Can you be a relaxed Christian?

[SeaGshore]

Just wondered what other people think...

Can someone be (for want of a better word) a 'relaxed' Christian? By relaxed I mean in terms of views etc.
For example: my church had a great family atmosphere and I like the family feel etc.
I believe in God etc but my church is very heavy on the 'women are submissive to the men, men are in charge and women cannot have any preaching/leadership roles in the church unless it's with children'.

This doesn't sit well with me, ice always been quite independent and 'in charge'.

They are also very strict on no sex before marriage, it is very frowned upon to date a non-Christian etc.
I have much more liberal views and do not like those views being transferred to heavily to my children during Sunday school and kids club etc.

I work full time and the bible study group can't understand why I can't spare them three hours one evening a week (between marking and running the house I simply don't have time).

I have many friends in the church as do my children but so feel some of it (by a few of the people) is conditional on your regular attendance and commitment to bible study and Sunday morning services etc.

I have a strong belief in God and my faith is very real but feel like I am pulling away from the church a bit.

I am awaiting the call anyday now to ask where we've been.

[isitsnowingyet]

Sounds like it's time to change your church. I bet they're not so keen on gay people either?

[SeaGshore]

No they asked us all to sign a petition last year against gay marriage. I refused but most of the others signed it!
They also did a whole evening on homosexuality - it's okay to be gay as long as you don't act on it ( I have no issues with people being gay).

[Lovelydiscusfish]

My (Small village C of E) church is very different to what you describe. We have had female vicars in the past, and women are encouraged to play as active a role as men in leading worship etc. I have never felt discriminated against or subjugated as a woman in my (current) church. Sex before marriage - some members of the congregation live together but are unmarried, and no one excludes them or passes comment. I would say some members of the congregation may be homophobic, but most aren't, so I think that is just them, rather than their faith, iyswim - homosexuality is certainly never preached against.

[FishWithABicycle]

Yes there are lots and lots of "relaxed" (more usually called "liberal") christians.
How big an issue is worship style for you? It's relatively unusual (but not impossible) to find a congregation of liberal christians using a solely guitars-drums and modern choruses style. But it's a huge spectrum.

Try going to a URC church - they are usually quite liberal theologically but often use a mix of worship styles ancient & modern in services.

[combust22]

I think the "basics" of your church are actually what underpins all christianity ( and all Abrahamic faiths too). basically men are superior, the godhead etc.

Ultimately ot was Eve and her clitoris that caused man to fall, so she is doomed. The foundations of the church are laid with misogyny.

[mummytime]

I know a lot of churches and some of them even quite "Evangelical" in theology, and certainly children friendly - who are much more relaxed/liberal in theology than that. Do they accept evolution BTW?

If this is the attitude from the leadership, rather than a few members, I would look around for another Church! There must be other ones with good children's stuff around.

BTW I have had to tell my children at times that I disagree with some of the theology that they have been taught in Sunday school - and that was in a Church I basically agreed with. Do you want your children to grow up with these attitudes? Women are inferior? Gay marriage is something to campaign against?

[honeysucklejasmine]

There are, imo, three main factors of church. Worship, teaching and fellowship. If you're missing one, you can sometimes replace it alone e.g. online sermons, worship cd's. But if you're missing two, its time to move on.

[vdbfamily]

I think that every church carries a broad range of views within the congregation and you have to decide whether you are happy there. If you hold different views and have biblical support for that then get into debate about it. I am in the opposite situation. I am quite a 'conservative' Christian from a non conformist background. We go to our local Anglican church and have a female vicar with 1 year old twins. I disagree with her theologically on several issues but it is a caring,loving church and a focal point of our community and we would not consider leaving it because of that. You need to pray about where God wants you to be and then make your decision based on that.

[treaclesoda]

OP I completely identify with your post.

My church is like this. But tbh so are all the churches where I am, and some make mine seem very liberal in comparison. I really struggle with it. I like the singing, I like the fellowship, but I find myself sitting through sermon after sermon thinking 'why does God hate me so much, for the 'crime' of being female? To be a Christian, does my earthly life have to be a misery, being bullied and downtrodden by men?' . Because no matter how many times they tell me that it is a gift from God to have a man put me in my place, I can't quite agree with that. But of course their answer to that is that it is Satan who has put the idea in my head that I'm equal to a man...

[combust22]

"I'm equal to a man..."

You never can be in the church's eyes.

The godhead is masculine.

[mummytime]

combust22 - why do you keep coming on here with your very blinkered views! You are as bad as the churches you are criticising.

There are great female role models in the bible - eg. Deborah.
There are open and inclusive Churches. I know female Vicars that I disagree with, I also know ones who I totally agree with, just like male Vicars.

treaclesoda - I wonder where you live that there are no alternatives. To be honest even some of the churches I have known that try to enforce very gender stereotyped roles - still see being a "woman" as a joy and a privilege. Lets be honest it was the: poor, downtrodden and women who "recognised" Jesus fully

[treaclesoda]

mummytime think NI bible belt, Rev Ian Paisley etc.

[mummytime]

Oh poor you! I used to have lovely arguments in the Lab with a young man who thought Ian Paisley was wonderful - surely there must be some alternative though? Somewhere?

[vdbfamily]

I suspect I will get completely lambasted for this but I will say it anyway and then hold my breath! There is nowhere in the Bible that I read that women are unequal to men. Jesus was very counter cultural in his approach to women . He engaged directly with them,even prostitutes. It was a woman that carried the news of his resurrection. The Bible says all are created equal, slaves and free,male and female etc. However it does tend to suggest that we take on certain roles according to our gifts. The 'norm' until fairly recently was that women were the homemakers and men the 'hunter gatherers'. I think this is reflected in Biblical teaching. The verses about women 'submitting' to their husbands are followed by verses commanding husbands to 'love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...' It describes an ideal situation where the 2 of you are both so harmoniously functioning that whilst you are asked to submit to the wishes of your husband, he is encouraged to love you so much that he would lay down his life for you.Your needs and wishes are paramount and he does not make decisions that would affect you negatively. Unfortunately we are all human and I am not sure this level of perfection is achievable here on earth but it sounds great. I have tried to live by this teaching and can honestly say that in 12 years,the only time I felt really tested by it was when I wanted our kids baptised and DH wanted to have a dedication service and let them make an adult choice re baptism. In a situation like that you can talk all you like but you fundamentally believe different things. That was the one occasion where I knowingly gave him the final decision based on what I believed to be a biblical principal. Most of the time you can just talk things through as adults and reach a compromise.
I personally do not see different roles as more or less important. My boss might have authority over me at work but I am not a lesser person because of that. Jesus went to the cross asking' if it be your will, take this cup from me,yet not my will but thine be done' Does that make him less than God because he did his will. Personally I think not.
It makes me really sad to think that women can be in churches where they feel they are being taught that they are less than equal to a man in Gods sight and that life is miserable.
Now I will don my armour and prepare to be shot down!

[honeysucklejasmine]

vdb well said! Really sensibly written and true too! If you're getting shot down, I'll be beside you!

[treaclesoda]

I think what I have been taught my whole life is so ingrained into me that I struggle to break out of it. I remember as a child at Sunday school, I was the only girl in my age group and I remember not being allowed to answer the questions until the boys had had a go. There was one lovely Sunday school teacher, a man, who seemed to see that I was left out of things, and one year we studied the book of Judges in depth, because he thought it would be fantastic for me to study a book with a really strong female character. He was more or less hounded out of the church shortly afterwards. I'm not saying it was entirely because he tried to be supportive of me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it played a part.

I don't belong to that church any more, but to be honest I've tried two different ones as an adult and they have been the same. The final straw for me in the last one I went to before my current one was sitting through a sermon on submitting to your husband, where an example was given of a man and a woman and the man wants to throw away all the family money on some harebrained scheme that the wife can see will be a disaster. Well, far from telling him the error of his ways, apparently the correct thing to do is to let him get on with it, because it's not for a wife to question her husband's judgement. I just felt like crying.

But even if I could find a church that didn't teach these things, my upbringing is so deeply ingrained that it is very hard to shake off - I've been taught all my life that there is no room for interpretation of God's word, that there is correct interpretation (ie what I'm being taught at a very 'strict' church) and that everything else is man/satan's interpretation, which is just satan's way of tempting you away from the right path. If you were to say 'but X church thinks that eg. homosexuality is not a choice but something that the person can't control' I would be told 'well, then X church isn't a Christian church at all, they are false witnesses'.

When it is ingrained so deeply it really makes you question every thought process within your own head.

[AMumInScotland]

What vdb said. (Mostly at least!)

People like combust22 don't accept the reality that religion changes over time, or even that Christ becoming human might have actually changed things just the teensiest little bit so that the Old Testament is no longer the main descriptor of our relationship with God.

Jesus did not teach that evil was the fault of women - he taught very clearly that we each have to search our hearts and consider our attitudes. He treated women as people.

Anyway, to go back to your original point - yes you can be 'relaxed' as a Christian, if you are in a church which is supportive and tolerant and liberal, and all the things that Jesus was! Of course we all fall short, as individuals. But if the whole institution is going against what you believe to be important in Christianity then you'll never feel part of it, however 'nice' they are in other ways.

To relax, you have to feel you are being true to your beliefs. And you can't do that within a church that tells you the opposite of your actual faith.

[combust22]

"People like combust22 don't accept the reality that religion changes over time"


The bible doesn't though.

[AMumInScotland]

"The Bible doesn't change"

Well, the whole of the New Testament got added to it, which is a pretty big change.

[combust22]

Recently? I must have missed that.

[AMumInScotland]

Well, more recently than the story about Adam and Eve.
More recently than the common root of all Abrahamic religions.

If you read the NT, the stories have quite a different emphasis from the ones in the OT. Much more about individuals taking responsibility for their own behaviour. Much more about faith and relationship with God, and much less about following a rigid set of rules.

[TempsPerdu]

OP, I believe that you absolutely can be a relaxed Christian. Having said that, I absolutely understand where you're coming from; I've been in a similar situation myself, and have found it surprising that even where I live(London), there are so few genuinely liberal, inclusive churches that also happen to be thriving. I do think that the Church (not necessarily the Bible or Christianity per se) has a massive issue with women, and with minority groups in general. Often, I think, particular interest groups within the Church use the Bible to their own ends in order to shore up the entrenched hierarchies.

Growing up with no religions, I was first exposed to 'serious' Christianity at university. Even though I found many of the messages appealing at the time, and got quite caught up in the whole thing, I was always uncomfortable with my new friends' attitudes towards gender; I remember a very devout friend of mine agonising over whether she should stand for a post on the committee because she'd be brought up to believe that women should not be in leadership positions. At my university there was even an official ban on women becoming president (this emerged after I left; while I was there it was just accepted that no female student had ever won the ballot). Several male friends ultimately ended up travelling to other countries in search of suitable wives, as they considered British women to be too emancipated!

Back home in London, I attended a local church that a university friend had recommended. It's a large, thriving evangelical church in an affluent middle-class area. Most of the congregations are well-educated professionals, and yet the attitudes I encountered towards women, gay people and divorcees were surprisingly illiberal and backward - women were only allowed to lead groups relating to children (even then, a male youth worker took over once the children became teenagers). When the church built a new hall and meeting centre, the men took on the leadership of the project while their wives worked in the café or ran the crèche. Gay people were 'welcome', providing they remained celibate; as a result I met several long-established members of the congregation who were clearly denying their own sexuality in order to fit in. Sex before marriage was strongly disapproved off, resulting in a steady stream of marriages among young people who were often barely out of their teens. (DP and I, still happily unmarried 10 years on, definitely bucked the trend there!)

The teaching itself was always terribly mild-mannered (and rather convoluted), but there was an insidious overarching message that straight, white, 'happily married' men ran the show. In the end, DP and I left - we're both pretty liberal, and it was all too insular and regressive. There was a mini exodus of the more liberal church members shortly afterwards, and the church was since become deeply conservative in outlook.

Problem is, there seem to be few local alternatives - all the churches nearby are either American-style conservative evangelical (whether middle-class or multi-ethnic 'Mega Churches') or traditional CofE with a dwindling congregation that's shored up by parents who are only attending to get their DC into the local CofE school. I really think there's a gap in the market for a modern church with a liberal, inclusive, non-judgemental ethos, which allows for a healthy level of debate, questioning and reflection and doesn't require its members to leave their brains at the door.

[TempsPerdu]

Oh, and yes, phoning members who hadn't attended for a while was part of the set-up at my old church too. Think it was supposed to be taken as caring concern, but I found it faintly sinister!

[combust22]

Oh yes the New Testamen- really relaxed and "with it"

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. . . .""

[nicename]

Yes you can be 'relaxed', or progressive as a christian.

All religions have their various hues and sometimes you are unlucky to have a congregation/coven who are less than enlightened, or a vicar who thinks that pop music is the work of the devil.

Follow your own convictions and visit other churches to see how they fit with your own beliefs and values. If you stay where you are uncomfortable/bullied, then you will grow to resent them and the religion, and feel pressurised into 'stay or leave completely'. How can you find peace with the world if you feel hectored or uncomfortable with your place or worship/community?

You can't agree with every word that comes out of the vicars mouth, but find somewhere where you can devate the point with him/her and part as friends.