Like any online quiz, this takes one's complex and nuanced personal theology and reduces it to a simplification in order that it fits into a few defined sorting categories. This particular quiz uses five broad categories for sorting people:
- Jesse Ventura Christian (a.k.a. a "Secularist" or non-Christian)
- Bishop Spong Christian (a.k.a. "Biblical Revisionist")
- Hillary Rodham Clinton Christian (a.k.a. "Left-Leaning Traditionalist")
- George Bush Sr. Christian (a.k.a. "Right-Leaning Traditionalist")
- Jerry Falwell Christian (a.k.a "Historicist")
I suppose this result comes from the reading and reflection that I've done with "Biblical Revisionist" writers like Spong, Crossan, Borg, Funk, Pagels, and others. Much of my personal reflection was presented in a sermon I presented in my congregation several years ago.
I suspect that nearly all Unitarian Universalists would find themselves sorted into the "Jesse Ventura" category or the "Bishop Spong" category. And it may be a fun way to start conversations about how present-day Unitarian Universalists view Jesus, the Bible, and God.
1 comment:
Interesting. I am apparently a Hillary Rodham Clinton Christian (a.k.a. "Left-Leaning Traditionalist"). Since I voted for her in 2000 I guess I should be pleased. Now, I've never been a confessing Christian for even a day in my life, though I do have beliefs about Jesus and can see ways in which he and the general Christian tradition (mainly filtered through Unitarian and Universalist Christianity) have had significant impact on me. Not surprisingly, I often found myself wishing for answer options which were not provided by BeliefNet.
I was just thinking about the nature of calling oneself a Christian yesterday, so the timing is interesting to me. Perhaps it would be fair to call myself Christianish, even if I am not Christian. I mainly don't claim the mantle of Christian out of respect for other Christians, whom I doubt would have me. I am, after all, agnostic-leaning-toward-atheist and don't believe in miracles (sorry to PB, on her resurrection thread), nor do I consider Jesus to be the primary religious influence in my life. But at the same time my entire religious worldview is shaped by the Universalism I grew up with, Jesus has been a significant role model for me, and while I don't have nearly as much respect for it as any given Christian, I do have considerably more respect for the Bible than just about any non-Christian/Jew. I wonder how others will score on this "test."
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