It is an interesting question, isn’t it? Especially given that, in my experience, you can get more than 10 opinions on what it means to be Christian by asking fewer than 10 Christians.
<<ummm, believing in Christ?
pretty simple. >>
I think its clear that it is not nearly as ‘simple’ as that. There was a man named Jesus of Nazareth, most people know that. His name was not ‘Christ’, that is a title meaning “messiah” given by his followers in later centuries. Jesus never referred to himself as “Christ”, and the evidence that Jesus claimed himself to be the one true prophesised messiah is surprisingly scant (given its centrality to the religion that took his name). (Yes, I’m aware of the main Biblical references.)
Many people who think that Jesus was inspiring, spiritual or holy (and some who call themselves Christian) do not believe that he was God/son of God.
Many Christians that I have spoken to do not think that it is necessary to believe the ‘supernatural’ components of the religion (let alone the dogma that the Church promotes today that Jesus had nothing to say about), they think that Christianity is about following Jesus’ example of how to live a good life. Other Christians have told me that this is completely false, and Christianity is entirely about accepting that Jesus was the son of God and is the only way to ‘salvation’ with God.
My conclusion is that you can only really say that someone is a Christian if that is what they sincerely believe themselves to be. (That’s all the statisticians require).
Starting with that wide definition, we know a few simple things:
-
Jesus was NOT a Christian. He was a Jew who hoped to bring people back to the Jewish faith, while at the same time reforming that faith which he saw as drifting from its proper doctrines.
-
Christianity today encompasses a staggeringly wide array of beliefs, including beliefs blended from other religions and practices. Remember that what appears as a range of Christian views and practices in the USA is only a small fraction of those represented worldwide.
-
Many Christians object to any interpretation or definition of Christianity that differs from their own, and they don’t like that some objectionable people are described as Christian (e.g. Hitler and Mussolini were quite devout Christians - at least they certainly described themselves as Christian.) This often leads to what is sometimes known as the “not a true Scotsman” fallacy of reasoning (as in: “All Scotsmen eat porridge!” ‘Really? My grandfather was Scots and he hated porridge’ “Well, then, he wasn’t a true Scotsman!”) Better to reject the example that doesn’t fit than to change the prejudice. Many people who call themselves Christian will say that another who calls him/herself Christian is not a “true” Christian.
For mine, I’ll take people’s word for it. They are Christian if they say so, and mean it. Nonetheless, I’m bemused by people (and I know many) who tell me that they are, say, Catholic, yet they also tell me that they reject virtually every single piece of doctrine that defines Catholicism. They say that they are still Catholic because they fundamentally believe in being a good person. Sorry. So do secular humanists, Buddhists, Baha’i, Taoists, Sikhs and everyone else. Identity is defined by what distinguishes one group from another, not by what it has in common. Still, whatever… I’ll accept that people are what they say they are, whatever that means to them.
Prejudice and judgementalism about putative or actual beliefs is about the scariest thing happening in the world, so I’m going to try not to slip into it myself.
