Talk Elections

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Episcopalian or Anglican.

I suppose my current church would fall under the "other Charismatic" in "Assemblies of God, Church of God or other Charismatic", but since that's a pretty icky category in general I'd still just say "Lutheran or Evangelical Free Church".

Atheist, although that's not really a "movement" now is it? ;)

Well, okay, to be fair, while I've long been of the "don't care" variety, I have found myself getting more and more anti-religious, in the last few years, so I suppose that's a movement - the "New Atheism", etc.

I'm an agnostic, although I do believe in "something" ... but like Oakie, I'm becoming more and more opposed to organised religion.

Jewish.

Not really sure where I fit in when it comes down to denomination or branch though. I know i'm definitely NOT reform (no offense to any reform jews on here).

I'm not very religious in the conventional sense of the term, but I do agree with a lot more of the traditional or Orthodox branch.

I just took an online quiz and I fit Orthodox Judaism more than any other branch. (Than Conservative, and Hasidic lol)

Lutheran; LCMS, more specifically. I have issues with it, but I haven't actually taken the time to research other options, so it'll do for now.

Not religious/atheist/agnostic.

While there might be some spiritual leader among us, I doubt it, as there is no evidence to say that there is.

"Atheist, agnostic, or humanist"

Also, what exactly would the third to last option (secular) refer to when there's also an option for 'Atheist, agnostic, or humanist'?

Congregationalist.

Sorry, that was a little confusing. I thought that it would be a little too simplistic if I categorized all the non-religious as either atheist/agnostic/humanist or don't care, so I added a third option for those who are essentially secular but do not wish to be characterized as atheists or agnostics.

Agnostic (WAY backslid S.Baptist)...but I think I'd like to try on Buddhism at some point.

Other: United Church of Canada. But, spiritually I'm Agnostic. I still go to church once in a while though.

That's basically Congregationalist from what I understand.

No, it's actually mostly Methodist. The American denomination United Church of Christ is about half Congregationalist and half German free church.

I consider myself a pantheistic Pagan.

Don't care.

"Atheist, agnostic, or humanist"

Raised and baptized in a southern Baptist church, but I identify as agnostic these days. I'm still quite the 'cultural' Baptist (every event possible must have some sort of meal! :P) but I don't believe that there is a god, but am erring on the side of 'I don't know, and you don't know either, so let's please not fret about it'.

I am not opposed to religion, however. I enjoy learning about different religions and I'd like to attend a number of different religious services. I've always been very interested in Catholicism.

A/G with a Wesleyan bent.

Humanist.

Between secular and don't care. Religion has literally no place in my life, positive or negative.

Hicksite Quaker.

Pagan. I very loosely follow celtic revivalism (mostly just samhain, shamanism.. kinda pedestrian I have to admit) although lately I've developed some interest in the germanic syncretics and all that. It's only political in so far as I agree with a lot of de Benoist's critique of Christianity. That and well, only cultural christianity could have produced anything as annoying as Atheistkult (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hegXAo8IdUs&noredirect=1).

That's actually good in my opinion. You don't want to get too deeply in Celtic revivalism. It's notoriously the  most anti-intellectual, anti-scholarly of all the pagan movements I've heard.

I had a somewhat cursory, looking back quite campy interest in Celtic revivalism when I was younger. It resists, sometimes with considerable force, most actual scholarship about Celtic paganism (for instance, in its insistence that Druids did not practice human sacrifice, when it is fairly clear from the archaeological record that this varied according to time and place and there were in fact many Druidic cultures that were fairly bloodthirsty and particularly obsessed with severed heads). I still have a lot of that cultural interest, though; there are some very Celtic, pre-Synod of Whitby aspects to the way I (try to) practice Anglicanism.

I was referring specifically to pop-schlock writers like Peter Ellis who believe that the ancient Celts were matriarchal, didn't believe in violence, etc. Also despite all the romanticism surrounding the early pre-Whitby Celtic church scholars of the past thirty years now see that the early system was extremely corrupt, and that the culdee monks were often little more than puppets of the Irish/British royalty.

Oh, I know that too. Pretty much all of the early-to-mid-medieval churches were corrupt (the culdee monks left the shilling for the royalty after Whitby to fall, within the span of a couple of centuries, into the days of the Pornocracy, though that obviously wasn't as bad for them as it was for Italy). I just for the most part prefer the Celtic Rite (and Sarum Rite) prayers over the Rome Rite ones. (It seems like I might prefer the liturgy too if it weren't so hard to reconstruct that most people in the churches have given up.)

Of course the best things that pre-Conquest Insular Christianity ever produced,  the Venerable Bede and the Book of Kells, were in the first few generations post-Whitby, so perhaps Whitby isn't so much a good actual cutoff date as it is a good synecdoche or shorthand for 'preferring Insular to Continental prayers and maybe liturgy' in my case.

The opening up of Insular Christianity did of course have some benefits for the Continent, notably the service of Alcuin.

So, generally, I'm not any sort of dyed-in-the-wool reconstructionist about this, I just prefer to incorporate the older forms into my worship.

To be fair, most modern paganism is susceptible to pop-schlock by virtue of its nature as a religion. Agreed that it is particularly bad with Celtic reconstructionism.

Agreed. Much as i love my RC church I do admit that the Celtic rite prayers are more beautiful. Also the transition from inuslar to continental practices din't really occur until the 12th century (at least in Ireland) if that answers your question. I'm studying to earn my doctorate in Irish history so that excuses me being a know-it-all about this stuff :P

And of course the reason why it's worse with Celtic paganism than other forms of paganism is a mix of Celtic paganism being based entirely on this "etheral" image of the Celts and the lack of written documents from the pre-Christian Celtic world.

I thought it was more C10-C11, but C12 makes sense from what I have seen. My knowledge of the history involved is pretty good from about St Patrick to the Carlovingian Renaissance, then drops off before picking up again in the High to Late Middle Ages (my area is actually Japanese history, which I switched to from medieval Insular history in my second year of college). Thanks.


Clearly. No Asatru person thinks of the Vikings as 'ethereal', and there is a metric sh**t-ton of written material from the Greeks and Romans.

Yeah, I despise that for the same reason I do wicca. Still it's given me a fairly decent model for pursuing what little "spiritual" (god I hate that word) side I have.

Since people are talking about exploring other religions...

I have at one time considered converting to Mormonism or becoming a Southern Baptist. (I know so drastically different haha). I even read some parts of the Book of Mormon.


This was 2 years ago. I'm solidly confident in my Jewish views now.

You're making it really obvious which poster you were. Just saying.

I identify much more strongly with the term "secular" than the term atheist. I'm not hostile to the liberal, tolerant strains of the Abrahamic religions and I roll my eyes at the idea of "militant" atheists. I just can't be spiritual or mystical at this point in my life.

So now there's only one Rite of Catholicism? What about the Caldeans or the Byzantines? I recall from 7th grade religion that those too are Rites.

Currently unaffiliated though I do believe in the spirit world and in God.  I am very interested in Roman Catholicism in particular, for its mystical theology and to understand what it is about the faith that inspired the two English Catholics that I admire most (William Shakespeare and J.R.R. Tolkien) to create their masterpieces.  

And for the Catholics on this forum, I have a question: what is your opinion about this website (http://www.ancient-future.net/index.html)?  Is it legit?  I sure hope so, because that is where I am learning the basics of Catholicism. 

Atheist (picked secular as I don't identify with any movements or organizations)

Secular humanist.

atheist

It seems to be legit from my reading of it, though I haven't looked at the entire site.