Consider an analogy: a Christian fundamentalist considers whether Christ’s resurrection didn’t really happen. He reasons: “But if the resurrection didn’t happen, then Christ is not God. And if Christ is not God, then humanity is not redeemed. Oh no!”
There’s clearly a mistake here, in that a revision of a single belief can lead to problems that are avoided by revising multiple beliefs at once. In the Christian fundamentalist case, atheists and non-fundamentalists already exist, so it’s pretty easy not to make this mistake.
“Christ was resurrected” isn’t a fundamentalist thing. It’s the Main Thing about Christianity. If you don’t believe it, you are a “cultural Christian” at most, which essentially all churches and communities say Does Not Count.
Good point; I was mentioning a fundamentalist mainly to ensure that they unironically have standard beliefs like the resurrection, but it applies to a lot more Christians than fundamentalists. (I think Unitarians don’t generally believe in the resurrection as a literal physical event?)
Yeah, contemporary Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in much in particular. Mostly they’re “people who would be atheists reconstructionist Jews (if they were ethnically Jewish), casual western Buddhists (if they were Californian), or “spiritual” (if they were middle-American young white women), but they are New Englanders descended from people named things like Hortense Rather.” It’s said that the only time you’ll hear “Jesus” in a Unitarian church is when the janitor stubs his toe. Most Christians consider them “historically and aesthetically connected to Christianity, but not actually Christian.” In the olden days they were more obviously “heterodox Christians”—like LDS, 7DA, or JW today, they would certainly consider themselves Christians holding the most truly Christian beliefs, though others considered them weirdos. I’m not sure how the transition occurred, but my impression is that the Universalism part of UU made it a uniquely easy religion to keep affirming as the early-20th-century weird-Christian milieu of New England rapidly turned into late-21st-century standard elite atheism.
“Christ was resurrected” isn’t a fundamentalist thing. It’s the Main Thing about Christianity. If you don’t believe it, you are a “cultural Christian” at most, which essentially all churches and communities say Does Not Count.
Good point; I was mentioning a fundamentalist mainly to ensure that they unironically have standard beliefs like the resurrection, but it applies to a lot more Christians than fundamentalists. (I think Unitarians don’t generally believe in the resurrection as a literal physical event?)
Yeah, contemporary Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in much in particular. Mostly they’re “people who would be atheists reconstructionist Jews (if they were ethnically Jewish), casual western Buddhists (if they were Californian), or “spiritual” (if they were middle-American young white women), but they are New Englanders descended from people named things like Hortense Rather.” It’s said that the only time you’ll hear “Jesus” in a Unitarian church is when the janitor stubs his toe. Most Christians consider them “historically and aesthetically connected to Christianity, but not actually Christian.” In the olden days they were more obviously “heterodox Christians”—like LDS, 7DA, or JW today, they would certainly consider themselves Christians holding the most truly Christian beliefs, though others considered them weirdos. I’m not sure how the transition occurred, but my impression is that the Universalism part of UU made it a uniquely easy religion to keep affirming as the early-20th-century weird-Christian milieu of New England rapidly turned into late-21st-century standard elite atheism.