I recently had a conversation with a friend whose current denominational affiliation may change drastically. It made me think about my own label and what I would be if I were not an evangelical (Pente-Baptist as I like to say) Christian. I am sure that I would be Orthodox or Catholic if I could get past a few things about these groups with which I seriously disagree (e.g. the Papacy). Since it is unlikely that I can ignore those things it appears that I won’t be going anywhere, but it is interesting to ponder since it brings some self-awareness regarding one’s own religious sensibilities.
So now I ask you this same question: If you weren’t ___________ you’d be ___________. If you currently see yourself with no affiliation or you are atheistic or agnostic where do you sympathize? If you are Christian would you be Muslim instead or another form of Christian? If you are Pentecostal would you be Methodist or Reformed if you had to make a move? I’d like to hear your thoughts!
the archives near Emmaus 
If I weren’t a/n (post-?)evangelical, I’d be Anglican.
If I weren’t a Christian, I’d be an existentialist.
I think that nihilism is the logically consistent atheistic position. I felt the nihilistic tug when I was an atheist, but could never be consistent with it, so instead of saying I would be one when I couldn’t be before, I think I’d recognize the absurdity of life and try and make meaning anyways. Therefore, existentialism.
If I weren’t a Southern Baptist, I’d probably be Presbyterian (the PCA flavor :-D). Or maybe a conservative Anglican.
Bryan: When I was a teen I designated myself a Deist because I agree that once you move toward agnosticism/atheism there is no other conclusion as logical as nihilism.
Mike: Mike, the conservative Anglican option is a good one too! Though I could never wrap my mind around adherence to Canterbury rather than Rome, or Alexandria, or Constantinople (Istanbul), or one of the older sees if I were to adhere to a structure with bishops.
Yes, I think I could go PCA if I couldn’t find any good baptistic churches around, also. That’s really one of the only main theological issues keeping me from being presbyterian. Baptism and autonomy, though autonomy is less important for me in attending a church.
Baptism is important to me as well. It may be one of the more important things that would prevent me from going Catholic or mainline.
If I weren’t a pentecostal, I’d probably want to be Orthodox. I find the liturgy very appealing, and I prefer a plurality of bishops to the primacy of Rome, and I love the history of that fellowship. Plus, Greek>Latin. God even thinks so, the NT is in Greek :-P.
This is a fun mental exercise, but the reasons you have mentioned are my own for staying Southern Baptist. Infant baptism pretty much holds me back. Plus I see now real reason to change. The breed of Southern Baptists I roll with in southern CA are theologically Reformed and evangelistic. I’m getting my education at a SBC school and will probably do seminary at SBTS. I don’t see much reason to change.
Brian- Canterbury makes me a bit cautious too. Perhaps it’s an overreaction to some of the decisions of the RCC in the middle ages… who knows! 🙂
Mike,
I’m a student at SBTS. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.
Alex: I agree, if I were to go to a more ancient version of Christianity Orthodoxy with multiple bishops is much more acceptable. Likewise, as a I understand it, clergy in Orthodoxy can be married and you must only be single if a bishop due to the many responsibilities. This is much better than what I consider to be a grave mistake by Rome in demanding all clergy remain unmarried.
I don’t currently claim a denomination. I was raised Assemblies of God, but presently attend a Free Will Baptist church. I guess I would consider myself a pentecostal though. If I had to choose something else, I’ve recently been attracted by some of the more liturgical methods of doing church, where Bible reading has a much more prominent focus. So I would probably choose a church where they use a lectionary.
If I wasn’t whatever it that I am (Disciples of Christ is what you’d call it in the States) I’d be an Anglican in the Reformed tradition… which is where I grew up.
Good questions Brian.
If I were not a member of a National Baptist Convention USA, (christian), I would be a Wesleyan, perhaps an African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ Christian). My grandmother was once a preacher in those circles. I am pretty Wesleyan theologically already, I just hold onto the doctrine of Soul Competency which I remain convinced of still.
If I were not a Christian, I think I would be an existentialist like Foucault.
Nathan: What are the distinctive characteristics of Free Will Baptist over and against other Baptist?
Mark: Anglican Reformed like J.I. Packer, et al?
Rod: What makes AMEZ distinct from other Methodists? Also, I have never heard of “Soul Competency”. What is that?
@Brian,
The AMEZ is distinct in that it just has a different history. It claims to have started from a famous group of slaves that separated from a racist methodist church in the late 18th century. Just the history that differentiates it. For years, it has wanted to merge with the Christian Methodist Episcopal (formerly Colored Methodist Episcopal) church but the label “African” is the sticking point. The CME does not want it in the name, the AMEz folks do.
AS for soul competency, it is a doctrine that separate baptists from presbyterians and catholics. It is the teaching that each person alone has the choice as an individual to choose or reject Christ as their savior. In moderate circles, this doctrine is taking heat for “privatizing” Christianity. I think it is a miscontrual, it is just a rejection of the idea a church or a family can save you.. Only Christ alone.
I’d probably go Methodist – the AG has lineage in Weslyan theology and that probably in the United Methodist circles – though I would miss the baby baptism services (if they have them).
if not Methodist then probably Eastern Orthodox like Alex – many former Pentecostals have gone over to the EOC.
Rod: Thanks for explaining! I guess that I would affirm soul competency as well though I have never heard it defined by that name.
Brian: I wonder what the attraction to the EOC has been for former Pentecostals?! Any thoughts?
The Eastern Churches typically have a much richer theology of the Spirit than the western ones, which I find particularly appealing. They’re also very rich in areas that Pentecostalism is pretty poor, namely historical “rootedness” and liturgy (esp the Supper). I think those are large parts of the appeal.
Alex,
Thanks makes a lot of sense. As a former Pentecostal there has been an attraction to Orthodoxy in part because of a robust Pneumatology as well as historical grounding.
I tackled this a few years back and said that “I am presently a Charismatic-Pentecostal. If I had to convert I would remain within the ranks of Christendom and look to a High Church atmosphere in the Wesleyan tradition (UMC) with a focus on sacramentalism.”
Today I’d say, “If I wasn’t Pentecostal I’d be Orthodox.” The Orthodox Church combines spirituality and order in a way that I find very appealing and I think it has the best pedigree of any Christian tradition. I’m afraid that any/all mainline Protestant denominations are just too “dead” for my tastes and while I have fond memories of being a Roman Catholic I can’t justify the papacy although I have little to no problem with most of the other things in the RCC that Protestants take issue with.
Nick,
It seems if all of us who appreciate the Orthodox church took one more step they’d have a youth movement on their hands!
I’m non-denominational charismatic. I tried to think of something else but I couldn’t. I think I would find everything else boring. I guess I probably just wouldn’t go to church. If I could have found another denomination or tradition I probably would be it since there’s plenty I don’t care for about non-denominational charismatic churches. But I don’t know of an alternative that would get me out of bed on Sunday. At least not right now, anyway.
Brian,
If I were’t Pentecostal, I would probably be Southern Baptist or Wesleyan. I have never attended either type of church service, so my guess is soley based on books I have read from them, which I tend to throughly enjoy.
Bryan: There are benefits to being non-denominational. The last church of which I was part was not affiliated and you could probably classify them as Charismatic-esque. My only dislike for being non-denominational is it made our church feel like we were out on an island alone without the rest of the faith.
Robert: It is funny how some Pentecostals have Wesleyan/Baptistic leanings, others Orthodox or Catholic, and then there are some who feel closer to the Reformed churches.
Brian – More of the NT Wright variety, although John Stott is another one to consider.
I am not sure my Reformed friends here in the United States would appreciate N.T. Wright being considered by that label!
Brian, as I’m not a FWB, I didn’t know the answer to your question. Wikipedia saved the day:
“Free Will Baptist congregations believe the Bible is the completed, inerrant word of God. It is distinguished from the majority of Baptist groups (including the Southern Baptist Convention and its offshoots, as well as fundamentalist Baptists) in that Free Will Baptists reject the popular Baptist view of “unconditional perseverance of the saints” (also commonly referred to as the “Doctrine of Unconditional Eternal security” or “once saved, always saved”). Instead, Free Will Baptist Doctrine holds to the traditional Arminian position, based on the belief in a General Atonement, that it is possible to commit apostasy, or willfully reject one’s faith. Faith is the condition for salvation, hence Free Will Baptists hold to “conditional eternal security.” An individual is “saved by faith and kept by faith.” The concept is not of someone sinning occasionally and thus accidentally ending up “not saved”, but instead of someone “repudiating” their faith in Christ. Free Will Baptists believe that an individual maintains his or her free will to follow Christ, but in the event a believer turns from faith in Christ, there is no remedy for this apostasy (based on an interpretation of Hebrews 6:4-6).”
These positions have nothing to do with why I attend my FWB church. This is just another good example of why the plurality of denominations is ridiculous.
Huh, I guess I never got around to answering the meme in which Nick tagged me three years ago! 😉
If I weren’t Orthodox, I would probably be a strict confessional Lutheran of a decidely liturgical bent, after pattern of the late great Arthur Carl Piepkorn. I have a sense that, had things happened differently 10 years ago, I eventually would have come to the Piepkornian conviction that the Church of the Augsburg Confession is the true Western Church. As it is, I owe much to confessional Lutheran scholars like Pieper and Scaer for helping me shake off the crypto-Nestorian Christology (and, consequently, also the crypto-Nestorian “Sacramentology”) of the Reformed.
I have never thought of Reformed Christology as being Nestorian. What makes you say that? I’m interested.
In summary their doctrine of the Eucharist, which is a clear result of a deficient Christology. There are five centuries of polemics between Lutherans and the Reformed precisely on this point, with accusations of Nestorianism and Monophysitism (or Eutychianism) flying back and forth. In the end, their Christology (to speak in Lutheran terms) is nothing but a “theology of glory”: a strict Calcedonian Christology could never render such a doctrine of the Eucharist, and this is due to their crypto-Nestorian separation of the natures of Christ in spite of their formal assent to Chalcedon.
Esteban: So if I understand you correctly, it’s the belief that Christ is present spiritually and only spiritually in the Eucharist, that evinces a crypto-Nestorianism, right?
Nick’s question is my question as well. 🙂
In a sense, yes, but the classical Lutheran objection to the Calvinist view of the Eucharist is more closely tied to what the latter denies on the basis of its Christology. Calvinists reject the notion of the real (i.e., local) presence of Christ in the Eucharist because they reject the Lutheran notion of the ubiquity of the Body of Christ, and this they reject because they hold it as a Christological axiom that the finite cannot contain the infinite (finitum non capax infiniti). But the end result of this is a theological separation between the natures of Christ that cannot be bridged by the communicatio idiomatum and that, I believe, goes beyond the bounds of Chalcedon. So, again, the problem is a deficient Christology, but it becomes concrete in the doctrine of the Eucharist.
Even if one was to conclude that in communion it is only representative/memorial do we necessitate that this means someone believes the same thing about Christ himself? I am not sure if I understand how a view of the Eucharist must necessitate the same view of the nature of Christ.
I’m not quite sure what is it you’re asking, exactly, but I will venture a guess and say that the connection between Christology and Eucharistic doctrine was simply taken for granted, and it was precisely Christological disagreements that yielded the various theologies of the Eucharist of the magisterial Reformation. Again, there is a vast polemical literature on this matter which can be read profitably, starting with Article VIII of the Formula of Concord (see both the Epitome and the Solid Declaration), which is dedicated in its entirety to this single point, and which condemns Nestorius and Zwingli in a single breath.
In seeing such a clear connection between Christology and Eucharistic theology, the theologians of the Reformation embraced an understanding that reaches back to deep Christian antiquity: already St Ignatius of Antioch notes the connection between the heretical Christology of the Docetists and their views on the Eucharist, and St Ireneaus goes as far as saying in this same regard that “our opinion is in accord with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our opinion.”
You seemed to have understood my question correctly since you have a sufficient answer. I guess it would take time for my mind to wrap around this connection. Since I was a child the Eucharist had been taught to me as more of a symbolic meal so I have slowly moved away from that but I haven’t given it enough thought.
So I assuming you and Jim West disagree on these matters since he is a big Zwingli fan?!
If not a Reformed Presbyterian, then an Anglican of some stripe.
If not a Christian, then I’d give all my heart to following baseball.
Baseball would be a good religious persuasion!
Brian> Good, because I wasn’t quite sure I understood, and sometimes I can be quite dense! 🙂
Oh, and malicious people have always said that if I already didn’t worship the One True God, I’d probably worship Paul Simon instead. I shall refute these false claims on my blog one of these days.
If I weren’t Pemtecostsl, I’d be Reformed / Acts 29 affiliated.
If I wasn’t Christian, I’d ne a reformed Jew.