NOTE:
Some of the punctuation in the cut and paste sections below have morphed into odd characters due to our blogskin. I usually go through and retype punctuation, but I’m just not up to doing this much. If it annoys you, then don’t read any further.

The LDS church today explicitly includes itself in the Christian fold.

I’ll cut and paste below, excerpting from the LDS article:

Of course we are Christians. Why would anyone say otherwise? Here are the facts.

But there are sincere people out there who believe the Latter-day Saints aren’t Christians. In fact, the accusation that we are not Christians is probably the most commonly heard criticism of the LDS Church and its doctrines today.

Why would anyone say such a thing? Isn’t the name of our church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Do we not worship Christ? Is not the Book of Mormon another testament of Jesus Christ? How could anyone seriously doubt that Latter-day Saints are Christians?

There are a number of arguments used supposedly to “prove” that we are not Christian. It is important to recognize that none of them have anything to do with whether or not Latter-day Saints believe in Jesus Christ. Rather, what they basically boil down to is this: Latter-day Saints are different from the other Christian churches. (We understand that these differences exist because traditional Christianity has wandered from the truth over the centuries, but other denominations see things otherwise.) Their arguments against the Latter-day Saints being
Christian generally fall into six basic categories:

Exclusion by special definition
1 What is a Christian?
…The term Christian may be defined in a number of ways, but the most common is “one who believes or professes… to believe in Jesus Christ and the truth as taught by him… one whose life is conformed to the doctrines of Christ.” The second most common meaning is “a member of a church or group professing Christian doctrine or belief.”
Under either of these two definitions, Latter-day Saints qualify as Christians.
…No one “owns” the term Christian or has the right to deny it to others who worship Jesus as the divine Son of God.

2 Exclusion by misrepresentation

3 Name calling has often been used in religious controversies. At one time, Catholics called Protestants “heretics,” and Protestants called Catholics “papists.” But this sort of tactic amounts to nothing more than saying, “Boo for your religion, and hurrah for mine.”

The negative term most frequently flung at the LDS is “cult,” a term which can suggest images of pagan priests and rituals. But the truth is there is no objective distinction by which a cult may be distinguished from a religion. Use of the term cult does not tell us what a religion is, only how it is regarded by the person using the term. It simply means “a religion I don’t like.”

4 Exclusion by tradition (Smallholder has left this section intact because, gosh darn it, it is interesting)

It is sometimes argued that to be truly Christian, modern churches must accept both biblical Christianity and the traditional Christianity of later history. In other words, one must accept not just biblical doctrines, but also the centuries of historical developmentv=the councils, creeds, customs, theologians, and philosophersv=that came along after New Testament times. Since the Latter-day Saints do not accept doctrines originating in the early Church after the death of the apostles and prophets, we are accused of not being v¨historicalvÆ or v¨traditionalvÆ Christians.
In fact, we believe that revelation to the early Church stopped because of the death of the Apostles and the growing apostasy, or falling away, from the truth. In the absence of Apostles, the church eventually turned to councils of philosophers and theologians, for guidance. These councils, after lengthy debates, in turn interpreted the gospel according to their best understanding. Often they drew upon the philosophies of respected men (like Plato), concluding, for example, that God has no body or physical nature; or that the three separate persons of the Godheadv=the Father, Son, and Holy Ghostv=are only one being. The declarations of these councils are still generally accepted today by traditional Christian churches as official doctrines. Yet these creeds were formulated centuries after the deaths of the Apostles and the close of the New Testament.
Were the Twelve Apostles Christians? Of course. But if it were true that one must accept the whole package of historical Christianity in order to be a Christian, then it would be impossible for early Christians, including Jesus and his disciples, to qualifyv=since they lived centuries before these traditions came to be. On the other hand, if the New Testament Saints can be considered Christians without accepting all the traditions of men that came later, then so can the Latter-day Saints, and the historical exclusion is invalid.

5 The canonical or biblical exclusion (This section intact too. It does a good job of demolishing my earlier appelation of “post-Christian” to groups that have additonal sources of revelation)

The term v¨canon of scripturevÆ refers to the collection of books accepted by any group as the authoritative word of God. For most Christians the canon of scripture is limited to the Bible. But Latter-day Saints have a larger canon of scripture that includes the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The canonical exclusion, in its simplest form, says that since Latter-day Saints have books of scripture in addition to the v¨traditionalvÆ Christian Bible, they cannot be Christians.
One of the problems with this canonical exclusion lies in the assumption that there is only one v¨traditionalvÆ Christian Bible. Over the centuries, there have been a number of different versions of the Bible, and many Christian churches and individuals have disagreed about which books should be included. Even today, the Bible used by Catholics contains a number of different books than the Bible used by Protestants. Yet Catholics and Protestants continue to call each other Christiansv=even though they have different canons of scripture.
When revelation stopped after the death of the early Apostles, people were forced to draw one of two conclusions: (1) either revelation had stopped because God had already said everything they would ever need, or (2) revelation had stopped because the church lacked apostles and prophets to speak for him. Traditional Christians accept the first explanation; Latter-day Saints accept the second.
Sometimes critics cite Revelation 22:18v±19 [Rev. 22:18v±19] as evidence that the Bible forbids adding to or taking away from the canon of scripture. In these verses, John curses those who would add to or take away from v¨this book.vÆ But when John wrote Revelation, the Bible in its present form did not yet exist. He was simply referring to his own book, the Book of Revelation, rather than to the whole Bible.
The truth is that prophets have usually added to the scripturesv=almost all the biblical apostles and prophets did this. There is, in fact, no biblical statement whatever closing the canon of scripture or prohibiting additional revelation or additional scripture after the New Testament.
Some non-LDS Christians believe that the Bible contains all religious truth. However, the Bible itself says nothing of the sort. The word Bible never appears in the Biblev=for the Bible never refers to itself. Thus all these claims about the Bible are unbiblical. The Bible itself never claims to be perfect, never claims to be sufficient for salvation, and never claims to grant its readers authority to speak or act for God. Rather, such claims are made by those who have lost priesthood authority and have lost direct revelation and, instead of trying to find them again, are trying desperately to maintain that their loss doesnv t matter.

6 The doctrinal exclusion (The Maximum Leader’s focus on the Trinity here)

This type of argument claims that since the Latter-day Saints do not always interpret the Bible as other Christians do, we must not be Christians. But, in fact, other denominations also differ among themselves doctrinally, and it is unreasonable to demand that Latter-day Saints conform to a single standard of v¨ChristianvÆ doctrine when no such single standard exists.
For example, the Latter-day Saints are accused of worshiping a v¨different godvÆ because we do not believe in the traditional Trinity. v¨We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy GhostvÆ (A of F 1:1) as taught in the New Testament. What Latter-day Saints do not believe is the non-Biblical doctrine formulated by the councils of Nicaea (A.D. 325) and Chalcedon (A.D. 451) centuries after the time of Jesusv=the doctrine that God is three coequal persons in one substance or essence. We do not believe it because it is not scriptural. As Harperv s Bible Dictionary states: v¨The formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the New Testament.vÆ
Jesus didnv t teach the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. The New Testament writers didnv t have any idea of it. The doctrine itself wasnv t invented until centuries later. So one canv t say the Latter-day Saints are not true Christians for not accepting it, unless one also excludes Jesus, his disciples, and the New Testament Church, who similarly did not know or teach it.
Latter-day Saints do believe that God the Father has a physical body. This view is attacked as v¨non-ChristianvÆ by critics who often cite John 4:24, which states in the King James version that v¨God is a spirit.vÆ However, since there is no indefinite article (a, or an) in the Greek language from which this verse is translated, the consensus among biblical scholars is that there should not be an indefinite article at John 4:24. It should simply read v¨God is spirit.vÆ In other words, this scripture does not limit God to being only a spirit, but merely includes spirit as one of his attributes. After all, we also read that v¨God is lightvÆ (1 Jn. 1:5) and v¨God is lovevÆ (1 Jn. 4:8), and yet no one interprets these verses to mean that God is only light, or God is only love. Certainly, the member of the Godhead called the Holy Ghost is spirit, but that fact tells us nothing about whether or not God the Father has a physical body.
Finally, quite often we hear that Latter-day Saints are not Christians because true Christians believe in salvation by grace, while the Latter-day Saints believe in salvation through our own good works. But this is a misunderstanding. Yes, Latter-day Saints do believe we must serve God with all our v¨heart, might, mind, and strengthvÆ (D&C 4:2). But the Book of Mormon makes perfectly clear that it is impossible for us to completely earn or deserve our blessings from God (Mosiah 2:21, 24); that redemption can never come through individual effort alone, but only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ (2 Ne. 2:3, 5v±8); and thatv=after all we can do (Alma 24:11)v=we are saved by grace (2 Ne. 10:24; 2 Ne. 25:23).

Conclusion
We have discussed arguments some people use for claiming that Latter-day Saints are not Christians. Notice that not one of these addresses the question of whether we accept Jesus Christ as the divine Son of God and Savior. Our critics donv t address thisv=the only issue that really mattersv=for the LDS position here is an unassailable matter of record. Our first article of faith [A of F 1:1] declares our belief in Jesus Christ. We meet every Sunday and partake of the sacrament to renew our faith in and our commitment to Him as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.
…Both the Book of Mormon as scripture and Joseph Smith as a prophet bear witness to Jesus Christ as Savior. The Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price bear that same great witness, as do all of the modern prophets and apostles. Though all the world may say that Latter-day Saints do not know or love or worship Jesus Christ, the truth is that we do. If this is not enough to be counted as Christian, then that word has lost its meaning.

Baker certainly claimed to be the final prophet who had the complete, inerrant truth that would correct the mistakes people had made in the writing and interpretation of the Bible:

“In the year 1866, 1 discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love and named my discovery Christian Science. God has been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing” (Science and Health, 107:1-6).

“I should blush to write of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” as I have, were it of human origin, and were I, apart from God, its author. But, as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be super-modest in my estimate of the Christian Science textbook. ”

“The material record of the Bible,. . is no more important to our well-being than the history of Europe and America” (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, 1833-1896, p. 170:19-21).”

“The decisions by vote f Church Councils as to what should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New,–these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages” (Science and Health, 139:15-22).

The last two quotes seem to show the fallibility of the Bible. Which is why, according to Eddy, her writings are necessary for the attainment of:

“vñ. The revealed Truth uncontaminated by human hypothesis” (Science and Health, 457:1-2).

The more I read, the more I am reminded of Mohammed; he accepted, as does Eddy, that the Bible was divinely inspired but corrupted by the men who wrote it and passed it down. Mohammed claimed that he was the final, inerrant message from God who had come to correct the earlier prophets whose message had been misunderstood.

Mark Twain picked up on this particular claim to authority in his “Christian Science” book.

CAVEAT: I do not have a physical copy of “Science and Health” sitting here before me. The quotes are from online sources, so I cannot vouch for their accuracy. If the Maximum Leader has a copy at hand in his magnificent reference library, would he be so kind as to check the authenticity of these quotes?

Several internet sites (though perhaps unreliable because they exist in order to label Christian Sciene a cult) also claim that, in Eddy’s philosophy, “Christ” represents the Truth of God, not Jesus. They did not back up this claim with any quotes other than:

Christ is the ideal truth that comes to heal sickness and sin through Christian Science, and attributes all power to God. Jesus is the name of the man who, more than all other men, has presented Christ, the true idea of God … Jesus is the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of Jesus the Christ” (Science and Health, 473:9-16)

Well, if Jesus was human and his message of the truth was errant and needed to be correct by Eddy, does that make Eddy are more reliable conduit to “the Christ?”

This quote, if authentic, seems key to our discussion. Would some minion with a hard copy of the book PLEASE check to see if it is accurate or taken out of context?

Perhaps we are arguing about definitions of the word Christ with which Eddy would not agree.

The Minister of Agriculture begs the Maximum Leader to reread his post. There is no appeal to authority; I simply, and explicitly stated that it shows that a proportion of the Christian world does not view these groups as Christian. The google links were to allow people to skim down the various objections made by those groups.

Really, Mike. We may often disagree, but have you ever seen me make a blatant appeal to authoirty without further discussion.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader still has some comments to make on the whole “Christian” discussion that is going on here, and elsewhere. By “elsewhere” your Maximum Leader means specificially the insightful comments by Bill on his blog Bill’s Comments. You should click through and read his thoughts on this discussion.

Your Maximum Leader wants to get a quick jab in first thing this morning. First off, he is disappointed in the Smallholder’s use of Google hits to try to “prove” his claim of non-major sects not really being Christians. A Google of “roman catholic” + cult gets you 137,000 matches; and presbyterian + cult gets you 65,00 matches; “presbyterian church” + cult gets you 21,300 matches; and so on… Your Maximum Leader’s disappointment is mainly in the claim to false authority, namely that googling terms can make an authoritative case for or against anything.

Now the Smallholder may still have a perfectly valid point here. Namely that the non-trinitarian churches listed may not be “Christian” churches. One can make a persuasive case for the Mormons not being “Christian” in the traditional sense. As the Smallholder points out, their holy texts supercede the Biblical stories that are the foundation of other “mainstream” Christian churches.

But this may not apply to other groups under discussion. For the Christian Scientists, “Science & Health” is not concedered to supercede the Bible; it is believed to be a “key” to understand the meaning of Bible. Your Maximum Leader is unaware of any Jehovah’s Witness’ texts that hold a status equal to or superior to the Bible. And the Smallholder didn’t mention the Congregationalists.

The Congregationalists are the modern decendents of the Puritan settlers of New England. They deny the Trinity but accept Jesus, and his teachings as the key to salvation. This would be the same argument your Maximum Leader would use to counter the proposition that Jews and Muslims could also be considered “Christians” by use of the broader (dictionary if you will) definition of “Christian.” Jews and Muslims do not accept Jesus as the final word in salvation. Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Congregationalists, member of the United Church of Christ, and Quakers (to name a few) do; they just reject the divinity of Jesus.

Your Maximum Leader will concede that denying a core tenet of a Christian religious order may make you a bad member of that order doctrinally. But does it also exclude you from the ranks of “Christians?”

Carry on.

Many moons ago, the Maximum Leader and I reminisced about the “booty curve,” an adaptation of the supply/demand concept to a subject about which we, being adolescents, were much more excited.

Evidently we were not the only college students to (mis)apply our fancy book larnin’ to what we really wanted to study.

I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Steve the Llamabutcher.

The Maximum Leader points out several groups that claim membership in the Christian fraternity yet deny the divinity of Jesus. He specifically mentions Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Scientists.

Members of each of these groups may consider themselves to be Christian. But they are not Christians according to the definitions of mainstream Christianity. Many mainstream Christians specifically deny membership in the fraternity to their groups.

Google searches for:

“Christian Science” + Cult = 48,300 hits.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses” + Cult = 50,600 hits.

Mormons + Cult = 51,700 hits.

I’m passing no judgment here. And many of the links provided by Google are lacking in, shall we say, Christian charity. But certainly a good proportion of the Christian world does not view those groups as “Christian.”

Perhaps it would be better to call each of those groups “Post-Christian.”

All three are unique products of the American experience - the Second Great Awakening and the humanism of the Antebellum period.

All three rely heavily on the teachings of a new prophet - Mary Baker Eddy, Charles Taze Russell, and Joseph Smith.

All three have works that supercede the Bible - “Science and Health” and “The Book of Mormon” both claim to be divinely inspired and infallible. I am not sure if the Witnesses ascribe divine revelation to Russell.

In many ways, if the Maximum Leader want to include these groups in the fold, he would do well to include Muslims as well. The Muslims accept the teachings of the Bible as incomplete, have a new prophet, and subscribe to a new testament.

I once had a pair of toads as pets.

A pack of elementary school friends was playing army behind Tarun Gupta’s house. I think the Minister of Propaganda may have been there, but I really don’t remember - and it really doesn’t matter. As I was frolicking through the woods (notice the straight line set up there for the Maximum Leader), I came upon a pair of toads and took them home.

I kept them in an terrarium.

I named them Shake and Speare.

Shut up. Just ’cause you were an unoriginal putz who named your dog “Spot” doesn’t make you morally superior to the intellectuals in your midst. I also had Edgar, Allen, Poe, Abdul the Damned and Gromyko the turtles, Lenin the Hermit Crab, Trotsky the garter snake, and Shiller the fish. Today my dog is Kermit Roosevelt. I guess my Scottish cow had a common, non-historical name, but that was just so I could squint, impersonate Willy the groundskeeper, and say “Aye, she’s a Bonnie lass!”

Shut up. I’m warning you. I was not a geek!

Shake and Speare were cool pets. I taught them to jump through hoops. They slurped worms up like spaghetti. If you fed them lightening bugs, the lightening bugs would light up inside their bodies, glowing redly through toad skin. If you fed Shake and Speare several lightening bugs and then let them hop around, the blinking lights would make them look like moving Christmas trees.

I always wanted to have them lay eggs and hatch tadpoles, but over three years never had any luck, even though I had a male and female pair.

Shut up. It’s not that hard to sex toads, you perv.

You just pick up a toad and rub the belly. A female will squirm around. A male will squirm around and squeak.

You see, toad sex occurs when a male wraps his arms around a female and squeezes out her eggs. He then releases his sperm into the water and his sperm fertilize the floating eggs.

During mating season, things get really hectic. “Toad balls” develop as males struggle to be the one closest to a fertile female. As a defense mechanism, the squeak is the way one male toad lets another male toad know: “Get off! I’m not a girl!”

Try it with the next toad you find. Impress your friends.

One of my favorite childhood memories was when the local boyscouts put on a kid’s pet fair at the branch library.

I took Shake and Speare.

Shut up. I was not a geek.

So there I was, an eleven year old with his toads. They announced a best pet trick contest.

I entered.

There were over a dozen dogs, a few cats, and Shake and Speare.

So the announcer calls each kid up on stage, they do their pet trick, the audience applauds, mom and dad snap pictures, and the duo climbs down from the stage dreaming of winning the trophy.

I was last.

I strode up to the announcer, asked to borrow his megaphone, put Speare to the mouthpiece and ordered him to “Speak, boy, speak!”

Tickled on his belly, driven by millions of years of Darwinian selection, Speare croaked out his “stop molesting me” cry.

We brought down the house. All the adults laughed uproariously and the kids who had worked so hard to train their Benjis and Spots stared at their shoes as I was awarded the trophy.

Heh.

Why am I telling you this?

Shut up. I’m not a geek.

Shut up. I mean it.

The Maximum Leader linked a Beautiful Atrocity post based on a My Pet Jawa riff. Their comments threads are full of guys exhibiting shower rage: raw, violence-spawning fear of the possibility that a gay might look at, or even hit on them.

Men who have gay rage are morons. Why engage in fisticuffs when a simple “no thank you” will do?

Toads do it all the time. If a gay man comes on to you, simply say “no thank you.” If anything, be flattered by the attention.

It’s not that horrible. Gay men have made passes at your Minister of Agriculture on several occasions. I seem to set off gaydar. One frustrated suitor told me that he had made an assumption about my orientation because I violate the “straight line” when I dance. Evidently most white heterosexual men will not raise their hands above their shoulders when dancing. My arms fly around with wild, spastic, uncoordinated abandon. Each and every time, when I declined by saying “no thank you, I’m straight,” they left me alone.

They did not try to convert me. They didn’t drag me into an alley. They all got a little sheepish grin, apologized, and went away.

You know that little sheepish grin.

It’s the one you get when you ask a girl to dance and she says no.

Excursus: The Foreign Minister is my personal hero for many, many reasons. One of them is because when one girl shot down his offer of a dance in a particularly snooty fashion, he deadpanned back: “I’m not being picky. Why are you?”

Men who can’t handle unwanted attention should think about what women have to put up with every day. I’m sure that the Lovely Annika and the lovable Celibate turn down invitations from unattractive men all the time. Women don’t seem to suffer emotional trauma when they turn away undesirable suitors.

So men who suffer from gay rage are actually demonstrating that they are emotionally weaker than women. Not that women are emotionally weaker. But knuckledragger types who suffer from gay rage probably hold chauvinist views about the “weaker sex.” Misogyny and homophobia seem to be clustered phenomena, no? So I’m just hoisting them on the petard of their own misguided ideology.

Repeat after me, guys:

Be like a toad:

Squeak! No thank you. I’m straight. Squeak!

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will pass along this headline for you without comment.

Tom Wolfe wins bad sex award.

The article is an interesting read. And the award is one that our favourite sexy Sadie would never win.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will direct his minions to a recent post of Jeff’s over on Beautiful Atrocities. One entitled “Protocols of the Homo Predators.” It is quite good. And the comment track is equally excellent.

In many ways a post like Jeff’s and the thoughtful commentary are what the whole blogosphere is all about.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, while a religous reader of John Derbyshire’s work, doesn’t often want to comment on his work in this space. Well, that is not the case today. You ought to go and read his column about Intellectuals on National Review Online yesterday.

Very thoughtful stuff. Identifying modern living intellectuals. What is really so sad is that your Maximum Leader could only come up with one that he thought met Derb’s general criteria. (Alive, reasonably well-known, published, etc) The one he came up with was Niall Ferguson. Your Maximum Leader thinks that a case could be made for journalist Christopher Hitchens. But Hitch would be a stretch.

If any minions care to name others, your Maximum Leader’s ears are open.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader can say that now his good minions are going to be pleased. Not only is your Maximum Leader back; but he is arguing with the Minister of Agriculture.

Not a full-blown argument exactly… Just  quibble.

Begin quibble. The term “Christian.”

We should begin with the term “Christ.” As we all know the English word “Christ” is derived from the Greek word “Christos” which is used in the early versions of the New Testament to denote the Hebrew word “Messias” which in turn means “annointed.” In this early sense any prophet in the Jewish tradition could be considered annointed in his work. There was, before the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a growing Jewish belief in the coming of “The Annointed.” A single eschatological being who would fulfill all the previous prohecies of Daniel, Isaiah, and others. (Okay, perhaps not fully eschatological, but how often can you work eschatology into a proper sentence?) The followers of Jesus of Nazareth began to refer to their teacher as the Christ. “The Annointed” as it were. Early followers of Jesus called themselves “Chrestus” which means roughly “excellent.” (And your Maximum Leader thinks the term is also a clever play on Christos.) They referred to themselves collectively as “Chrestians” or “the excellent ones.” Eventually, this collective appellation “Chrestians” became “Christians.”

Now, as for the term “Christians” automatically denoting a belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth; the good Minister of Agriculture is on pretty firm ground here. According to the doctrinal tenets of most of the major Christian Churches there is an implicit belief in the Divine nature of Jesus. The Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodist, Presbyterians, and Baptists (among others) all believe in the Divine nature of Jesus. In fact, they all adhere to the concept of the Trinity (One God in three forms, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost/Spirit). So, to be an adherent to one of these religions implies a belief that being “Christian” also implies a belief in the Divine nature of Jesus.

But that is not the end of our story. There are plenty of minor sects which don’t care, don’t mention, or flat-out deny the Trinitarian impulses of their larger bretheren. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, the United Church of Christ, the Congregationalist Churches, and the Quakers (among others) are all non-Trinitarian churches. They deny the Trinity and in many cases the Divine nature of Jesus as well. Are these people not “Christians?” It might be surprising for them to find out they aren’t. Your Maximum Leader, for one, is happy to lump them in with other “Christians.”

For the purposes of your Maximum Leader’s earlier musings, he was relying upon the commonly-held dictionary definition of “Christian.” In this case, a Christian is simply one who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.

So in one respect, your Maximum Leader answered his rhetorical question of an earlier post already. If you deny the divinity of Jesus, it is hard for you to be a good Episcopalian - at least insofar as doctrine is concerned. But the spirit of your Maximum Leader’s question remains. Can you still behave like a good Episcopalian even if you deny certain basic premises of that faith? And your Maximum Leader isn’t meaning to single out Episcopalians here, any (broadly-defined) Christian religion will do. It is just that being the “Cake or Death” church the Episcopalians are least likely to kill you for questioning their faith.

Carry on.

Heh.

The Foreign Minister emerged from his cocoon whilst your humble Smallholder remained awol.

You Minister of Agriculture is suffering from big-post-itis. I’m working on a post about the bittersweet market day when I took my lads to the butcher. Vater Smallholder and I had a heckuva day. But I haven’t been able to get the post to where I like it.

Blogger’s block, if you will.

I have also had interims, test grading, and SOL reviews to complete for the paying gig.

But I digress. The Maximum Leader is not one for excuses anyway (unless offered on behalf of the administration, which is why I was a little surpirsed at his Rummy post).

What I regret most about my absence has been the innocents who suffer. Sadie Mirth seems to have taken my silence hard; she has gone on a hunger and blogging strike pending my return. No need to be coy about your reasons, dear; the Maximum Leader will probably figure out your preference for chopped liver soon enough.

As a quick hit, the Maximum Leader asks about labeling religion. His example, I fear is not apt; the word “Christian” refers, by definition, to someone who accepts the divinity of Christ. I grew up believing that Chirst was simply Jesus’ last name, but believe it or not, Christ isn’t really a bit of Josephian patrimony. The word means “messiah and son of god.” So if you say “Jesus Christ,” you are naming a historical figure and declaring your acceptance of his divinity. I have had to work very hard in my world history class to avoid improper terminology. It is quite proper for me to explain to my kids that Jesus the historical figure was perceived by many of his followers to be the Son of God. But I ought not to use my position of public trust to proselytize for my interpretation that he was indeed the Christ.

Perhaps Bill over at Bill’s Comments or the good Kevin at Big Hominid can rework the content of the last paragraph into a semblence of scholarly consideration. I can’t. Too tired.

Posting will most likely remain light until Christmas break.

All the best of the season to our happy little corner o’ the blogosphere.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the news wires are leading with: Jury Agrees on Sentence for Scott Peterson.

Death? We can only hope so. Especially since one cannot guarantee that he will be some other convict’s bitch for the rest of his natural life.

Carry on.

I apologize for dropping the villainous ball when the ML was on Sabbatical, however, in my defense, I will say that I was away myself and barely had time to check in with NV as my INLAWS were visiting.

The Foreign Minsiter, the Warden, and her Parents went down to the German/Austrian alps to celebrate Thanksgiving and the onslaught of Christmas.

WHEN I DID try to blog, I will say that blogger kept crashing on me or not opening up at all. Since the Warden only lets the Foreign Minister out for good behavior, he did not have a lot of time to blog.

Anyway,
To make my attempt at your question about flavors of religion (more specifically flavors of Christianity), here is how I see it.

With your scenario of what if a guy thinks Christ exists, but was just a dude with cool ideas.

That already exists. The Jews, and Muslims believe that he existed and was some sort of holy man. I argue that what MAKES a Christian is the person that makes the leap of faith to believe that he was God’s Son and was raised from the dead. Without that part, there is no Christianity.

But–
The Bible is kind of like the US constitution in respect that 2 people could read it and get something TOTOALLY different out of it. That is why you have Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, etc etc.

And the constitution-
The M of A reads it and thinks the second amendment is only for states. Annika reads it and buys a machine gun. (I don’t know if she did buy a machine gun but she knows an awful lot about the Hitler’s Saw!—- )

On to the Humvee thing.
The soldier in question should have asked/said-
1) Why don’t we all have tanks to ride in instead of lightly armored jeeps?
2) Why don’t we just carpet bomb Falujah instead of sending me in?
3) I learned enough in college through the GI bill to know that I can die here… could you send someone else in?
4) This is a scary place, I want more than armor… I want a force field.

I kind of think it was a stupid question. The Humvee is not a bullet proof vehicle. It was not designe to be. Even the up armored version is not going to do well against a roadside bomb. Soldiers have been making field adjustments like welding scrap armor on since warefare began. I would imagine even the soldiers with up armored humvees are adding on additional armor. I think this is more of the MSM stirring the pot.

Back to the trenches—

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to make an observation. Do you minions know what the most delicious ironical part of today’s installment from the Crack Young Staff at The Hatemonger’s Quarterly is?

It is the the first blogad at the top of the screen of course.

Heh.

Carry on.