I don't understand why in the Church of England and Catholic masses we talk about Jesus being the king of Jews....

[confusedaboutreligion]

Surely then if we follow Jesus and his teachings we should be Jewish rather than Catholic or C of E?? Also why in a C of E service do we say "we believe in one holy and Catholic church" during the creed? Surely that is then saying we only believe in the catholic church (yet said during a C of E service)

V. Confused.....

I suppose I struggle when something is very clearly scriptural (or not) and it is ignored - wither you belive what the scriptures say or not!

catholic means universal or all-encompassing, so the "catholic church" that we talk about in the creed is just "the whole Christian church".

The Roman Catholic church uses the same word, and gets shortened to "Catholic", which causes a lot of confusion, because the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church do not accept that the other churches are valid (Anglican at any rate, not sure how they view the Greek & Russian Orthodox churches).

isn't it something like you can tell Jesus was jewish because he thought his mother was a virgin and his mother thought he was the son of God?

The trouble with things being "scriptural" is that parts of it are an instruction to the whole church in any place or time, while others are specific to the place and time they were given. Like "slaves submit to your masters" - do we really think Jesus was in favour of slavery? Or was it an instruction to do the best you could in the circumstances at that time?

I know many many many non orthodox jews who also take the mother line. I was brought up with a lot of jewish children, some of them from orthodox families, and found the whole religion and the way it 'ruled' their home lives absolutely fascinating.

yes you have to look very hard at when the scripture mean, and sometimes it has been badly/wrongly translated/transliterated. I just found out that in the greek Hades is mentioned 11 times and Hell 12 times and they are completely different things but on 10 occasions Hades has been transliterated into Hell in the English version!!!!!!!!!

Your best bet is to learn New Testament Greek , but failing that the Revised Standard Version is about the most "accurate" in a word-for-word sense. But not the best for the flow of the language... If you want to really know what a passage says, I prefer to look at a few different translations as between them you should get a feel for the actual words.

Now, I believe in infant baptism, my two are baptised, plus I was baptised as an infant.

But PLEASE don't let this turn into a debate on infant baptism. On another board I go on, that would be consigned to a debating area known as "dead horses", together with the ordination of women, homosexuality and many other topics!

Mary you'll have to CAT me as to why you believe in it/what purpose it serves because no I'm not up for a slanging match!

Back to confusedaboutreligion's original questions for a bit - if you want to know about the general history of the Christian church(es) then the wikipedia article about Christianity (the part about history and origins) looks fairly understandable, though I've just skimmed through it.

Jesus and his disciples were Jewish, and Christians believe that Jesus came to fulfil the prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah. But most of the Jewish people at the time did not believe this, and after a while the early Christian church stopped being a part of Judaism and became a separate religion. This was partly because they started accepting non-Jews into the church (can't quote you chapter and verse, but the part where St Peter had a vision of all kinds of animals both clean and unclean being lowered on a sheet made them believe they no longer had to be Jewish to b saved).

So Christanity started to a separate religion, and has been ever since. And has now split into lots of different denominations with slightly (or in some cases very) different views about a lot of things... Which they hold very strongly, and argue about very passionately - examples being MaryBS's various "dead horses"

Good summary Amuminscotland

My mum reads Old Testament Hebrew and NT Greek! So she is a useful authority (she used to lecture on it!).

My take on infant baptism is that baptism is the point where the parents promise to bring the child up as a Christian, and the congregation promise to support them. As such the baby is welcomed into the church. At confirmation the person makes their own decision to renew their baptismal vows, and promises to live their lives as a Christian. That's my view anyway, but know others have others, and don't feel strongly enough about it to argue!

I'm in the same camp as you on that one tortoiseSHELL, though I know it's one of the big argument issues so this would probably not be the place to argue anywway. I'm also a definite believer in Christian Egalitarianism though again that's the right room for an argment (am I showing my age?)

Oh incidentally, the "Christianity starting out as part of Judaism" thing also explains why we have the "Sabbath" on Sunday instead of Saturday - because the members of the early church were Jewish, they celebrated the Jewish Sabbath and then had the "Lord's Day" on the day after, ie Sunday.

Cargirl, I haven't got CAT, but you can email me on:

suttonmb
at
talktalk
dot net

It was actually my children's baptisms that brought me back to God, but that's a whole different other story!

Also, AMIS, I've not heard of Christian Egalitarianism, but based on that article, that is what I believe too.

Actually there's something I'd like the answer to, where things like autism and Asperger's fit into what's in the bible. I'm about to go for a diagnosis for Asperger's for myself, although I am sure as I can be, that I do have it, in the same way my DS does. I don't see it as a disability as such - I think the best way of putting it, is my brain is "wired differently". But because it affects thought processes, it doesn't really come under "sick", maybe demonic possession? (just kidding!)

Sorry MaryBs I can't help but now reading through this I can understand why the jews were not happy with Jesus. Imagine if you were happily following your religion and culture and a chap down the road starts telling you that you're doing it all wrong and that you have to change your whole way of life...cos he is the Son of God .

AmuminScotland What's amazing is that since only a relatively small number of jews beleived him, that the majority of christians must have come from other faiths. Since these faiths didn't follow the old testament, the idea of a messiah coming would not have been part of their belief system anyeway. So why did so many think he was and take on the old testament as well???

I suppose it comes under the umbrella of living in a sin filled worlds and things would get worse at the end times, so the closer we get to the end times the more sickness type stuff we will see evident (or I suppose I would think of it as being less like god created us to be), I know that's how my friends views her dd have downs syndrome and the fact the incidences amongst women etc is on the increase (this is what she told me so I assume there is some evidence of that?)

BTW I don't have an issue with parents taking on promises to bring their children up in their faith just when it is then declared that a baby is a believer........you certainly don't need believer's baptism to have a relationship with God (ie be a christian) but I believe it's a powerful spiritual thing to go through with believers baptism because it was on of Jesus commandments and something he did.

Microwave there is something like 500 propecies in the bible and not that many that haven't yet happened (less than 50 at a guess). The birth, life, death of Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the old testament - that he would be born in bethleham, that he would be descended from David, that he would be born of a virgin, that he would not be accepted by the Jews, that he would be crucified, that he would die of a broken heart (his heart was pierced ont the cross to speed up his death, etc etc etc etc

The Jews were waiting to see the prophet Elijah first but Jesus said that John the Baptist was the Elijah they had been prophicied.

In our church (evangelical Anglican), we are equally supportive of infant and credo baptism. There is scriptural support for each route. We pretty much view baptism as membership of the church, and who would not want their children to be denied this? Of course they are members! As a sacrament - an outward sign or an inward grace - there is no need to deny children.

Our young people who were baptised as infants can make a public declaration of their faith at anytime. In addition to informal testimonies, they can go through Confirmation and a Renewal of Baptism. It is very powerful. We had a rather large Confirmation service last year, and the testimonies were amazing.

"...he threatened the position of the religious leaders, so they had him crucified.
"

"The Jewish rabbis did not accept him as 'King of the Jew's'. That was rather what they hoped the Messiah would (and indeed will) be. When they crucified Jesus, Pilate nailed a board above him..."

The Jews did not crucify Jesus. The Romans crucified him.

The Romans performed the actual crucifiction, but they did so to keep peace among the religious zealots. They knew they had killed an innocent man.

scienceteacher, when you say "innocent man" what exactly was the crime he was crucified for?

was it basically trouble making, which in fact it sounds like he was guilty of!

Back after dealing with the kids...I have to say, this is a very intelligent, non judgemental discussion about religion and rather than each of us preaching in what we believe is right, we are instead offering our thoughts. I am very clear now on the whole catholic thing, it is something that has bothered me for a long time. I am going to ask something very naive now I'm sure, but as the Roman's crucified Jesus, what religion does that make them? Any suggestions on good reading for me??

think it was some petty religious thing