Talk:Cafeteria Christianity

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Academic Challenger added this template, but didn't include anything on the talk page. Anyway, I've added a couple external links and wiki-linked some of the existing text, but I haven't touched the NPOV problem. KickAir8P~ 01:10, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Regarding the link to Hang Six and the notion that Jesus endorsed only 6 of the Ten Commandments and rejected the other 4: It's out of context. Matthew 5.17-20 is fairly specific, specifically Jesus is recorded as saying that not one yodh (the smallest Hebrew letter of the Tanakh) or one iota (the smallest Greek letter of the Septuagint) is removed from the Law of God until *everything* (lion lies down with lamb, swords into plowshares, restoration of Jerusalem Temple and Davidic (Messianic) Kingdom ...) has come to pass. In fact, before pontificating on what would Jesus do, any Christian would do well to first read the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5-7, specifically the verses Matthew 7.13-28. Of course if one is a Cafeteria Christian, one is free to remove the Sermon on the Mount from one's Bible if one so chooses. Who is fooled? You will know them by their works, history is replete with examples.

I did a complete rewrite to remove the POV problems. Whether or not Jesus actually did away with any of the law is irrelevant to whether Biblical law should be literally followed (as that would just change what the Bible said), and whether Biblical law should be literally followed is actually an issue for Fundamentalist Christianity and tangential to an article on this term. It's an article about a perjorative term, not an article about a philosophical position. Postdlf 20:29, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks better to me. KickAir8P~ 22:43, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Ad hominem claim
The article claims that the use of "Cafeteria Christianity" as evidence in an argument against literal interpretations of the Bible is an ad hominem attack by definition, thereby calling same argument a fallacy. I believe this is not so. The intent of the argument is not to insult the Christian, but to expose the fallaciousness of the "God says it must be, so it is" argument: if a Bible passage is used to justify an argument, but equal Biblical coverage is not sufficient to justify another argument, the use of the Bible as a cite is illogical. For example, there is equal support in Leviticus for arguments for sacrificing goats to repent for sin (4:27), against homosexuality (18.22), against "put[ting] on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material" (19:19), against touching a woman up to seven days after she begins menstruating (15:19), and against eating pork (11:7). Say hypothetically that Sam argues for a law against sex between men, based on the insistence in Leviticus that sex between men is wrong. If Dave asks him whether men who have sex with each other should sacrifice goats afterwards to repent, and Sam says no; or if Dave asks him whether it is wrong and should be illegal to wear cotton and wool at the same time, and Sam says no; or if Dave asks him if it's wrong to touch a menstruating woman or eat pork and Sam says no; then Biblical support is therefore rendered invalid as a basis on which to make an argument. --Disbomber 21:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, the point of the argument is not to label someone a "hypocrite" but to point out a basic inconsistency in their appeal to authority. It is not an ad hominem attack, as the other party is not responding with "you, too!" attacking their right to criticize based on their own moral flaw, but calling into question the accusation itself. Simply, the critic in this case likely does NOT practice the laws of the Torah and wishes to know on what consistent basis a person would embrace some, but not other, parts of those religious laws.

The "shellfish" argument would be an example of reductio ad absurdum used in a non-fallacious way, the presumption being that most modern Christians would find the notion that eating shellfish is religiously prohibited, ridiculous.

- RJG, 14 August 2006
 * This is not pointing out an inconsistency, but I can understand it only as a means of propaganda. I mean, in the subject in question the distinction of the Old Law into a moral, a ceremonial and a juridical part has been all settled out. The cry that this defines away something while leaving other things according to the interpreters' own wishes should be taken for what it is, a defamatory accusation and nothing else, and disproved by the facts, namely the arguments of the Church Fathers. --93.133.216.20 (talk) 17:49, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Impartiality of several sections
This whole article smacks of personal opinion and research, including some statements that seem just wrong. For example;

"When used by conservative or fundamentalist Christians, it is often an expression of their preference for what they perceive to be a literal and uniform approach to the teachings and beliefs of Christianity, rather than the carefree do-what-you-want theology preferred by Liberal Christians and most Catholics."

is pejorative and would be said to be inaccurate by, well, most Catholics. -Senori 05:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Shortening the Article
I have shortened the article substantially and in the process I have removed the POV (which rose to the level of religious bigotry in some instances) and obscure sectarian material on Torah-Observant Christians as such groups are fairly marginal and are not entirely germane to the subject of this article. The article is about Christians who arguably selectively accept the Bible, not those who don't. (An article on the GOP wouldn't and shouldn't dedicate a third of its text to a discussion of the DNC either.) Eugeneacurry 23:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You've gutted the article and turned it into a stub which provides little actual information. At the minimum there certainly is no reason to bulk delete the entire External links section. Since you have taken it upon yourself to substantially shorten the article, I assume you will be adding to it, since it certainly is an article in need of expansion, not contraction. 69.104.122.199 21:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see how what was removed significantly added to the article; if it provides very little actual information now, it provided even lses before. -Senori 02:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Merging multiple related terms into one article
I found Cafeteria Catholicism, Lapsed Catholic, Sunday Christian, and Sunday Morning Christian floating around and I think they have a better chance at cleanup and to be a solid article if they were combined into this one. They all seem to describe the same basic concept, only under slightly different terms. On this talk page already it appears that how this term affects Catholics has already come up. I'm not sure how to decide which of the articles should be the main location for all of these articles, and I'm not endorsing Cafeteria Christianity as anything other than the central repository for this discussion. I'm also thinking something might be better served in wiktionary since these terms are generally Neologims - Optigan13 04:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that Sunday morning Christian and Sunday Christian should be merged into one article, and Cafeteria Christianity and Cafeteria Catholic should be merged into a separate article. The former describes people who don't practice Christianity but show up for church on Sunday. The latter may describe people who are very devout in their faith, but who reject certain teachings of their church, cafeteria style. Lapsed Catholic is different again, because they generally don't show up on Sundays. Peter Ballard 06:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree with Peter Ballard. Kjl 17:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, do what he said. ALTON   .ıl  06:35, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I've merged the articles as suggested by Peter Ballard. I've tried to integrate Cafeteria Catholic into this article somewhat, but it will still need some more refactoring and re-organization with the article to improve the structure and avoid repetition. Optigan13 07:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

literalistic Biblical interpretations?
I think it is dubious to say that Cafeteria Christianity means rejecting iteralistic Biblical interpretations. I thought it was to reject particular church teachings, or even mix (cafeteria style) teachings of different churches. So while a person might both be CC and anti-literalist, they needn't be both, because they are unrelated concepts. But still, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise if a cite can be provided - that section currently has no cites. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Contents
Does this article really need a contents at this point? To my mind, it's not long enough to warrant one.

70.49.136.169 (talk) 04:23, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * shrug: I can do that. -- Kendrick7talk 21:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality, Original Research
This article has serious problems of neutrality - it makes little attempt to provide a balanced point of view, and the points made are largely unsupported by citations. It also has a long section which appears to be original research - in mentioning the opinions of Popes Benedict and John Paul, it appears to imply that they support the description 'cafeteria christianity', even though it clearly states that the term has no official status. Since these papal statements make no reference to the term, the connection is only being made by this article - which constitutes original research. That's not to say that they are not talking about the same issue - very likely they are - but they are unconnected, except in so far as they both refer, separately, to a bigger issue, which is the degree to which it is appropriate for members of a religious faith to dissent from the teachings of that faith. They could both go in an article on that subject, but that is not what this article is.--Rbreen (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * What is this article about? I assume it is about these terms:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cafeteria+Christianity%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cafeteria+Christian%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cafeteria+Catholic%22


 * 68.126.20.224 (talk) 22:38, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Bishops owning slaves in the 1820s
The prevalent attitude of the American Catholic hierarchy, with some notable exceptions, was that many aspects of slavery were evil, but that to change the law would be, practically speaking, a greater evil. Some put forth strong arguments in favor of the institution of slavery; for example, Bishop John England of Charleston, who believed it to be among the accepted practices of the  early Church: "The right of the master, the duty of the slave, the lawfulness of continuing the relations, and the benevolence of religion in mitigating the sufferings ...   are the results exhibited by our view of the laws and facts during the first four centuries of Christianity." ADM (talk) 08:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of "Sources"
Under the section on so-called "cafeteria Catholics", the piece cited from the Washington Post is an op-ed. And the "Magic City Morning Star" is some guy's blog (with the masthead "All the News That Interests Me").
 * Good catch, anon. Magic City has got to go.  It's stuff like that that gives WP a bad name.  The Post article, however,  was written by Anthony Stevens-Arroyo.  His credentials are impressive: Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College, 50 scholarly articles, authored nine books, etc. Of course the Post is reliable.  Per WP:BLPSPS: "Some news organizations host online columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals." We should keep the Post source.Lionelt (talk) 08:24, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051125000537/http://www.christianpost.com/article/editorial/322/section/moralistic.therapeutic.deism--the.new.american.religion/1.htm to http://www.christianpost.com/article/editorial/322/section/moralistic.therapeutic.deism--the.new.american.religion/1.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041111081240/http://www.christring.org/pastorruss/CafeteriaChristianity.htm to http://www.christring.org/pastorruss/CafeteriaChristianity.htm
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