Nice work. The history of Christianity doesn't matter to me. All I know is that there are many people who self-identify as Christians and who do not believe in the resurrection or miracle stories. Some of them are clerics. This answers the OP's quesion. :wink:

On the broader question as to who should qualify as Christian, there is no certain answer since Christianity maintains beliefs and practices that often (as Bishop John Shelby Spong points out) support violence and bigotry and are antithetical to Christian teaching. Christianity is not monolithic or consistent or reasonable. Like most human enterprises.

I came of age in the 60's as I often mention and the way I used to view Jesus then was as a peripatetic teacher of spiritual enlightenment. The Kingdom of Heaven was the state of Self Realisation as described by Indian gurus such as Yogananda and Sri Ramana. The latter's teachings supported this view as Ramana had been educated briefly at Christian schools and would frequently quote Biblical aphorisms to illustrate convergence between his teaching and the Bible (typically, 'I AM THAT I AM' Ex 3:14 which Ramana said is the Self, the I AM of all beings.)

Of course this reading tends to infuriate doctrinal Christians as Hindu teachers are by definition not 'saved', not having 'kissed the ring', but there were always a few maverick Christians who managed to straddle both cultures. One was Venerable Bede Griffith who lived most of his adult life in a Christian~Hindu Ashram and whom I saw at one of his last public lectures, in Sydney in the early 1990's. One might also mention Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge which made quite an impression in the 1950's and which he wrote after a pilgrimage to Ramana's Southern Indian hermitage (subject of an atrocious film starring Bill Murray in 1984). Another influential book from that period was Alduous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy.

Then there was the entire Zen-Christian subculture which was inaugurated by Thomas Merton (one of my mother's favourites, as his autobiography Seven Story Mountain was very popular in the 60's). There was thereafter an entire cadre of Catholic Zen teachers who blended elements of Zen Buddhist liturgy and practice with their own (Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, Ama Samy, Reuben Habito, William Johnston among others.) Raimon Panikkar is another name worth knowing, a Jesuit of Spanish and Indian descent, who divided his time between India and Europe.

Salutations to all of these wisdom teachers. :pray:

In any case, the universalist theme always made perfect sense to me, as it situated Jesus in a broader context, as an epitome of a kind of higher consciousness which described in many cultures outside the Middle Eastern. It is of course open to all kinds of criticisms and I wouldn't die on a hill defending it, but it makes sense from an anthropological perspective, aside from anything else.
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(Perusing the Wikipedia on Panikkar 'He earned a third doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1961, in which he compared St. Thomas Aquinas's philosophy with the 8th-century Hindu philosopher Ādi Śańkara's interpretation of the Brahma Sutras.[3] Just the kind of thing that interests me.)

This answers the OP's quesion. — Tom Storm

I claim to be Christian. Never read the bible.

Answers the OP?

I claim to be an astronomer. I don;'t know what a tensor equation is. Answers the OP?

I claim to be an adherent Buddhist, but I compete in Jiu jitsu, having broken several limbs and am somewhat proud of that fact. Answers the OP?

Self identification must be the weakest defence for someone meeting a criteria which others must share.

claim to be an astronomer. I don;'t know what a tensor equation is. Answers the OP?

I claim to be an adherent Buddhist, but I compete in Jiu jitsu, having broken several limbs and am somewhat proud of that fact. Answers the OP?

Self identification must be the weakest defence for someone meeting a criteria which others must share. — AmadeusD

I see why you might argue this but I disagree with aspects of your approach. I'm also not making that argument and I said many not 'all'.

If you say you are an astronomer or a doctor (something highly technical and measurable) then self-identification alone is clearly inadequate. Not all identities are built on the same foundational footing.

But the issue with a religious belief is that there is no clear way to identify what's valid and what's not. Who wants to get into the 'no true Scotsman fallacy' here?

Besides, the people I referred to were theologians and Christian thinkers, not just some dead shit who likes the sound of a particular word.

I hear you when you say only those who believe JC was a real person who was resurrected after execution can call themselves Christians. I just don't agree with you.

But the issue with a religious belief is that there is no clear way to identify what's valid and what's not. — Tom Storm

I disagree with this, but it is fact-specific to any particular claim so probably not worth following up in this context. Appreciate it :)

not just some dead shit who likes the sound of a particular word — Tom Storm

Are you entirely sure these are mutually exclusive? hehe.

:up: