One of the parents in the group challenged this; she thought ranges of belief occurred between Christian churches, but that people in the same church believed the same things.
She is so, so wrong. I majored in Religion in college, and for one of my classes (New Religious Movements in America) I attended a Charismatic (neo-Pentacostalist) church in town for several weeks, interviewed the Pastor and various people who attended, and wrote my term paper about them. This church attracted a large number of people who take the Bible as literally as possible, and quite a few people who would self-describe as Fundamentalist Christians. And yet I found an incredible diversity of belief there. Just one example: the Pastor, for the most part, believed that only men should be pastors. However, two of the female students who attended believed that they were being called to the ministry, so he was helping them prepare their applications to seminaries.
Some of the diversity here was propelled by the fact that this was a church where people were supposed to be having intense mystical experiences on a regular basis; I routinely saw people stand up and interrupt the Pastor's sermons to "prophesy," and things like that. When everyone has a direct wavelength to God, and everyone's getting somewhat contradictory messages, you need to have a fair amount of tolerance for ambiguity.
Still. This church was absolutely nothing like I'd expected. That project taught me to question a lot of my assumptions about the spiritual lives of others, and I realized that conservative Christians are a FAR more diverse group than they seem from the outside.
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She is so, so wrong. I majored in Religion in college, and for one of my classes (New Religious Movements in America) I attended a Charismatic (neo-Pentacostalist) church in town for several weeks, interviewed the Pastor and various people who attended, and wrote my term paper about them. This church attracted a large number of people who take the Bible as literally as possible, and quite a few people who would self-describe as Fundamentalist Christians. And yet I found an incredible diversity of belief there. Just one example: the Pastor, for the most part, believed that only men should be pastors. However, two of the female students who attended believed that they were being called to the ministry, so he was helping them prepare their applications to seminaries.
Some of the diversity here was propelled by the fact that this was a church where people were supposed to be having intense mystical experiences on a regular basis; I routinely saw people stand up and interrupt the Pastor's sermons to "prophesy," and things like that. When everyone has a direct wavelength to God, and everyone's getting somewhat contradictory messages, you need to have a fair amount of tolerance for ambiguity.
Still. This church was absolutely nothing like I'd expected. That project taught me to question a lot of my assumptions about the spiritual lives of others, and I realized that conservative Christians are a FAR more diverse group than they seem from the outside.