- Nov 16, 2016
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Well, as often happens, @dzheremi, you are more on top of things than I am, but I will venture a response, sort of:
1) Re: comparisons with majority-RC countries, I have zero direct experience of those countries, so I am not even going to pretend here. The "cultural Catholicism" that I am familiar with in the US, however, does not involve people identifying as RC who were never baptized and who never attend services (or maybe a funeral or something every so often). I have never encountered this. "Why do you wear that cross?" "I'm Catholic." "So you were baptized as a child or an adult, right?" "No."
I know nothing about the Coptic context, but I would guess (and you will tell me, I hope, if this is way off) that you, a convert, would be surprised to hear that a 20-year-old from an Egyptian family in the US sometimes attended services and even communed but had never been baptized and this somehow slipped through the cracks. Or that an Egyptian in Egypt was from a Christian family and "identified" openly as a Coptic Christian but had never been baptized.
2) With the language stuff, maybe I am being a dolt, but it seems to me that the situation that I described (not at all universal, but it certainly does occur) was different from your examples. You would not feel a strong need to test people's proficiency if they themselves say they have no / extremely low proficiency, right? "No, I can't speak Spanish, or barely." "Prove it in a laboratory setting!"
In other words, I meant that in this context, with religion (at least E. Orthodoxy), there is a component missing from the local conception that we on TAW would expect is basic -- having been baptized and chrismated at some point. "Yes, I'm an Orthodox Christian, but I was never baptized (and this isn't a problem in need of correction" is a possible sentence or sentiment in that context although we would not expect it to be so.
Similarly, we expect that one has or at least once had some solid, age-appropriate proficiency in one's "native language." But it is possible for someone to claim that language X is their native language and that they don't / can't speak it and never did or could. i.e. - you say "no differently than a Belarusian who can't speak their own language claiming to speak Belarusian natively would be incorrect" but I mean "a Belarusian who can't speak Belarusian (or not well at all) and says she can't speak it (or not well) and says it is her native language [родной язык]" is clearly not "lying," so must mean something other than what we expect by "native language."
In other words, I am saying that in East Slavic countries, in my experience, there is a current of a kind of "tribal identity" that allows people to claim as part of "who they are" although they themselves recognize and openly state that they lack something that we would expect is foundational to that claim.
None of which means that there are not baptized EO Christians, even lots, in the Russian Federation. But that in such a context, notions of religious identity are more slippery than we, with our focus on reception into a Christian confession / communion, tend to expect, and that therefore a survey of what people identify as means less, in our terms, than we expect.
In other words: yes, it is probably true in many places that more people claim faith X than go to church and do anything about it. But if we affirm that Baptism and Chrismation are necessary to be received into the faith...and some folks who claim that faith are not baptized and chrismated...then how are we counting people, again?
1) Re: comparisons with majority-RC countries, I have zero direct experience of those countries, so I am not even going to pretend here. The "cultural Catholicism" that I am familiar with in the US, however, does not involve people identifying as RC who were never baptized and who never attend services (or maybe a funeral or something every so often). I have never encountered this. "Why do you wear that cross?" "I'm Catholic." "So you were baptized as a child or an adult, right?" "No."
I know nothing about the Coptic context, but I would guess (and you will tell me, I hope, if this is way off) that you, a convert, would be surprised to hear that a 20-year-old from an Egyptian family in the US sometimes attended services and even communed but had never been baptized and this somehow slipped through the cracks. Or that an Egyptian in Egypt was from a Christian family and "identified" openly as a Coptic Christian but had never been baptized.
2) With the language stuff, maybe I am being a dolt, but it seems to me that the situation that I described (not at all universal, but it certainly does occur) was different from your examples. You would not feel a strong need to test people's proficiency if they themselves say they have no / extremely low proficiency, right? "No, I can't speak Spanish, or barely." "Prove it in a laboratory setting!"
In other words, I meant that in this context, with religion (at least E. Orthodoxy), there is a component missing from the local conception that we on TAW would expect is basic -- having been baptized and chrismated at some point. "Yes, I'm an Orthodox Christian, but I was never baptized (and this isn't a problem in need of correction" is a possible sentence or sentiment in that context although we would not expect it to be so.
Similarly, we expect that one has or at least once had some solid, age-appropriate proficiency in one's "native language." But it is possible for someone to claim that language X is their native language and that they don't / can't speak it and never did or could. i.e. - you say "no differently than a Belarusian who can't speak their own language claiming to speak Belarusian natively would be incorrect" but I mean "a Belarusian who can't speak Belarusian (or not well at all) and says she can't speak it (or not well) and says it is her native language [родной язык]" is clearly not "lying," so must mean something other than what we expect by "native language."
In other words, I am saying that in East Slavic countries, in my experience, there is a current of a kind of "tribal identity" that allows people to claim as part of "who they are" although they themselves recognize and openly state that they lack something that we would expect is foundational to that claim.
None of which means that there are not baptized EO Christians, even lots, in the Russian Federation. But that in such a context, notions of religious identity are more slippery than we, with our focus on reception into a Christian confession / communion, tend to expect, and that therefore a survey of what people identify as means less, in our terms, than we expect.
In other words: yes, it is probably true in many places that more people claim faith X than go to church and do anything about it. But if we affirm that Baptism and Chrismation are necessary to be received into the faith...and some folks who claim that faith are not baptized and chrismated...then how are we counting people, again?
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