My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Join our Philosophy forum to discuss religion and spirituality.

Philosophy/religion

When your family's evangelical Christian beliefs aren't yours.....?

3 replies

praisedalord · 15/07/2014 14:55

I just don't get my families beliefs. I'd say that I believe more or less in the Christian faith and DH (who's a bit more agnostic than me) and I go to a local URC church from time to time. It's a pretty liberal church and v focused on what I'd call social action / justice. It's also pretty ecumenical. We also married in a (different) church as that felt important to me at the time.

I was brought up Baptist / Pentecostal and DH's parents were Catholic / CoE but neither of his parents observed their family faith.

My parents are still Baptist and traditional and their church (or rather, chapel) is pretty much what you'd expect - organ with hymns and traditional sermons (though a bit fire and brimstone if I'm being honest!). Other relatives go in for a very modern, evangelical church and go for occasional visits to those US-style mega churches with huge music bands on stages where everything is OTT and lots of the church-goers are v well off. The latter just makes me cringe and the pursuit of materialism doesn't sit well with me, but the former just isn't me either - it's too old school. Both churches do lots of good work in their local areas though, for regular members of the community.

My general life outlook is pretty progressive and definitely left of centre and that's another difficulty for me when it comes to religion as lots of Christians I know, even if they seem like great people in other respects, seem to accept misogyny (specific views on the roles of women and segregated youth groups etc) and are quite reverential on material gain - which don't seem to be very Christian to me. I also get confused by those who support ecumenicalism and those (my relatives! who oppose it.

There are no real 'issues' as far as religion goes in our family. All my relatives believe that people should decide their beliefs for themselves and can't and shouldn't be forced to be believe something. But I'm so confused! When we go to our church, DH and I often feel 'moved' emotionally, especially when the sermons deal with issues of social justice but I don't know what that means...? But we have so little time to spare with young DC that we don't go weekly and can't manage more than a Sunday service in any case. How do we explore all this and how do I stop feeling distant from my relatives due to the denominations of Christianity they follow?

OP posts:
Report
niminypiminy · 15/07/2014 15:27

Christianity's a broad spectrum, and there are people who are Christians that I feel very distant from indeed -- and people who I don't agree with (some are conservative evangelicals) but are very close friends. I don't have family issues in that direction, but because all my family are atheists there are tensions from time to time.

It's a cliche to say that faith is a journey which we're all at different stages of, but that doesn't make it any the less true. I think finding out how to live with people we have differences from is something that we as Christians should be modelling because you can't make peace with people if you know you're totally, absolutely in the right. You are on your faith journey and they are on theirs -- although where you are sounds closer to where I am than where your relatives are.

There are two things that I would try and hold on to. One is that (even in the hectic demands of having small children) your faith means something to you, even if you don't have all the answers. Perhaps having more of the answers is a matter of time and space, and keeping on with your journey. The other is that your relatives, whatever they believe, are still part of your wider family, and you can hold on to that, even if you can't understand or follow their beliefs.

Report
livelablove · 15/07/2014 17:18

Evangelists can be great. I really admire Steve Chalke en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Chalke and there really is a progressive movement within Evangelicalism that is great to see.

Report
livelablove · 15/07/2014 17:41

Steve Chalke's article on where he thinks the future of Evangelism should lead www.redletterchristians.org/evangelicalism-future/

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.