As You Like It - Men Becoming Women

It's called "playing to your audience".

The Anglican Church in Africa has similar priorities. Another little schism-in-the-making.

Popular mechanics? And regarding another of your posts Eku, are you saying you would rather see the English people be cannibal eating Druids rather than having technology, improved medicine, water, transportation, education, the internet and SL among other things we have today because I don't understand your points regarding Western civilization and it's evolution? Albeit a not too pretty evolution, but yet here we are. We can't go back, unless people want to move to some island and live off the land. I guess those people are perfectly welcome to do such, like those descendants from the Bounty. As in Mutiny on the Bounty. Those people just chucked all of civilization as they knew it and began to start a new life on the island they landed upon.

The Anglican Church I have no part of. American Protestants don't give a shite about anything any King or Queen of England or the Arch Bishop of Canterbury has to say about anything related to American protestantism or Christianity for that matter. We don't believe in the British church's hierarchy called "Aglican".

Avawyn.. start off by reading the history of civilization... where exactly do things like medicine, water (hangon... water???? don't you mean irrigation or.. sewer systems or..) transportation and education originated from. I promise you, you will be surprised.

the term Western Civilization as a term is completely innocuous, but the way you use it, it smacks of racial superiority.

I cant carry on arguing with your gargantuan ignorance.. but I am really happy that it makes you happy.

PS dont put words in my mouth.. you have enough in your own.

PPS perhaps you prefer CNN to popular mechanics...
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/25/face.jesus/index.html

Evidently you don't make many Darfur demonstrations. In every one I've been to, mostly the large ones in DC, the Jewish community is disproportionately represented and is occasionally the largest single contingent present.

So Eastern cultures confuse you, but throwing in front a completely new tangent comments about Africa and Islands (which Islands, Man?) are completely on topic with your comments. My, my.

And get back to me when you parse the ELCA and Missouri Synod web sites for their real belief in transubstantiation and what takes place in the communion sacrament. Hint:do the same as above and mention the small nominally Lutheran sect that believes in Papal primacy.

Not that I really care. I think that Chilton in his book "Rabbi Jesus' probably has it right. In his opinion, what Jesus said was that when people sat in communal meals, shared food and wine and turned from transgression and toward God, from incompleteness toward wholeness, the meal they shared was the same as sacrificing flesh in the Temple, the wine they shared was the same as pouring blood on the Temple's sacrificial flame. In short, you no longer had to make a pilgrimage to the Temple, purchase perfect animals from the Levites and make sacrifices in the Temple, you only had to come together in community and turn toward God and wholeness.

This is my flesh. You don't have to make sacrifices in the Temple. This is my blood. You don't have to pour blood on the flames in the Temple. You can be made whole before God without a pilgrimage. He challenged the very financial life blood, no pun intended, of the Temple Levites and he died...

The idea of the meat and wine of a meal being his flesh and blood would have been anathema for Jews of that day and age. As they say, it doesn't scan.

Actually, there were advisers to President Wilson (a noted Racist) who believed in the same thing, as long as it was applied to blacks. Mostly good Protestants, all. Sterilization was an occasional policy of these civilized states of the U.S. for most of the period from the 1920s to the 1950s. Mostly those with disabilities or black, but heaven help you if you were both in the wrong place and time. Oh, wait, heaven had nothing to do with it...

Let's also not forget another devoutly Christian and uniquely American Group. The KKK.

Civilization, indeed. The Moors had more civilization than those that replaced them. Killing someone to not eat them is more civilized than killing them to eat them? Why? Dead is dead. And through the middle ages, the Christians were far more efficient at killing people, innocent and those presumed guilty, than the Druids ever were. Torture was a particular art of theirs, with putting gunpowder into torn flesh before burning heretics at the stake so that they were spectacularly dismembered by the explosion, but not instantly killed - there's some civilization for you.

Oh, they changed did they? Even if true (speculation), so could the Druids. The Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, were doing some serious torture and killings in the name of religion well after the Druids were gone and buried.

Explains much - them movie folks see the world in a whole different way.

Some of the worst atrocities in human history were committed in the name of a 'true' religion. 'Christians' have done their share.

.d

Episcopalians I guess are also not Protestants. Maybe you could give us the short list of those you consider Protestants worthy of consideration. Don't forget the ELCA is also in discussion with the Anglican Church on common communion, so, OK, we have the Episcopalians and the ELCA. Who else doesn't count?

At least they don't profess it to be a "Religion of Peace".

So overall- I come away with do away with religion and we can pretty much do away with oppression of one sort or another- religion is not central to belief in god- you can believe and not enter a church, mosque, synagogue or what ever. God, if it exists, wd exist regardless of religion, faith or denomination.

Personally, I will again quote Mr. Heinlein, "I'm God, You are God and all that groks is God."

Avawyn Muircastle (insert any posts made)

I think that at some level people have to come together in belief, whatever it is, because it is part of what is the human community, perhaps an essential of the human community. The problems often start in my opinion when a religion begins to confuse faith and knowledge, when the phrase 'I know' is substituted for 'I believe'.

No religion would preclude even on congregation coming together. Perhaps it is a religion of sorts, revolving around one or two basic beliefs, when people come together in a square on Christmas or New Years. Outside of the occasional mugging, probably no harm in that.

Then we can get on with oppressing people that are different for other reasons...

Windows vs Linux pogroms, coming right up.

I never said the churches were not in communion such as talking or helping each other in times of need or crisis. American Protestants are also in communion with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church during times of need/crisis or a coming together in an emergency. However, the Church of England's governing bodies which involve the Queen or a King or the Archbishop of Canterbury have no actual jurisdiction as a governing body in America.

A bit from that awful Wikipedia!

The Anglican Communion is an international association of national Anglican churches. There is no single "Anglican Church" with universal juridical authority as each national or regional church has full autonomy. As the name suggests, the Anglican Communion is an association of these churches in full communion with the Church of England (which may be regarded as the mother church of the worldwide communion) and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury.[1] The status of full communion means that there is mutual agreement on essential doctrines, and that full participation in the sacramental life of each national church is available to all communicant Anglicans.

With approximately 77 million members, the Anglican Communion is the third largest communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.[2][3] Some of these churches are known as Anglican, explicitly recognising the historical link to England (Ecclesia Anglicana means "Church of England"; others, such as the American and Scottish Episcopal churches, or the Church of Ireland, prefer a separate name. Each church has its own doctrine and liturgy, based in most cases on that of the Church of England; and each church has its own legislative process and overall episcopal polity, under the leadership of a local primate.

I wonder what this schism in the making is regarding The Anglican Church in Africa?

Mostly by the Roman Catholic Church, The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, all the burnings of the first "attempted" protestants, as Protestantism has only been around an approx 500 years. The hierarchies such as the Roman Catholic Church of Rome and The Church of England have the worst histories ever because of their belief in their power and authority as a hierarchy. I assume this is why America has the First Amendment regarding governing bodies not making laws in an established religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, as the RCC and the Church of England ARE governing bodies. It took a lot of years to establish this freedom of religion and many died in the process under those of power.

Is America perfect, absolutely not. And I think it's horrible what happened to the American Indians in this mess. One cannot change everything. My heart has lied with American Indians and the elderly in this country those of my neighbors who have no fresh vegetables or fruits to eat because they struggle in illness to keep a roof over their head.

There's an old saying:

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

My focus on what I can change may be different than your path. My focus is The American Indians and the elderly, doing little by little what I feel I can change, however small it may be.

As far as Darfur, I am disabled and due to constant ear infections for over five years, I cannot fly, so I donated money and clothing. And all I know is what media I've read. I never heard the largest denomination was Jewish. I've heard otherwise. But I say more power to them whomever they are who are helping. But I will state as a matter of fact that the American Protestant Christian community has been quite active in helping those in Darfur. Disagree as you wish and we will agree to disagree.

However, I don't understand why all the pointing fingers at Christians while discounting Islam, who are the current killers in Darfur? I don't see any past or present culture or religion as perfect or without the shedding of blood. However, there seems to be this set Eastern religion up on pedestal thing while discounting the human atrocities from those religions, such as kill Christians if your not Buddhist or ostracize them from the general community altogether and make them hide in basements to practice their faith. Or worse Islam, get your head chopped off or put in prison because one wants to follow the Christian faith.

Not to mention American's see "royalty" as utterly useless and pointless. Breeding blue bloods not for love but just for an heir according to their bloodlines is quite an odd notion to us as well as very antiquated if not pointless altogether.

Grant you I have not looked it up so I could be wrong - but I am pretty sure Buddhists have never been out for mass executions, racial cleansings or pogroms of any sort. I think we can pretty much accept Buddhists as generally peaceful folks- barring the occasional Killer Monk or something. As for putting Eastern religions on a pedestal, not hardly, it's just this conversation has centered around Christianity with brief forays into disparaging other civilizations (ahem). And as Brenda pointed out, Christians are not the ones claiming to be a religion of peace so Islam got a bit of a swipe. I think most religions have gotten a bit of praise and damnation through this thread - equal opportunity and all that.

The basic thing here is, I think, Man - we are predators, we want and we take what we want. Civilization tries to cage the beast, but at heart- we are what we are.

Shall we discuss Evolution vs Creationism now?

I think it might be a better idea if everyone got back to cooking, eating or sleeping off their dinner, actually.

Pep (Nothing better to do than to quarrel senselessly about "religion" on Christmas Day? Bye!)

Actually, Pep- considering the tone of it all- there has been hardly any quarreling. Merry Christmas Pep