Since a hundred other words could have sufficied to describe his own personal beliefs, the fact that he chose a word that 2.1 million other people use can only mean that it was his intention to insert himself into that group identity; to stand and be counted among the ranks of those who call themselves Christians.
Well I sure am sick of this game you are playing. Yes Jazzns identified himself as a Xian, and it has (supposedly) around 2.1
billion adherents worlwide. That does not show you are correct at all. Christianity is not one set of beliefs, especially the ones you have described.
Here is wiki's entry on Xianity. In case you have no time to read through it here are the pertinent facts...
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament writings of his early followers... It shares with Judaism the Hebrew Scriptures (called the Old Testament by Christians), and for this reason is sometimes called an Abrahamic religion, along with Judaism and Islam.
The names "Christian" and hence "Christianity" come from Acts 11:26, "For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians (Gr. ‘)".
Christianity encompasses numerous religious traditions that widely vary by culture and place, as well as many diverse beliefs and sects. It is usually represented as being divided into three main branches, at least since the Reformation:
Catholicism (includes the largest coherent group, the Roman Catholic Church, including Eastern Catholics, with over one billion baptized members),
Eastern Christianity (includes the second-largest coherent group, the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the Oriental Orthodox Churches),
Protestantism (many denominations and schools of thought, including Anglicanism, Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist, Anabaptist, Evangelicalism, Charismatics and Pentecostalism)
These broad divisions do not represent equally uniform branches. On the contrary, some branches encompass vast disagreements, and in other cases the division existing overlooks sympathies.
And there is more...
Not all people identified or self-identified as Christians accept all, or even most, of the theological positions held by their particular churches. Like the Jews, Christians in the West were greatly affected by The Age of Enlightenment in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Perhaps the most significant change for them was total or effective separation of church and state, thus ending the state-sponsored Christianity that had existed in European countries. Now one could be a free member of society and disagree with one's church on various issues, including the right to freely to leave one's church altogether...
Many did resist or abandon mainstream Christianity, accepting belief systems such as Deism, Unitarianism, Binitarianism, and Universalism, or becoming atheists, agnostics, or humanists.
Others... created the liberal wings of the Protestant Christian tradition. Modernist Christianity in the late 19th century encouraged new forms of thought and expression that did not follow traditional lines.
Reaction to the Enlightenment and Modernism triggered the development of literally thousands of Christian Protestant denominations, Roman traditionalist splinter groups of the Roman Catholic Church that do not recognize the legitimacy of many reforms the Roman Catholic Church has undertaken,
and the growth of hundreds of fundamentalist groups that interpret the entire Bible in a more literal fashion, exclusive text-centered fashion.
There is a list of doctrines on that page which are common to almost all denominations considered Xian, though even these are not wholly uniform. But even assuming that they are what you will find is that the literal account of hellfire and destruction preceding Jesus' return is NOT one of those tenets.
The closest you will get is this...
Jesus will return personally, and bodily, to judge all mankind and receive the faithful to himself, so they will live forever in the intimate presence of God.
This is certainly true, even within the church I went to. But that is not horrors of the apocalypse stuff.
Interestingly enough is the next doctrine listed...
The Bible is an authoritative text, inspired by God but written by men. Some, particularly in the West, refer to the Bible as the "word of God." Other Christians, particularly in the East, reserve to Jesus alone the title, Word of God. Christians disagree in various ways about the authority of the Bible (especially in relation to the authority of tradition) and how the Scriptures are best interpreted.
Do you understand what that means for your position?
Words have meanings, Holmes. And, more importantly, words have connotations, and neither you, nor Jazzns, nor anybody else is in a position to dictate to me what connotations I should place upon a word like Christianity.
Yes, words have meanings and you can choose to misapply many different meanings to any word in popular usage, or pretend that your narrow definition correctly applied to a branch of something may be applied to the whole.
The problem is that you would be choosing a very impractical and willfully ignorant course. As has been explained to you, and now shown to you, the term Xian does have a meaning and it is not what you believe it to be. While it certainly has bounds, to define Xian from nonXian, they are not the ones that you ascribe.
Still calling himself a Christian. Still referring to those other churches as Christian. The split is not nearly so wide as you make it out to be.
Xians have killed Xians over differing beliefs. I just gave you a quote where Robertson declared some hold the antiChrist. If that does not make abundantly clear that Xian can refer to vastly different beliefs then your head is up your ass.
I mean come on, you can't even admit that this patently showed Robertson himself stating he does not speak for all denominations? This doesn't indicate others might have something to say about him and his opinions?
It is not ignorance that I am defending, but the right of an audience to make connotations with words
That is the defense of ignorance, no matter how eloquently you state it. An audience is not free to make connotations with words and assume they are correct and force others to comply with their own applied connotations. That is ludicrous.
Audiences can make errors and be corrected accordingly. You are right that the more a person identifies with something specific the more specific assumptions might be made, but you haven't come close to defending a position that someone can correctly make assumptions about Xians based on the comments from a leader of one denomination of Xianity.
If Jazzns had said he was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, and a part of evangelical ministries I think he'd have a hard time saying your couldn't make a valid assumption he might agree with Robertson... though he might not agree. But he said he was a Xian. He is right, and you are about as wrong as wrong gets.
No one has even come close to addressing that point.
Saying this doesn't make it true. It has been addressed. A person has a practical responsibility to not choose labels that might lend to confusion, but a person also has a responsibility not to assume themselves correct on a subject and more importantly overgeneralize to the point of stereotyping.
Jazzns did not choose a specific title which could reasonably be connected to Robertson's statements in specific. You assumed something about Robertson's relationship to a entity called Xianity, and as of yet still have not admitted that you have been proven wrong about that connection.
This message has been edited by holmes, 10-22-2005 11:16 AM
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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