Jack AMA vol 2

Jack of Spades said:

I can't really say do I see them or not in the streets, there aren't really Christians who would distinct themselves by wearing something special or acting publicly differently than rest of the people. I do know personally Christians, those are pentecostals and Lutherans. I have pentecostal relatives who are rather conservative, but my Lutheran friends are generally of the liberal end of the scheme.

Generally speaking about religion here: There are pretty conservative Christian groups, like Pentecostals (2% of population) and Eastern Orthodoxes (1%). But most Christians here are Lutherans, and there are many kinds of Lutherans. The Lutheran church is the old state church here. With Lutherans it's much more difficult to give any numbers about conservatives or liberals, because majority of the population are officially Lutherans (75% of finns are officially members of the church). So, it's statistically difficult to tell who's liberal or who's conservative because they're both members of the same church.

Most Lutherans are pretty liberal. What is normal Scandinavian Lutheran Christian, would likely not be considered Christian at all with the CF standards. But some lutherans are hard line conservatives or moderate cons, and well, the church is always in turmoil about this and that. You might imagine, if you put 75% of population of a country into one church and everyone there has their own idea what Christianity, the church and Lutheranism is about, outcome can't be much else than unsolvable mess.

It's also worth to note that other denominations than Lutherans don't really have much of liberal wing, because as soon as someone starts to develop liberal views, they leave that church and join the Lutheran church.

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Jack of Spades said:

I don't really have an opinion on what "actual Christian" is, usually I let people identify themselves and go by that. But if we use as a definition people who would themselves identify as a Christian, I think majority of the church members wouldn't call themselves Christian in their private lives. I'm not sure about numbers, but I think it's a good bet that there are at least as much practising Christians in Lutheran Church than in all other Christian denominations in Finland put together. But that depends on how you want to draw the lines and define what makes person count as a Christian.

In a country with a state church, the line between Christians and non-Christians gets very vague because majority of population has some sort of relationship to the church and religion, so there are alot shades of gray on how seriously they take the religion. On one end there are people who openly claim that they have no religious beliefs, but stay as a members for sake of tradition and on other end are the strict Lutheran dogmatist puritans. And then there are like 100 different versions inbetween.

For normal people, being a member of the state church is about traditions, like church weddings etc. Historically Finland was 100% Lutheran country for couple of centuries, so pretty much everything that's Lutheran tradition is by default Finnish tradition. There are also large number of people who couldn't really name any particular reason why they are members of the church and have just never questioned it. Lutheran church baptizes people as babies and they are members from that moment on, so the membership easily passes on to next generation if the parents are Lutheran.

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Jack of Spades said:

I actually get it. People doing that here are called "Cultural Christians" which means that for them, there is nothing spiritual or divine in it, most of them are agnostics or atheists, but they enjoy religious culture or some elements of it for some reason. The Lutheran church has no problem with that kind of members, so they're welcomed in the church.

I think they're okay, they are openly what they are, so it's not hypocrisy or pretending. Of course their views are almost opposite to my own (I'm interested about spirituality, not really about traditions) but I'm actually glad if atheists and agnostic find something positive about religion. Makes them less anti-religious.

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Jack of Spades said:

Nice to see you too Quieted!





I love poetic expressions or symbolic language mixed in with "normal language". Anything that's spiced up with poetic expressions and such is great!

Last actual poetry I've read was The Kalevala. I didn't read all of it tho, just some parts.

As for writing poetic stuff, I can write sort of a poem or song in Finnish, but if I tried to do that in English, it would be just tragicomic because of the clumsy output.

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Jack of Spades said:

Nice to see you too Quieted!





I love poetic expressions or symbolic language mixed in with "normal language". Anything that's spiced up with poetic expressions and such is great!

Last actual poetry I've read was The Kalevala. I didn't read all of it tho, just some parts.

As for writing poetic stuff, I can write sort of a poem or song in Finnish, but if I tried to do that in English, it would be just tragicomic because of the clumsy output.

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grandvizier1006 said:

I wish I could write poetry. It's one of those art forms that needs a revival.

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Jack of Spades said:

No snow here yet

I promise, if I'm around on CF at winter, I'm going to build a snowman and take a pic of it for you!

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Jack of Spades said:

Deal!

First snow should come around next month here.

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