LL you are right that definitions are everything, yet the Christianity of the NT does endorse coercion bby threat of hellfire and narrow separatism from the larger community. In parts it promotes all or nothing thinking and devaluation of others not in the group.
Early Christianity - a cult?
by serendipity 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Lady Lee
Christianity of the NT does endorse coercion bby threat of hellfire and narrow separatism from the larger community. In parts it promotes all or nothing thinking and devaluation of others not in the group.
True. But people were still free to walk away. They weren't penalized by shunning. They weren't subjected to a myriad of ever-changing rules.
They got two "rules" Love God and love your neighbor. It was far less restrictive than the WTS is today.
In fact if you look at it the JWs today are far more like the Scribes and Pharissess that Christ condemned in Matt 23
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Mr. Neutron
Xians have rarely let people simply walk away from their cult... Those who have tried to reform or remove themselves have often been met with violent persecution... I site as an example the Anabaptists...
http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/html/ch/CH.Arnold.RMT.10.HTML
Check out paragraphs C and D for specifics... And while this is but one source a simple google search of the term "Anabaptists" will yield quite a number of results detailing just how free these people were to walk away from or attempt to change the Xian "faith."
Read a few of the stories at www.exchristian.net to see just how free people of today are fairing under Xianity... -
Justin
Those of us who live in democracies are living in a post-revolutionary world. We live in a world that has come to value the freedom of the individual in a way that traditional societies did not. We are post-Enlightenment and are on the other side of the political revolutions which made democracy possible. Groups which are labeled cultic are misfits in this world. But, we cannot use our standards to judge previously existing groups which were living in a different kind of world. Older societies and cults did not have the benefit of our knowledge. A pre-revolutionary person or group is not in the same position as someone who fights against a revolution which has already taken place and wants to turn back the clock.
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jwfacts
I like the following defn of cult:
A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion.
By this definition it was a cult if Jesus was not God's son. If he was God's son then I guess it was not a delusion and so not a cult.
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peacefulpete
nice comment Justin
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serendipity
bttt