tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post1361833682181315882..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Evangelicals and CatholicsAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-66312707372803887542018-03-16T08:16:37.886-04:002018-03-16T08:16:37.886-04:00The Episcopalians appeal to me in part because of ...The Episcopalians appeal to me in part because of their relatively firm grasp on the history of the church, not skipping over quite so thoroughly everything between 100 A.D. and 1600 A.D. We joke about its being Catholic-Lite or Catholicism-without-that-pesky-Pope, but it is apostolic. it's also quite anchored in the Biblical text. I'm often surprised by how little Biblical text is included in the average Baptist service. The Episcopal service includes a lot of the Bible even in the liturgy, before you get to the readings and Psalms. In my experience, the sermons also are anchored in the Bible, though that may be a perspective peculiar to the rather traditional Western U.S.<br /><br />As for the persecution of the Jews, I look at that in the same way that I look at the Jews' persecution of Christ: that's old Adam, and it's in all of us. There is no group, no religion, no era free of the temptation to violent purging of outsiders and heretics. Anti-semitism crops up over and over everywhere, and where there are no Jews, it crops up against any insular and rather successful group with perceived ties to outsiders: Chinese merchants, Armenians, Indians in Africa, Koreans in L.A. It astonishes me how easily people can blame "the Jews" for killing Christ, as if any other society would have been less prone to that horrible error. That's not "them," that's "us."Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-40538728582817622992018-03-13T22:48:22.561-04:002018-03-13T22:48:22.561-04:00Me 'n my Bible is all I need. There's God ...<i>Me 'n my Bible is all I need. There's God right there, in the book. </i><br /><br />There's something very important in that line. Maybe you don't even need the book: God made the world, after all, and thus you learn about the creator by learning about his work. <br /><br />It's a very different approach, and one that stands as a serious challenge to Catholicism and similar approaches. I don't think the Church has adequately engaged it even yet.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-2755447716481562342018-03-13T13:15:03.556-04:002018-03-13T13:15:03.556-04:00KJV: I attend a Methodist church which uses some ...KJV: I attend a Methodist church which uses some kind of new English version. It just sounds WRONG to me, having grown up with the KJV.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-63950947793975110852018-03-13T12:41:59.588-04:002018-03-13T12:41:59.588-04:00"He made the observation that not only did mo..."He made the observation that not only did most Protestant churches in America seem more like each other than they did like their European origins, but that even Catholics and Jews had a generic Americanism about them, in contrast to their churches across the water."<br /><br />I was recently informed, by an Italian friend of a friend, that American Catholics hardly seemed Catholic to him at all. This was annoying, because it was in the context of me trying to write fiction with Catholic characters of an imaginary European nation, so that, being an American Protestant, I didn't have a lot of resources to turn to.<br /><br />This probably relates to Chesterton's remark about America being a nation with the soul of a church.Earl Wajenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03972213104063301125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-2759631077767021172018-03-12T21:47:55.456-04:002018-03-12T21:47:55.456-04:00Actually I meant the "Great Conversation"...Actually I meant the "Great Conversation" that the compilers of the Great Books series used as a metaphor for the millennia-long debates in Western Civ. <br /><br />Faced with the greats one feels a need to write in a coordinated and systematic way, and scattered blog posts feel inadequate. At least mine do.<br /><br />Your observations match mine about anti-Catholic attitudes among evangelicals--almost all are either ex-Catholics or very old. (Did you read Stark's Bearing False Witness?)<br /><br />WRT ancestral wrongs, I tend to use a personal statute of limitations rule: If the offenders and offendees are dead and more than three generations back, I ignore the complaints. Complaints about US slavery fall into that category, and the Armenian genocide is almost there too.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com