“This will vary from tradition to tradition, from congregation to congregation, and especially from believer to believer.”
-our church spells out what it believes about everything, which is agreed on in a sort of convention. The part about gays and transexuals is specific only to certain churches actively engaged in the dialogue and is printed in the bulletin every sunday in case anyone wants to walk out, which has happened. I don’t suppose everyone agrees with everything, but if that happens we pray about it and try to listen with open mind.

‘Struggle with doubt’ is probably more a more common theme, having just passed Easter in the church calendar, when Thomas had his famous rondevous with doubt and belief. A polite phrase I used with Moslems, and I thought I was pretty original to make it up, was that God is so big and we are so small, we can never understand God. It was meant as a way to keep to my own religion without disagreeing with theirs, but I have since heard someone else make exactly the same statement in a different context.

I just happened to stumble on a used copy of marcus borg’s “The Heart of Christianity‘. His “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time was strongly recommended to me and has been on my reading list for a while. Anyhow there is a whole chapter on the four meanings of faith, maybe I’ll look at it and post something tonight if it’s as good as I think it will be.

Okay, here is a quickie from the 4th meaning, “earlier in this chapter i emphasized that for many in the modern world, faith means primarily “believing”, with believing understood to mean accepting uncertain claims to be true…I want to emphasize that the premodern meanings of the English words “believe” and “Believing” and the Latin word credo are very different from what believing has come to mean in our times….
We commonly translate credo as “i believe” And becasue most modern people understand “i believe” as “I give my assent to ” many christians have difficulty with the creeds…
but credo does not mean “i hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following statements.” Rather, its Latin roots combine to mean “I give my heart to”. as mentioned earlier in this chapter, the heart is the self at its deepest level, a level below the intellect. as the giving of one’s heart, credo means “I commit my loyalty to,” ” I commit my allegiance to.”

The points you make in posts 8 & 9 are interesting historically and theologically, and I can agree with most of them. My point however is more about the psychology (and to a lesser degree the sociology) of religious belief.
I really haven’t said anything controversial. Many Christians (and Moslems) of all stripes believe that non-belief is a sign of moral weakness or moral inferiority, regardless of the “official” doctrines of their particular brand of belief.
Being a practicing Christian yourself you are doubtless surrounded by many with this attitude.

The same Calvinist idiology responsible for both promoting theocracy of the American religious right and rejection of theocracy under the Nazis. The main difference seems to be literal interpretation of the Bible. So maybe as yo.be says “the bible is can hold up to criticism, but it can’t hold up to the heresy of literalism.”

The ‘Calvinistic tradition’ seems to be followed among “reformed” churches. The closest this comes to what you are talking about is in the paragraph on “Christian Reconstruction” but if you keep following links you will eventually come to the conclusion that no one in the christian right claims this viewpoint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

So if you look at the roots of the Southern Baptist Convention, which was taken over in 1979 by the christian right, they don’t really seem to be related to anything Calvinistic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist

So, no, i don’t agree with your conclusion in #3 that USM has concluded “If making a leap of faith is virtuous, making a greater leap of faith makes one more virtuous.”

The way I read the Baptitst/religious right/RTL crowd is

The bible is meant to be read literally as a scientific document.
the bible does not agree with what science says about creationism, dinosaurs, etc.
Therefore, science is wrong and scientific fact and reason will challenge faith of the believers
So believers need to be isolated from the outside world to keep from being corrupted.
Believers have to try to inject their beleifs back into the outside world, (school prayer, RTL, creationism, etc) becasue the world challenges and corrupts and weakens their religious group

So USM is just trying to get heavenly brownie points by trying to convert us heathens to whatever unreasoned viewpoint he has been fed by some religious authority. It goes with his ‘rescuing’ codependent outlook. I think he is really sincere and trying to get approval (whether it is by ‘kicking ass’ or regurgitating RTL viewpoints) but he is too afraid of being himself to be independent of whoever feeds his religious worldview.

Now you’re just making me nervous.

There was a very public debate between Calvin and Wesley; Calvin had 4 major points, Wesley agreed with the first one but not the last 3. Among them Calvin thought once you were saved that was it, Wesley said no, you could mess up. Then Wesley said eveyone is a sinner and no one could be justified except by god being magnanimous, therefore justification by grace.

I don’t know if any group actually follows Calvin today, maybe the Moravians? Where do Baptists get their doctrine? USM claims to be a graduate of a Texas Baptist school, no doubt southern baptist (they split with the northern baptist over slavery, as other denominations did, but unlike other denominations never reunited after the Civil War.)

Most religious groups start with a lot of energy and emotion, but are short on dogma. Eventually someone writes some dogma, but the average true believer probably doesn’t know it. Since USM likes the Old Testament so much, he needs to go back and look at that 9th commandment about bearing false witness. That thing about the bricks just doesn’t add up.