Husker- I am curious. You seem to be focused on Christians becoming agnostics or atheists. You apparently are not interested in what Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists etc. have to say. Any particular reason?
Don't have time to answer right now but I will when I can.
Just coming up for a little air.
Observant Jews etc, consider the Messianic Jews to be Christians, not Jews.
Stessid:
There are many conversions from Christianity to Judiasm for both the Conservative and Reform denominations. Fewer to Orthodox Judiasm.
Some conversions are for spiritual reasons others for marriage.
Some Chrisitans will convert, when they adopt a child, whose natural parents were Jewish and would like to have the child reared in Judaism.
Many Jewish Congregations offer conversion classes, that last up to a year. A popular course in Boston area is "Taste of Judaism", which is a course for couples and singles considering conversion.
Well, they are right. People that consider Jesus Christ being a Savior, are Christians. This Christian denomination calls itself "Messianic Jews", but this does not make them less Christian than all the other Protestants.
au:
I've know many people who converted to Judaism. As a matter of fact, most Rabbis wil NOT marry a Jew and a Christian. The latter must convert to Judaism before the ceremony can be performed.
ALSO: Most Rabbis will not participate in an interdenominational wedding ceremony.
The Messianic Jews are very active in New York. Also active in the Boston area. They don't seem to very religious.
There is a slight rate of conversion of American Jews to Islam. I've never heard of a Muslim converting to Judaism.
Secular Jews?
Steissd: Not so in New York or even in the Boston area.
Believe it or not Orthodox Judaism amongst Harvard University students is
very evident .
Really? Hmm, in Israel everyone is fed up with Orthodoxy...
Fbaezer,
Liberation theology was an exciting movement, was it not?
Most of my family were Baptists, though my Aunt converted to Catholism. After my mother remarried to a Mormon, our upbringing was in that religion. As a child I was very religious. I remember sneaking into random churches to secretly leave small change on their alters. I learned to read very early, and was encouraged to read on a wide variety of subjects. Voltaire was probably the most influential of those I read as a child. Though Enlightenment thinking planted the seeds of rebellion, I eventually became a Priest in the Church of Latter Day Saints. My questioning made people uncomfortable and defensive. By the time I ran away to sea, I had pretty much abandoned Christianity. I remained basically a religious person, but unable to accept the notion that Faith trumps Reason.
In phase two, I read extensively into the basic texts of non-Christian religions and was dissatisfied with them all. Judaism and Islam were as bad as Christianity. I looked into the Jains, Hinduism, and the teachings of Zarathustra. There were features in many that struck a chord, but nothing set my heart on fire. Taoism and Buddhism came closest to the vague star toward which I was traveling. By the time I dropped out of my first college, I was intellectually a Buddhist without ever actually meeting a Buddhist.
I arrived in San Francisco determined to find a Buddhist teacher and to more effectively participate in the movement to have the Civil Rights of Blacks enforced. When I left the campus in Ashland, I carried everything I owned in two heavy suitcases. One had my cloths and personal effects; the other was stuffed with books. I knew nothing of San Francisco, and so I had no destination in mind when I left the Greyhound station. I sweated up San Francisco hills until I could go no further. I sat down on my suitcases, and noted a small sign across the street advertising a room with kitchen privileges. Both the room and the rent were small. "There's just one thing", the landlord cautioned. "Everyone who lives here are Buddhists who attend a temple around the corner. You will have to abide by the life-style of my other residents." The next day I was introduced to Roshi Suzuki and he accepted me as a pupil. The monastery experience was wonderful, but limiting for a young buck still motivated to participate in the world.
I was restless and wanted to meet "regular" people for conversation that had nothing to do with Buddhism, so occasionally I slipped out to the local coffee house. There I met old Wobblies, Beatnicks, poets, and folks to play chess with. One evening I met my future wife, who was an aspiring actress with the San Francisco Actors Workshop. Ah, the temptations of the flesh. A few weeks later Natalie found us an apartment up on Russian Hill. It was a third floor walk-up without electricity, but with real gas powered lights. We had a view of Alcatraz by leaning out one of the windows, and below us was North Beach. Friends carried a refrigerator up to the apartment and we powered it and an electric skillet by running an extension cord to the house next door. I continued to be a practicing Buddhist, but became ever more involved in the intellectual life of North Beach. The Beatniks were favorably receiving my drawings and paintings.
I continued my study of Asian philosophy and religion. I attended classes in various subjects at San Francisco area colleges as a phantom student. Natalie and I were married by the highest ranking Soto Buddhist "Bishop" in the Hewitt Street Temple in Los Angeles where we remained part of the congregation for many years. I eventually formally completed a couple BA's (one in History and the other in Asian Studies). I thought that I would probably end up teaching in a University somewhere, so I did graduate work in Chinese and Oriental Philosophy and Religion. About that time some things happened that I can't talk about which diverted me into a different career path.
Oh well, that's enough of a stroll down memory lane.
ew Haven
I have never known any people who have converted to Judaism. But I know many Jews who have intermarried and in all instances there children have either accepted Christianity or follow no religion at all. I should add that in most instances they follow no religion.
steissd
I have heard that. Is it because they do not contribute to the State Of Israel just take.
I was raised Presbyterian (Methodist in the summers). I was never a born-again kind of Christian, but figured that if I was good and went to church and did what I was supposed to, God might eventually make his presence known to me. When I was 16 I read the entire Bible, realized that it was not the divinely inspired Word of God but simply a collection of diverse writings, and stopped expecting God to show up. But I still believed in religion as a force for good in the community.
That all changed when I encountered the smug arrogance, ignorance, and intolerance of certain fanatical Christians posting on Abuzz (glad to see that they aren't here), and began to see how the cognitive dissonance generated by the necessity of believing illogical and contradictory things can warp minds. It seems that Christians are required to believe that a good and perfect God who created everything was not responsible for the bad stuff or the flaws in our bodies that were supposedly perfectly designed, commanded his people not to kill and then demanded that they slaughter women and children, gave people free will but punishes them for exercising it, changed his mind about the laws and perpetual covenant he gave to the Israelites but neglected to inform any of his priests and prophets, and had to sacrifice his son to himself to allow himself to save people from the hell he created to punish them for committing sins that were inevitable given the way he designed them. I now think of fundamentalists as "people of the lie" since they cling to patently false ideas and deny or distort anything that contradicts their beliefs.
I was surprised to find that God's son walking on earth, doing miracles and being crucified and resurrected was not noted by historians of the time or mentioned in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There were many fraudulent writings about Jesus and centuries of controversy about which books to include in the NT. The church adopted ideas of Paul instead of following what Jesus taught. There does not seem to be any way of determining whether there really is a god, what it expects of us, which purported instructions to discard and which to follow, and why any real deity would want to be worshiped.
I am now agnostic, only because I cannot rule out the possibility that an imperfect and irrational god might be responsible for the absurdities of this universe.
And maybe you should attribute absurdities and injustice to influence of the devil?
and who created the devil? i'm guessing it was commie pinko liberal secular atheists or the national academy of sciences.
