Study Finds Fewer Evangelical Universalists than Reported

[JasonPratt]

Is that what gnosticism is? I can remember one of the books in the bible, where I think, Paul addresses this very problem. I wonder, though, if most Christians would define it this way because clearly most are under the assumption that right beliefs are what save us.

No, I think most wouldn’t…I wonder how people react when it’s presented that way?

In my experience they usually either:

(a) look puzzled because they’ve never even heard of gnosticism before;

or

(b) reply something like “No, Gnosticism is about Nature (or human sexuality) being created evil and needing to be destroyed, or about people doing anything they want (including sexually) because the body doesn’t matter, or Christ being a lesser goddy-type thing, or Christ never being Incarnated, or all things being God but ignorantly so and having to be wakened by the Christ messenger, or YHWH being basically Satan” (which are indeed various beliefs reported of Gnostic groups, but none of which have anything remotely to do with why the groups were called Gnostic).

A few people have read enough to get it, so they either already know it when I mention it, or they put the pieces together fast (in which case they’re either amused if they already have problems with the concept of salvation by doctrinal knowledge, or else they’re stunned and troubled that they’ve never figured out the connection before.)

[JasonPratt]

The problem isn’t creeds; even so-called “creedless” people and groups have creeds, if they have any beliefs at all.

I should have said “written creeds reinforced by a hierarchy to insure salvation”.

No disagreement here! And there’s the “gnostic” element of course.

What’s funny too is the name “Unitarian Universalist”, both terms holdovers from great doctrinal controversies.

Absolutely! The original unitarians and universalists (and unitarian universalists, though those don’t appear to have been combined until the late 18th and 19th centuries) were extremely serious about their doctrines. Which is why they made as many waves as they did. (Ironically, the modern UUs make waves for exactly the same reason, so far as they try to be relevant and challenging. As Dorothy Sayers used to say, the dogma is the drama.)

There’s a natural tendency, though (the opposite I guess of what you were talking about), to think in terms of “If X is good then more of X must be better.” So, “if changing this doctrine is good then changing more doctrines has to be better, right? Change is progress, right? And the most change is to drop a doctrine altogether, right? And if dropping one doctrine altogether is good then dropping all doctrines has to be the best progress, right?!”

So once major changes start rolling off in plurals, it feels harder and harder to say “whoa, no more paring off now!”

[JasonPratt]

I should add in fairness, that just because Santa was punching out Arius on the side of popular belief, doesn’t mean trinitarians didn’t start punching out the populace (so to speak) on the side of trinitarian belief eventually.

That sadly happened, too. And not too long after Nicea. Even though there was a period of time throughout the rest of that century when the Arians were the ones swooping in with the black helicopters instead. Then it was the turn of the trinitarians for a while, then the Arian Christians again at the fall of Rome, then the Arian non-Christians (so to speak) for a while, and then the trinitarians got busy competing with the Muslims on who could punch out the most common people faster… (Charlemagne was a great king in several regards, for example, but his attitude toward ‘evangelization’ was horridly oppressive. Not so great at being loyal to his wife, either. )

When the sordid history of what has passed for official evangelism during much of Christian history is considered, I really can’t blame people for trying to ditch the whole thing as being some diabolical evil. Even if they don’t believe in diabolos.

(That’s a very skewed look at the full record of Christian evangelism, of course. But the other side can’t be overlooked or whitewashed away either. )

[Gregory_MacDonald]

On the basic question of how many Christian universalists there are (once the terms are correctly understood) … I have no idea. But there are more than there used to be and not as many as there will be.

Sales on the orginal book have been pretty good for an academicish book but not amazing (something in the region of 3000).

I do not have delusions of grandeur and know that the book is only a small drop in the bucket. However, it does seem to have had some effect. I regularly get emails from people who read it and, at very least, found it plausible. Universalism is very much more on the table for discussion now amongst certain sections of evangelicalism than it was. If the book played a role in making it more OK to be universalis—and I think that it has—then I am pleased.

It is also being read in seminaries where the next generation of leaders and teachers are being trained … so who knows what the eventual impact will be. That is in God’s hands.

The new book is too new to have sales data on yet.

re: studies. The problem with studies is that, on this issue, those asking the question are usually not clear what universalism is nor are those being asked. Without that kind of clarity I would not trust the results. But I do know that we are very much a minority so any poll that says we are is no big surprise anyway (even if it was problem-free).

Thankfully the truth of universalism is not dependent on how many people believe in it.

[firstborn888]

When the sordid history of what has passed for official evangelism during much of Christian history is considered, I really can’t blame people for trying to ditch the whole thing as being some diabolical evil. Even if they don’t believe in diabolos.

(That’s a very skewed look at the full record of Christian evangelism, of course. But the other side can’t be overlooked or whitewashed away either. )

It’s amazing to me how much things have changed in the last couple of hundred years and yet how little credit is given to “the age of reason” for the transformation of how the church does it’s business.