yolen | (no subject)

Entry tags:

2004,
meme crap

(no subject)

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

My top 5 results from the Belief-O-Matic:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (95%)
4. Secular Humanism (86%)
5. Neo-Pagan (80%)

This is interesting. I'm a bit surprised to see the 2nd result, but oh well. The others make a lot more sense. I've been curious for some time about the Unitarians. Perhaps I should delve a little deeper sometime in the future. :)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I always get Liberal Quakers as #1, UUs as #2, and then it's a toss-up as to which I get for the next 3, but a mainstream Christian group is always one of them. It makes me wonder if more groups than I suspected allow people to join without accepting the divinity of Jesus, 'cause that's a deal-breaker for me.

Interesting, and while I think some of the questions were dippy, I like the ability to set importance levels for each answer.

Anyway, I don't know how Liberal Christan Protestant showed up anywhere, as I don't think a single answer I put down suggested monotheism, and I was pretty sure that most Christian sects were at least insistent on that point.

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (98%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (96%)
4. Liberal Quakers (94%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (82%)

Towards the bottom of the list, though, were entertaining relative scores. I scored pretty high on Reform Judaism, while Roman Catholicism (the religion I was brought up in) was dead last. Well, okay, maybe not that big a surprise, really.

I was pretty sure that most Christian sects were at least insistent on [monotheism].

In the early 90s, Chaosium did a game called Credo, after the opening of the Nicene Creed ("Credo" = "I believe"). The game came before the current glut of card- and board-games, and it shows; the cards weren't even printed on real cardstock, and everything is in monochrome except for two other colors (I think) on the cover, which was an amusing Gahan Wilson illo.

In the game, the players randomly draw elements of their faction's belief system, and also draw to see how many people follow them. There's an event deck and a number of options for actions, but your goal is to get as many elements of your creed into the Nicene Creed as possible. The events are drawn from actual events reported during the Nicene Councils (which met over a period of 300+ years, so there's plenty of time to draw upon) and the elements of the factions' creeds are drawn from actual beliefs promulgated by the rival Christian factions of the time. It really impresses you what a crapshoot the Nicene Creed ended up being.

All this being a long-winded way to say you might be surprised how little monotheism had to do with some Christian sects.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only