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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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Nitpick: in my experience Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims do not try to exclude each other from Islam. In Islam there is a very strong consensus that anybody who says and sincerely believes the shahada is a Muslim. Sunni-Shia differences are obviously very important and a major driver of violence even today, and heaven help you if try to change from one to the other, but I have never heard a Muslim trying to suggest that a member of the other party is not a Muslim.

That said, I don't like the analogy to early Christianity that much because I think what we're looking at in early Christianity is a young tradition forming itself, and as part of that formation, it went through a process of debating and coming to understand its own doctrine. 'Christianity' as we know it today is largely a product of that process.

I'd suggest that most people have an intuitive sense that there is a point at which a Christian-derived or Christian-influenced religious movement ceases to be Christianity. The most famous example is probably Islam itself. We know that the first Christians to come into contact with Islam understood it to be a heresy - Muhammad was a deluded man who misunderstood the scriptures and preached his own revelation. I think we have a spectrum of dissent where, say, Protestantism is clearly Christianity, Islam is clearly not Christianity, and in the middle there's a grey area. Pentecostals? Christian. Adventists? Christian. Jehovah's Witnesses? Ehh, getting pretty heretical. Mormons? A bit further out. Candomblé? Influenced by Christianity but definitely not. And so on. I understand that different people will, in good faith, draw the Christian/non-Christian line in different places.

My personal model would be concentric circles, if that makes sense? At the centre we have 'Christianity', which I define in terms of the ecumenical creeds. It contains Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and maybe Oriental Orthodoxy. The next circle out is what I term 'Jesusism', which includes any religious tradition in which Jesus Christ is the central or decisive figure: this includes Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Iglesia ni Cristo, Hong Xiuquan, and so on. The next circle after that is 'Jesus-influenced': this includes any religious tradition in which Jesus is a major figure, but not the central one. This would include Islam, the Baha'i Faith, CaoDai, and so on. Finally, beyond that, we have religions that have nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever: Hinduism, Daoism, Scientology, and so forth.

But I grant that there are plenty of people for whom 'Christianity' means everything within my 'Jesusist' circle.

The next circle out is what I term 'Jesusism', which includes any religious tradition in which Jesus Christ is the central or decisive figure: this includes Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Iglesia ni Cristo, Hong Xiuquan, and so on.

None of these other guys believe in the atonement, though, or that Jesus is God. Really LDS is just its own thing, not neatly slotted into a category of churches that see Jesus as a cool holy guy.

religions that have nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever: Hinduism

Ackchyually, some Hindus consider Jesus to have been an avatar of Vishnu.

Would you call those Hindus Christian?

I'd put them in the 'Jesus-influenced' circle, or possibly add an intermediate circle between it and the outermost category.

Nitpick: in my experience Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims do not try to exclude each other from Islam. In Islam there is a very strong consensus that anybody who says and sincerely believes the shahada is a Muslim. Sunni-Shia differences are obviously very important and a major driver of violence even today, and heaven help you if try to change from one to the other, but I have never heard a Muslim trying to suggest that a member of the other party is not a Muslim.

Ethnic cleansings have been done for precisely that distinction. The doers may have been 'bad' muslims doctrinally as well as ethically, and the determinations often coincide with political differences people feel worth killing over, but it has (and, occasionally, does) happen even if it's not the civilized norm.

Sunni and Shia have absolutely killed each other over the distinction, yes. There are rivers of blood between those parties. I'm just not aware of cases of Sunni or Shia declaring the other party not Muslims.

Them not being Real Muslims is the justification for why killing them is okay / moral / righteous, rather than theological fratricide. Sometimes its claimed on grounds of apostasy, sometimes that they are heathens, and sometimes qualified theological language is thrown out the door as well as any religious principles of how you should/should not treat other Muslims.

It's the same twisting of categories for why [insert denomination of Christianity] isn't Christian. Tailor a definition of the [Good Group] to some theological claim of [Subgroup], declare opponent outside the bounds of [Good Group], categorical ejection removes the target from the beneificary/protected claimed macro-group.

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