Since the
beginning of man, the adversary has used language to
disrupt and divide.
On several
recent trips, I have sat next to some very enthusiastic
Christians, who called other Christian denominations
other religions. Of course, when these denominations are
called other religions and the speaker knows that these
denominations believe in Jesus Christ or at least call
themselves Christian, then it is easy for the speaker to
become confused and believe that all other religions
have the same beliefs.
This is the
problem with language that changes. When Madison and
Jefferson wrote about religion, they were writing about
Baptists, Episcopalians and Catholics among other
denominations. They were not writing about Buddhism,
Hinduism and Shintoism, which are what we now consider
to be other religions and which do have very different
beliefs than Christians have. This linguistic shift may
be confusing more Americans than we know, including such
supposedly intelligent people as the justices of the
United States Supreme Court.
Older
Americans may say "Yes, we are Catholics or Baptists,
and you’re Episcopalians or Methodists, but we all
believe in the same God. We are just different
religions." Clarity here would be a great help.
Buddhists say
that they are non-theistic, that is they don’t believe
in God. Hindus are primarily monists. Shintoism is
polytheistic. Some religions are totemistic. These are
distinctly different religious thoughts.
If Christians
would see themselves as Christians first, and then
members of Christian denominations second, while other
religions such as Buddhism and Confusionism hold other
views, it would help clarify some of the problems we
face in our contemporary so-called culture wars.
