Interesting BBC news items

It's official. it's not just pie in the sky. Christians are happier then athiests NOW.

The least biased BBC article on homosexuality ever.

Recanting recanting.

I was telling my son about Cranmer putting into the flames the hand that had signed a document recanting his protestant faith.

I was about to recant some of my previous post - it was too harsh, to critical, with not enough room for variety in the church. But then I read in the Church of England newspaper that some senior American theologian with support from her bishop has said she sees no reason why a muslim could not be a minister in the Epsicopal Church, and that the Jesus she has been following has been leading her into Islam. So does she not understand Islam, or does she not understand Christ? Or more likely, neither?

So I recant recanting. I believe what I believe, and if your core beliefs are congruent with mine we can have fellowship, and if you believe something else, then obviously fellowship can't exist becasue we were never fellows, regardless of labels that try to lump us together..

Am I a Christian?

Well, yes, but only in a co-incidental sort of way - it's not a label I pay too much attention to.

Let me explain.

I believe the stuff in my 'Bullets of truth' down at the bottom of my sidebar. I believe that God, incarnate in Jesus, took on himslef the punishment he had decreed for my rebellions agianst him, on the cross, and that this is revealed in the Scripture, together with an indicatio of how I should respond.

Having decided all this, I then take stock and look around, and find that this set of beliefs falls within a very broad set of religions collectively known as 'Christianity'. So i am a Christian.

But I also find that there are a lot of people, whose religion is fundamentally different to mine, or has only some peripheral overlap with mine, who are also called Christians, becasue the definition of 'Christianity' is so broad that almost anyone born coincidentally in Europe or America fits in.

And then, beacuase Jesus appealed for unity, i am expected to be united with this bunch of people who are really members of different religions, which just happen to have the same label attached.

And if I make noises that, well, I'm not actually the same as them, it sounds as if I am promoting schism. But i'm not - I never was anything to do with them, I just wonder how it is that the same labels came to be attached. I'm not asking for division, I'm aking for it to be recognised that I was never united to them. I'm not asking for divorce, i'm asking for annulment. There was never a valid marriage. Apart from a broad belief in Jesus - which even demons share - I'm nothing to do with them.

I have the beliefs I have stated. I have fellowship with those that share them or something reasonably similar (Although I recognise that often they will not express them in these terms). People that don't share them, are (frankly) a different religion. Please don't put me in the same basket.