Believe on me: WTF?

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:04 AM -0700 8/31/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Aug 31, 2007, at 6:24 AM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>>[WG] <The teacher replied that all Christians (read: "Catholics
>>and, perhaps,
>>the Orthodox") are assumed
>>to be personal friends of God and you don't speak formally to your
>>buds.>
>>
>>What??  Protestants weren't included?!?  The KJV was sponsored by the
>>Protestant Anglicans, remember!
>
>we haven't had the "Christian(s)" discussion in a while.  the short
>summary is that different groups use the word, in a bewildering
>variety of ways, to exclude other groups they judge to be not really
>christians.  so some catholics (as wilson suggests) exclude
>protestants, on the grounds that protestants left the (original and
>true) christian church.  (the position of the orthodox varies here,
>as wilson suggests.)  and many protestants exclude catholics
>(sometimes maintaining that catholics worship mary rather than
>christ, more often maintaining that the churches of the reformation
>returned christianity to its true nature, rejecting the errors of
>catholicism).  many evangelical protestants exclude anyone who's not
>a born-again christian (so anglicans, lutherans, methodists, etc. are
>all out).  even if you count both catholics and main-line protestants
>as christians, you might exclude some or all of the following:
>mormons, quakers, unitarians, christian scientists, seventh-day
>adventists.

Another parameter is whether the group (to use a pretheoretically
neutral term) in question defines *itself* as Christian, as Arnold
notes the MCC does.  Are there any groups here other than Unitarians
(/Unitarian Universalists) that don't?  (We had a discussion on this
re Quakers, but I can't remember how that turned out, and the web
sites appear to be somewhat indecisive on this question.)

LH

>
>there's more, of course.  not everyone accepts the MCC as christian,
>despite the MCC's statement on the matter (on its website):
>.....
>This is the simple declaration of what MCC believes, as stated in our
>By-Laws, and accepted by our General Conference:
>
>"Christianity is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and is the
>religion set forth in the scriptures. Jesus Christ is foretold in the
>Old Testament, presented in the New Testament, and proclaimed by the
>Christian Church in every age and in every land.
>
>Founded in the interest of offering a church home to all who confess
>and believe, Metropolitan Community Churches moves in the mainstream
>of Christianity.
>
>Our faith is based upon the principles outlined in the historic
>creeds: Apostles and Nicene.
>
>.....
>
>point of linguistic interest: although "MCC" stands for "Metropolitan
>Community Churches" (not "Church"), it's treated as a singular, *even
>when written out in full* (as above: "Metropolitan Community Churches
>moves...").
>
>note also the reference to "the Christian Church", with the definite
>article.
>
>arnold
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org