as in all religions, in one form or another. And that there is a deeper truth in his own previous stages of faith that he had not seen. Buried underneath the perspectives of each of those stages, at that stage of development for the person in it. God was seen and felt, at each of those stages, even though the understanding of these were through limited perspectives.
And to just finish on Fowler's stages, the last stage, stage 6 is a true universalizing faith. Where one's whole being has been transformed by all these stages, to become a world-soul, my words. A Martin Luther King. A Ghandi. A Jesus, I'll add. That to me, is the pull of all faith, which is towards that. Not everyone wants to go that far on their personal paths. Very few do.
So all that in mind now.... when I hear Paul speak of these different stages of faith, I hear an ability to recognize in a younger faith, that literalism, yet with a compassionate understanding. I hear also an admonition to the younger, that as hard as it may be for them, to recognize that there are other ways that they don't yet realize that may appear to them at some point, and to not be so judgmental of what they can't see themselves.
However, one of the hidden traps in this, is that when we hear something that comes from a later developmental stage and don't understand it, we try to fit it into what we can relate to, which would be something we had experience in, namely an earlier stage. So we mistake a later stage, a stage beyond us, as something behind us. Just to add that, as that complicates matters. Hence, perhaps why Paul's best advice, is "who are we to judge another man's servant?" Grace is a sign of great maturity. Something that alludes us most of the time.
Sorry for the length of this. I felt inspired to turn a few stones over. I look forward to seeing where this goes, as opposed to just focusing on differences.
This I really want to talk with you about. Working in ministry, I might assume you are familiar with James Fowler's research and mapping of the different stages of faith, in his book Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning? I've spent a lot of time in consideration of this in making sense of my own path of spiritual development and the changes within it. Where I am today, is very much different than I was before, and I can follow that progression against Fowler's model.
A note to these developmental stages first, is that later stages are predicated upon early stages. Later stages, follow earlier stages. There's no skipping stages. So someone at a higher stage, will understand what it is to be an early stage, because they can personally identify with it in their history. But someone at an early stage cannot relate to or empathize, or see through the set of eyes of later stages. They have no experience with it.
This is no different than a child doesn't not understand what it is to be an adult by reading about it. But once they are an adult, living as an adult, they do know what it is to be a child, because they experienced it, and it is part of themselves today. They "transcend but include" the beneficial stuff of those earlier stage, while discarding what no longer is needed.
When I read Romans 14, I see that model being demonstrated right there in Paul's instructions to the church. This might be difficult to explain if you're not familiar with Fowler's work, but I'll take a stab at it. In the earlier stages, those who need milk, using Paul's language, the meaning of the symbol, and the symbol itself are fused together. Without the symbol, they cannot see the meaning. To question the symbol, threatens the meaning. So when Paul talks about those who get "hung up" on days of the week that are all-important, he would be addressing those who are at Fowler's Stage 2 faith.
That also carries into Stage 3 faith, which is more your traditionalist views which Fowler calls Synthetic-Conventional. "This is the way of things, and how things are supposed to be done", my take on it. It's very much just settled into "this is the way we believe" style of living, and there is a great sense of meaning derived from the predictable nature of this. A great many people live their lives out at this stage.
When someone hits Stage 4, that's when they start to question everything. Doubt and conflict push through to larger perspectives. The meaning of the symbol at the stage undergoes a separation of sorts. One can look at the meaning of Holy Communion, and see the same meaning contained within Native Totem rituals, for instance (I think that was Fowler's example, actually). My view of this stage is where a lot of Neo-Atheists find themselves in the earlier stages of that stage. They're still deconstructing the symbol. But not everyone at the stage goes that path into Atheism, unless they need to for their own individual reasons.
At stage 5, and this is going somewhere
, this is where having undergone this previous stage 4, there may be a reclaiming of the symbol and the meaning from the earlier stages, yet with a much deeper understanding of the nature of symbolic truth. The Christ, at stage 5, is seen as in all religions, in one form or another. And that there is a deeper truth in his own previous stages of faith that he had not seen. Buried underneath the perspectives of each of those stages, at that stage of development for the person in it. God was seen and felt, at each of those stages, even though the understanding of these were through limited perspectives. And to just finish on Fowler's stages, the last stage, stage 6 is a true universalizing faith. Where one's whole being has been transformed by all these stages, to become a world-soul, my words. A Martin Luther King. A Ghandi. A Jesus, I'll add. That to me, is the pull of all faith, which is towards that. Not everyone wants to go that far on their personal paths. Very few do.
So all that in mind now.... when I hear Paul speak of these different stages of faith, I hear an ability to recognize in a younger faith, that literalism, yet with a compassionate understanding. I hear also an admonition to the younger, that as hard as it may be for them, to recognize that there are other ways that they don't yet realize that may appear to them at some point, and to not be so judgmental of what they can't see themselves.
However, one of the hidden traps in this, is that when we hear something that comes from a later developmental stage and don't understand it, we try to fit it into what we can relate to, which would be something we had experience in, namely an earlier stage. So we mistake a later stage, a stage beyond us, as something behind us. Just to add that, as that complicates matters. Hence, perhaps why Paul's best advice, is "who are we to judge another man's servant?" Grace is a sign of great maturity. Something that alludes us most of the time.
Sure, but with the co opting of Christianity by conservative politics, Christianity gets bent into topics like abortion, gay rights, immigration policies, etc. Again, what one reads in the Bible, reflects those values. I don't see any of those "Christian" issues, being Biblical myself. I find them a distraction that appeals to our other-ism, rather than love. The whole "True Believer" nonsense which is about cultural identity, not Christ.
Sorry for the length of this. I felt inspired to turn a few stones over. I look forward to seeing where this goes, as opposed to just focusing on differences.
Haven't thought of this for years but;
Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us (issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) affirms the importance of the faith formation of adults in the totality of our ministries:
Ongoing faith formation . . . does not end at confirmation or graduation but continues until one's death. Accordingly, we strongly reaffirm that, "without neglecting its commitment to children, catechesis needs to give more attention to adults than it has been accustomed to do."1
This document and, of even greater importance, a mushrooming awareness of the need for adult faith formation among both clergy and laity present an exciting and challenging new opportunity for those who teach and work with adults. A better understanding of the adult journey of faith is vital—no, fundamental—to our ministries with the adults of our parishes.
James Fowler's theory of faith development provides a theological and psychological framework that helps map this journey of faith. Although he has written other books on the topic, his central thesis is most fully developed in his primary work, Stages of Faith. Based on extensive interviews with more than five hundred people, Fowler provides a stage theory of faith development that is solidly grounded in theology but uniquely simple in outline.
It's easily overlooked that when children reach adulthood biologically, that the assumption is we have quit developing in all other areas of our lives. We are "mature" now. An adult. But developmental studies show that continuing for our whole lives. While some may plateau at a certain stage and remain there, others continue to grow.
Growth to next stages does not always occur, as each movement is an upheaval. If you don't have a lot of peers at the next stage, transitioning may be more difficult, unlike the transitioning to earlier more populated stages which have many at that stage to help you along the way to that stage. So you tend to have a pyramid shape to the stages, with the earliest stages with the widest base, up to the next with a less wide base, and so forth. The higher you go, the fewer there are at that stage. Up at the highest stages, the numbers become very few.
Now combine this understanding of basic developmental stages, and add to this the understanding that there are multiple lines of different intelligences that one must develop through in their lives, social, emotional, cognitive, moral, egoic, and spiritual intelligence or "faith". Each of those line follow similar pathways of development, and while some may be very high stage in one line, they may be at the earliest stages in another.
So their faith development, maybe be very mythic-literal, while they are highly developed elsewhere in their lives. We can't look at say they seem so mature over here, and expect that mean mature elsewhere. This is the downfall of the great gurus, who have profound mystical insights, yet morally they are operating at a 12 year old's sexual mind level when it comes to interactions with their followers.
I glad you are aware of his work. I think this understanding is very much lacking in a lot of churches, who really don't understand the natural progressions that these things take, rather than assuming they are "wrong" and need "correction", and calling conformity to beliefs and dedication as maturation.
It's about the ways in which we hold our respective understandings, whether than is in a child's bowl, or an adolescent's bowl, or a young adult's bowl, or the wisest sage's bowl. All of those bowls, by the way, are nested inside each other. So the wise adult bowl, has the child's bowl and all the other bowls tucked inside their own bowl. That's perspective. The earliest stages don't have the higher perspectives yet. The child only has the child's bowl. The oldest can hold all of them, if they themselves are mature enough to realize that yet.
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But also how much leeway a priest has is determined by the bishop who is the final authority. And then there remain those 'traditional' Catholics (the liturgy police) who cry to the bishop and if the bishop is a conservative the priest will have to tone down his homilies.
exchemist
Veteran Member
What I meant was that priests are usually fairly tolerant towards members of the flock privately expressing ideas that may be technically wrong or heretical. The best they can do is gently guide them a bit.
True, I think the majority are probably in stage three, with some stage fours if they haven't already left not receiving the answers they sought, and possibly a sprinkling of fives who have an interest in helping others reach their next level.
There are many others referred to within the connection of psychology and religious education for children; Skinner, Erikson, Goldman, Kohlberg, Rogers, Alpert, all with their pros and cons.
Yes they are, absolutely.
Your way of thinking produces this;
COVID-19 spread at Maine wedding now linked to 143 cases, one death, outbreak at jail
The number of coronavirus cases linked to an outbreak at a Maine jail continued to climb Wednesday as authorities reported.
What I never realized until a few years ago, that excommunication does not release one from attending church, its meant to be a learning period though one is denied the sacraments until its lifted.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Exactly, and this is what happened to me when I left Catholicism about 25 years ago for Judaism, although it was a self-imposed excommunication versus a "writ of excommunication".
When I came back into the Church three years ago, I had to explain to Father why I left and why I wanted to return, explaining to him as well that I will always have questions because of my science background. He told me I could as long as I went to confession, which I did, and then I shocked my wife by following her up for the Eucharist during mass the weekend after. She turned around while in line and said "What are you doing???", and I just smiled.
When I came back to the pew, I had tears in my eyes, and she noticed that and realized what I had done. Ain't the first time I've shocked her, btw, and she's done the same to me numerous times, let me tell ya. We sorta love playing this game on each other.
That is pretty much what I think as well. I think the reason you see Stage 4 leaving is because leadership itself is Stage 3, or Stage 2 in many fundamentalist churches, where faith is understood as at a magic-mythic stage, pleading the blood for healing, "speak the word churches", etc. In organizations where the main center of gravity is the earlier stages, it definitely is a matter of an emerging higher stage not getting answers that speak to where they are growing towards.
That certainly was the case for myself. Slog your way through on your own, hopefully encountering those on the way at that stage or higher. From experience speaking, it was sort of a desert wasteland after embarking out alone, but it was still faith in action. This is why I say that atheism is in fact faith. It's still a search for ultimate truth, and a big step of faith to break away from traditional stage 3 faith.
Where I have come to now is definitely into stage 5, but if it's a wasteland for 4, it's more like a view of the valley below for 5. You see the truth and the beauty in the symbols of your earlier faith, but the way in which that is held has undergone a rather radical makeover. There is more peace with them, being able to see them through a different set of eyes, which embraces what Stage 4 faith exposed.
In all earlier stages, that stage always sees the previous stage as inferior or wrong. But at Stage 5, it begins to understand that each of those stages holds a piece of the truth, through the set of eyes of that stage. It is truth, understood from different rungs on a ladder. Stage 3 is a fully functional and valid rung on the ladder, and not an inferior or incomplete rung, just because Stage 4 is a higher rung. Each rung simply puts the person with an increasing more inclusive, and wider perspective from higher altitudes. This is something Stage 5 starts to see.
So I can see where Stage 5 might return to the body, as they have some elder wisdom on these matters. I'm not sure I'm at the place of trying to find a community again. I'm happy to be finding peace with what that was for me at that time, and to now just live it out in my own way today, as it unfolds in my life.
I'd say stage 5 is about quitting to look for answers externally, and settling into the Mystery for the rest of the ride, possibly into Stage 6 if life brings about the need to grow faith to that level. Probably another lifetime for me. I don't think I've got enough energy left.
I'd say stage 5 is about quitting to look for answers externally, and settling into the Mystery for the rest of the ride, possibly into Stage 6 if life brings about the need to grow faith to that level. Probably another lifetime for me. I don't think I've got enough energy left.
That's probably the most difficult leap for anyone wanting/needing absolute answers to acknowledge incomprehensible Mystery and rest in that Mystery.
Keeps the spice in marriage, so important.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Oh ya!
Muffled
Jesus in me
I believe he did say to Peter: "Get behind me satan." However he restored Peter for further ministry. I do not stand in the way of what my pastor is doing. He has to answer to God for what he does not to me. But perhaps I am like the apostles who were asked by Jesus, who He is and had a different idea from the correct one. Jesus does not condemn them for that but just congratulates Peter for getting it right
Muffled
Jesus in me
It is God's word but sometimes people have different interpretations of it. I asked my interrogators to look at what the bible says but they said "what the church teaches is all that counts." When you ask a JW to look at the scriptures they will simply ignore you because what they are taught is always right.