Question

f you are from Christian background, can you answer the question, "What does it mean to be Christian?", without excluding numerous groups of people who fervently view themselves as "Christian," but who live, practice and believe in ways that may differ significantly from you? They, too, appeal to the same Bible that you do -- often emphasizing things there that you either ignore, minimize or interpret differently. Is this situation any different for Christians than it is for people of any of the other traditions we are studying this quarter? Can people of ANY religious tradition describe their religious tradition without excluding others who view themselves as part of that same tradition, but who live, practice and believe in ways that may differ significantly from others who claim the same tradition?

Answer 1

To answer the question ‘what it means to be Christian’ perhaps calls for an immersion into the overarching question about what is Christianity and how did it emerge. Christianity as a religious faith represents a monotheistic system of belief in following the New Testament as a canonical book and organises the life and the practices of the people around the belief in Jesus Christ as God. Christianity itself has diversified into multiple ‘churches’ or sects such as the Roman Catholics, Syrian Catholics, Orthodox Greeks, Protestants, Methodists, to name a few. The different churches function as sub-religious groups that is they all prescribe to the Bible as the holy book but they differed in their interpretations of the same text. Moreover, the differences are rooted in the historical context of the expansion of Christianity from the place of its origins. Thus for instance, the Catholic Church in England claimed a different church for itself to break the supremacy of the Vatican archebishop that was associated with the Roman and the Spanish Empire. In other words, Christianity was involved in the political strife’s between the various kingdoms of Europe in the 14-15 the Century all of which had proclaimed Christianity as the state religion. However, the diversification became the new ordeal in order to avoid the direct interference or control of the major kingdom which was supported by the Roman church itself. Then in the 16-17th century, with the discovery of the new lands and the rise of colonialism, European states also began missionary activities and conversion of the indigenous people of the colonies into Christianity. The churches in Latin America, Africa, New Guinea and Asia that emerged evolved a version of Christianity which was modified to appeal to the sensibilities of the locals. Thus, cultural intermixing also added another layer of difference within Christianity. Which brings us back to the initial question. What it means to be Christian, would have a different answer depending on one’s own geographical and historical location. Thus, it isn’t felt that there can be no one uniform answer to this question and all the various churches are but different colours of the same spectrum of light.

Moreover, such differences are quintessential to the existence and continuation of other religions also, such as the Vajrayana and Gelug schools in Buddhism, or the Shi’a and the Sunni sects in Islam. It does not mean that one isn’t better or worse than the other. Rather, it shows that people have different paths to the same ultimate goal of reaching the higher divinity.