I have a confession to make. A while back, I was applying for an editing job with a fairly prominent Christian media company, and in the application process I was asked to sign a statement of faith. For those unfamiliar with this, it is a list of things that the organization in question claims to believe, and they ask all who are interested in being a part of it to sign their name, claiming their personal agreement with and belief in the exact same things. Truth be told, I needed the job, so even though I didn't actually agree with several points in the statement of faith, I signed it. Turns out I didn't get the job anyway, so I compromised myself for pretty much nothing.
I had another organization approach me recently about publishing some of my work. They've followed my writing for some time and thought that my content would add something valuable to their community. In most cases, when I give permission to folks to "repost" my stuff, it involves little more than a verbal agreement about what they plan to do with my articles, but this one came with two separate agreements I was asked to sign before moving forward. There, in the middle of both agreements, were the same statements of faith, nearly mirroring word-for-word the one I had disingenuously signed the first time when the job was at stake. But this time, I thought twice about it. I wrote them and explained that although I'd be happy to work with them, I couldn't sign their faith doctrine agreement in good conscience.
I appreciate that some folks want to be very explicit and clear about what they believe. I also understand why those in charge of an organization would try to teach or persuade those involved with them to believe likewise. But personally, I think the whole "sign the statement of faith" thing is more or less pointless.
For evidence of this, we don't have to look any further than the Catholic Church, the first major institutional body of the Christian faith. A recent poll found that despite the teachings and public positions of church leaders, a majority of Catholics not only support contraception but also support Obama's mandate to require employers to pay for it. Then there's the troublemaking American nuns getting into hot water with the male Catholic gentry for not toeing the ideological church line, particularly with regard to matters of sex and sexuality. So if over half the faithful openly differ with the Church, and if the hands and feet of the missional arm of the church vocally oppose the Vatican, what's the point of the institutional doctrine to begin with?
When it comes down to it, what seems to me to be at the heart of such traditions is not so much faithfulness but control. If your inclusion in a system is contingent on you conforming to the beliefs of the leadership, then that institution has the power either to coerce you into compliance or to exile you for disobedience. But the problem is that it sets up a dynamic that actually encourages people to lie. The fact is, no institution, no matter how powerful, can indelibly change the hearts and minds of its members. They may outwardly claim uniformity, but the inner sanctuary of a human being ultimately is off limits to anyone other than God and that individual. We can use fear, punishment, or even positive incentives to get people to fall into place, but there's never any guarantee that they actually believe what we're trying to force them to believe.
Some people proclaim the inevitable decline and death of the Emerging Christian movement. Yes, it has its flaws, and yes, in some ways it's already started to reflect some of the dynamics it sought to subvert in existing faith institutions, but there is no statement of faith to be found, namely because there is no specific body in charge to claim such authority and control. The day that someone tries to do that, the movement ossifies and crosses over to "institution" status.
The denomination I'm a part of, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), has a new slogan, if you will, that some people criticize for being soft or touchy-feely. They claim that we are "a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world." Kinda mushy, I agree. But the word "movement" is, for me, the most important of all. We are unified by our common faith in Jesus and in our common call to justice and service in the ways that Jesus called us to serve. But when it comes to exactly what that looks like and means for each individual, the administrative heads of the denomination are thankfully silent. Some call that flaccid leadership, or even un-Christian. How, after all, can we be sure that the people who claim to be Disciples of Christ are, indeed, doing it right? We can't.
From what I can tell, Jesus never made his disciples sign a statement of faith. In fact, when his followers pressed him for more specifics on what to believe and how to act, he would tell them a story rather than nail it all down in clear terms for them. If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.
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I beg to disagree. The first major institutional body of the Christian faith existed in the first century in Jerusalem where the older men (including apostles) heard cases and resolved disputes - Acts chapter 15.
Ah, but isn't this the whole claim of belief in supernatural gawds in the first place?
There is, in fact, according to YOUR belief, a "specific body in charge"....isn't that YOUR gawd?
If that is the case, and all these people believe in the same gawd, and he in fact actually exists, then why would they all believe sooooo many different and mutually exclusive things?
This is a perfect example of evidence to suggest that magic sky daddy is a figment of your imagination!
I thought that was irrational, and asked, "What if I decided I were no longer a Catholic?" The Dean of Students looked at me incredulously and asked, "Would you sign a form stating thus?" I couldn't believe I was in this Orwellian conversation, but I agreed to it.
The Dean had his secretary come in and he dictated this to her: "I, *********, have hereby stated that I am no longer a practicing Catholic. Now that I have disavowed my faith, I am no longer required to take religion classes at ******* University."
Please read the article, it explains better than I do :
"From what I can tell, Jesus never made his disciples sign a statement of faith. In fact, when his followers pressed him for more specifics on what to believe and how to act, he would tell them a story rather than nail it all down in clear terms for them."
Of course, if you need specific approval from fellow humans, you can join whatever organization you wish, but it doesn't add to or detract from your faith in the deity you believe in.
PS. Planned Parenthood would probably knowingly hire a pro-life activist (pro-the woman's life). Just not an anti-choice, pro-forced birth or pro-child starvation one.
Planned Parenthood, to use your example, has every right to expect its employees to behave, on the job, in a manner consistent with PP's objectives. But they don't heve the right to expect them to believe every single thing PP does, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Or that leprechauns power the sun.
Or that tree rings are individually drawn by satan.
Faith just means nonsense that you `believe'. A statement of faith is like a piece of drool. It carries no legal weight. I can `faith' anything.
For the most part, the Disciples of Christ is a good environment for those wanting a church to go to that doesn't believe a whole lot of anything. There are a few exceptions here and there, but a true Bible preaching Christian Church is a rare find. So, it is not uncommon for a member of a Disciples of Christ church to object to signing a "statement of faith".
Conservative say they believe in the Bible and Liberals don't.
The reality is that Conservatives follow SOME things in the Bible and reject OTHER things. Meanwhile Liberals also follow some things and reject others. We tend to mirror each other on this.
But Conservative claim they follow the entire Bible. This is not so. They are as inconsistent as we Liberals are, but they do it without thinking about it because they won't admit they do it. Meanwhile we Liberals do think about it and develop a rubric and a Theology that guides us in this.
So I REJECT the assertion in the above comment that we Liberals don't want to believe anything and that those Conservatives are more "true Bible preaching."
:-)
http://www.disciples.org/AboutTheDisciples/TheDesignoftheChristianChurch/tabid/228/Default.aspx
They believe that God literally created the heavens and the earth apparently. I guess that technically makes you a creationist.
"We rejoice in God, maker of heaven and earth."
Believing that God created the universe is NOT the same thing as creationism.
Your use of the word "literally" isn't in the statement and implies a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, ie God created the earth one day and then later on another day created the sun and then on another day created animals, all in six days. It's a rejection of evolution, of the cosmos being around 14 billion years old and of the cosmos developing into its current state due to natural development according to the laws of nature.
But none of that is implied by believing that God created the Cosmos. Some of us who would affirm that would understand it similar to what Jefferson and the Deist believed, that God started the whole thing and it runs on its own. These folk would probably see the Big Bang as what God started. Others of us would see the Cosmos as an idea that God is having and inside the idea it is totally explainable without supernatural explanations, even for its start, and it might never even have had a start, ie our universe is part of a multiverse and although it may have started in the Big Bang, the whole multiverse has always existed or the Big Bang was the result of a Big Crunch in a previous iteration of our cosmos.
In short, you treat the parts you like as if they are real, and dismiss the parts you don't like as metaphor. This line of thinking reflects a debilitating cognoscente dissonance.
"Christianity is all wrong except the part about a giant-imaginary-friend creating all of existence."