Messiah: Complex

Our second episode on the Abrahamic traditions is about Christianity, the most popular religion in the world. Katie and Preston give a high-level overview of the history, traditions, observances, and the handful of common beliefs that are found amongst all denominations.

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Episode Transcript

Katie Dooley  00:00
Hi Preston 

Preston Meyer  00:10
Hi Katie

Katie Dooley  00:12
And welcome you

Preston Meyer  00:13
To the Holy Watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  00:19
Today's a big one. 

Preston Meyer  00:21
Yeah, it's the big one. I mean, we say big. There's an awful lot of Christians in this world.

Katie Dooley  00:28
I mean, it's the biggest,

Preston Meyer  00:31
Is it numerically actually the biggest? Okay.

Katie Dooley  00:34
It's followed closely by Islam,

Preston Meyer  00:37
Right. 

Katie Dooley  00:38
Which is two weeks from now. 

Preston Meyer  00:41
We will be talking about many, many religions as we keep going through this path of exploring the Western and Eastern traditions, a label, which of course you'll remember, I don't like 

Katie Dooley  00:51
We don't like it. 

Preston Meyer  00:54
All right. 

Katie Dooley  00:54
So Christianity, Mr. Christian. I feel like you are the more experienced of the two of us on this topic.

Preston Meyer  01:06
I have plenty of experience.

Katie Dooley  01:07
First-hand experience, for once

Preston Meyer  01:11
Yes, I am a Christian theology instructor. I have been for quite a long time I've 

Katie Dooley  01:16
You are Christian

Preston Meyer  01:19
I'm a Christian. I've been involved with Christian community for the last eightteen years. 19 years. It's been 19 years. That's kind of weird. Yeah, I've been teaching theology for a while. That's how where I got. That's the field in which I got my degree is Christian Theology and Religious Studies. Of course, they're two different things. But they have mixed very well for my studies, which is a lot of fun. And is a really complicated subject to try and cram into an episode of our podcast. 

Katie Dooley  01:56
Yeah, I guess we'll see how long we talk for. I've said this before, this might be a two-parter, and it never has been yet, so... 

Preston Meyer  02:04
We'll see. 

Katie Dooley  02:04
We'll see. I think we've done a pretty good job in planning that this will be a very broad, 

Preston Meyer  02:12
But relatively concise,

Katie Dooley  02:13
Broad, but concise summary of beliefs and practices and history. And of course, I know, some of the episodes we have planned going further, we'll dive into more specific areas of Christianity. But if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please drop us a line on Facebook, Instagram, or our email, all of them are [email protected] for the email, and handles are Holy Watermelon Pod, and we'd love to hear your suggestions and feedback for episodes.

Preston Meyer  02:49
Absolutely. If we can make this a discussion that involves your voices in addition to ours, we're gonna enjoy our company a lot better. 

Katie Dooley  02:59
So I think it's fair to say Christianity has a firmer start date than Judaism. 

Preston Meyer  03:05
Yeah, 

Katie Dooley  03:05
Judaism kind of just morphed from older religions.

Preston Meyer  03:10
It definitely looks that way from pretty much every perspective, 

Katie Dooley  03:14
Whereas...

Preston Meyer  03:15
The tricky thing is we don't have any sure day on when Moses is supposed to have been born.

Katie Dooley  03:19
Well, I mean, that's 4000 years ago, we're really starting to push it at that point. But Christianity has a standing JC 

Preston Meyer  03:27
Yeah. 

Katie Dooley  03:28
So that's, that's the starting point.

Preston Meyer  03:32
Yeah. Josh was later later, surnamed oily Josh was born approximately 2020 years ago. It's kind of convenient that we have a calendar that's based on the supposed time of his birth. Of course, there's loads of discussion on why that's not a very good estimation, why people think it's off.

Katie Dooley  03:56
Is it because we've changed our calendars? 

Preston Meyer  03:57
No, there's a good handful of scholars who are on one particular side of the argument say that Jesus was born probably four BC, four years earlier than what is typically commonly expected. This number is primarily driven by the chronology and the timing of the death of Herod the Great, the story of Matthew says that Herod the Great, was so worried about this rising up of the King of the Jews, that he had all the babies killed. And there's already some historical issues here. But for for that story to be true about Jesus, then Jesus had to have been born around four BC because Herod died a few years before one ad. So, which is the first year of our Lord It's not there's no year zero, it's not the year after the birth year before, it's year before and the year of 

Katie Dooley  05:06
A one and one. 

Preston Meyer  05:07
Yep. Calendars are tricky. There's usually not zero years and calendars. I'm not aware of a calendar that has a zero year. But I'm also allowing myself to get easily distracted from an interesting topic. So there's, I could go on for a whole hour on just the topic of the timing of when Jesus was born. I don't happen to believe that part of the story in the first few chapters of Matthew, that say anything about King Herod, popular Jewish literature of the time, attributes a very similar story to Abraham. And the way things go in Judaic literature is if you want somebody to look holy, or to appear to fill any of the same roles as another former great leader, you tell the exact same story about them. And so, as I think we talked about before, there's not a whole lot about the story of Jesus, that the first telling of that happening was to Jesus. This is definitely an example of that problem. Jesus, his story really begins with the important stuff when he was about 30 years old. Described as his cousin, good old John the Baptist, and then immediately starts teaching and beginning his life as a rabbi. And then tells everybody loads of things about how to be a good person, be a good neighbour, be a good friend. And then also says a few things that really offend an awful lot of people and gets killed.

Katie Dooley  06:47
Wow, yeah, short and sweet, 

Preston Meyer  06:50
Right? And so the Christian religion, when it exactly started, it's pretty easy to say, Jesus, having students as a rabbi in approximately 30 AD, is a fairly sound beginning. There's definitely a completely different organization at that point than there is 100 years later, or even 10 years later, let's be real. The churches established by the apostles are structurally very different and can't really be said to be the same church that Jesus started. But the doctrines and the dogma and the creeds and beliefs stem from the mortal ministry of Jesus and the miracles that He did to convince people that he was worth listening to. He fed an awful lot of people, whether they were rich or poor, he warns the rich that they're not going to go to heaven. This is very offensive to people in America who feel that you can't possibly have God's favor unless you are rich. It's a problem.

Katie Dooley  08:05
Well, I mean, there's a lot of wealthy churches out there. So that's probably a problem, too.

Preston Meyer  08:12
Yeah. Christianity is tricky. But yeah, it started with a guy. I don't think it's fair to just call him a guy who was in the Middle East, he was a Jew. He grew up in the Pharisaic tradition, he taught in the same way that all of the Pharisaic rabbis around him did. And this is very evident when reading the Bible. And if you have any familiarity with how the rabbis have argued, if you read the Talmud, or the Mishnah, in general, there's loads of arguing between people who have an education. It's almost like what we see today in university situations where you have to defend your thesis to be considered a doctor. Not wildly different. And that's that's who Jesus was as a mortal person was a person who argued on awful lot Well, we talked about this last episode that the Jewish community is waiting for the Messiah to come Christian believe the Messiah has come it was Jesus. Jesus is the Son of David that's going to rebuild the temple yeah and he didn't build anything as far as we have any record, 

Katie Dooley  09:28
Maybe a table. He was a carpenter, 

Preston Meyer  09:30
See, that's actually also a tricky thing. He might not- 

Katie Dooley  09:33
He didn't build a table!?

Preston Meyer  09:35
Though that is a very heartwarming scene and the Passion of the Christ seeing him build a table and having a high up being all prophetic that we're going to sit up here one day instead of these low tables where we're chilling out on our sides. This isn't even a visual medium, it doesn't matter.

Katie Dooley  09:50
Yeah, a person's like leaning and miming all of this just so everyone knows. He's really into it Yet, 

Preston Meyer  09:56
I talk with my hands and I draw things and one day well actually just straight up, have a show where people can see us. That'll be great. In the meantime, just miming for your entertainment. So there's there's no real evidence that Jesus was a carpenter at all. There's the word that has occasionally been translated as carpenter in the New Testament that's used to describe Jesus. And later in Latin, they doubled down and committed. Yeah, totally. Jesus was a carpenter. And that's where that tradition comes from. The Greek word translates more fairly to craftsman as a broader word. And if Jesus was, in fact, from the town that we now call Nazareth, it wasn't called Nazareth, when Jesus was born, according to all of the historians and archaeologists that we found, if he was from that town, it would make a lot more sense that he was actually a stone cutter. So slightly more likely that he would have actually built something that was meant to endure like a temple, but probably didn't build a temple.  right. Both just says the Jews are waiting for the Messiah to come, the Christians are waiting for him to come again. And the plan is that the temple will then be rebuilt.

Katie Dooley  10:45
I don't know what's with all this procrastination

Preston Meyer  11:27
Right? We just wait. We sit and wait, and we hope for the best. And some of us try not to be dicks in the meantime.

Katie Dooley  11:37
So the Christians had their Bible.

Preston Meyer  11:42
Oh, you're already on rocky ground.

Katie Dooley  11:45
Okay. We're going to do a full Bible episode so...

Preston Meyer  11:48
But I'll give a quick summary. So we talked before in the last episode that the Jews have the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nephi. And the Ketuvim. Christians have the Christian New Testament sometimes called the Greek Bible or the Greek New Testament. Luckily, the Catholic Church managed to nail down a solid 27 texts that make up the New Testament, and everybody splintered off after that point. So all Christians pretty much agree on the 27 books, the Bible, Luther wasn't too fond on the Epistle of James, there's loads of people who would like to write off the Revelation of John, but for the most part of the canon is those 27 texts. The Old Testament, which I've mentioned before, I like to call the Hebrew Bible, when it's appropriate, as much as I can remember to do so. The Old Testament is a different thing than the Hebrew Bible. Because the Hebrew Bible is 39 books. In the Christian tradition, the number is smaller, in, in the Hebrew tradition, they've combined a few books, they they've got a bunch of books got split in half, and they translated them into Greek, in the handful of centuries of the former era, the before Christ times. And so that the number got expanded a little bit, but also the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, translated in Egypt, by a group, by Jews, who spoke Greek and could read and write it. They included a lot more books than are included in the newer Masoretic text of this of the Tanakh. And so the Orthodox Christians, Russians, Ukrainians that the Eastern Orthodox collection

Katie Dooley  13:50
There's also an Asian orthodox 

Preston Meyer  13:53
There is 

Katie Dooley  13:54
Which I don't know a lot about but I just thought it was important to mention that there's the Eastern European 

Preston Meyer  13:58
And then there's further Yeah,

Katie Dooley  14:00
Even further east 

Preston Meyer  14:02
There's so many different churches and blocks of churches within the umbrella of Christianity that there's there's not one thing that you can say about Christianity and their doctrines or their beliefs or their creeds. That is correct, if you want to make it universal, except for we believe in Jesus.

Katie Dooley  14:27
I, I think the only thing I remember hearing is that Jesus is the Son of God. 

Preston Meyer  14:33
Yes. 

Katie Dooley  14:34
Is what makes a Christian because then you get religious scholars who believe in a historical Jesus, that doesn't make them Christian, 

Preston Meyer  14:41
Right. 

Katie Dooley  14:41
So the lowest common denominator in Christianity is Jesus is the Son of God. And we'll dive into this at another point, but like, I'm a firm believer that if you think Jesus is the Son of God, you're a Christian even if you're Westboro Baptist Church, you have- 

Preston Meyer  15:01
Worst kind of Christian

Katie Dooley  15:02
-garbage doctrine. You are a Christian. And I, you know, and same thing for Islam. If you believe that Muhammad is the prophet, and you're a part of ISIS, then yeah, you're still a Muslim, you're a bad Muslim, but you're still a Muslim. And I think that's an important conversation to have in the world of moderation. And that some of these, these groups have to moderate themselves. If you think if you're a Christian, you think Westboro Baptist Church is bad. You need to be having those conversations in your congregation, or in your home and with your community, that you know, this. Yes, they're Christian, but this is not acceptable way to be anyway. Sorry, that was a little soapbox. I got I'm gonna step down now.

Preston Meyer  15:53
All right. It's okay, to have soapbox moments. This actually, that was really, really normal, say 200 years ago, for Christian preachers to actually jump up on a soapbox and shout at people. 

Katie Dooley  16:10
It's still kinda normal 

Preston Meyer  16:11
I mean, here. Sometimes when we go downtown, I definitely see dudes on soapbox is shouting at each other. And that's not the way Jesus taught at all. I mean, sometimes he had to lift his voice to be heard by what is reported to be huge numbers of people I feel like 5000 people listening to Jesus at any given time seems unrealistic. I feel like it's being artificially planted. Right? Well, even if you had, as was sometimes practice, a person speaking, and then people like, just at the cusp of hearing range, they would shout to the next people down, which would probably also be distracting to the dude in the middle, but also

Katie Dooley  16:57
Like, telephone, 

Preston Meyer  17:00
Right? It causes some serious problems, that things would be left out, things would be reworded in a way that can be very problematic. I mean, 2000 years of Christianity has shown us that pretty effectively. There's, there's a lot that distract from the what I wanted to say about the Bible. So there was this Bible that was produced by Jewish scholars in Egypt, putting the Bible into Greek, they included a lot more books than is included in the Mesorah. So the Greek Orthodox Church has them as part of the canon, the Septuagint includes a whole bunch of extra books, their Bible is longer. And the Catholics generally don't have it in the main text of their Bible, we have the word Apocrypha, primarily in our language today, because of the title of these books, as a group, also called Deutero-Canon, like it's in the canon, but it's second class kind of deal. So they're books that are recognized, but they're not authoritative. And some of them are nifty books. And some of them are really cool stories that like just as valid as other parts of the Bible, and so on, they're like, that's a good reason. You got that,

Katie Dooley  18:15
Just to backtrack a bit

Preston Meyer  18:18
I had to backtrack to get to the Bible thing.

Katie Dooley  18:20
Just like we're going in circles. Christianity has dozens, if not hundreds, of denominations, but I did want to let our congregants know that Christianity can be broken down into three big ones, which then break down further. So you have Orthodox Christianity, you have Catholicism, and then you have Protestantism, which we'll get into in more detail, but

Preston Meyer  18:45
You have smaller groups that don't really fit into those categories. But they're smaller groups. That's the way that goes.

Katie Dooley  18:51
Yeah. And so, chronologically, it sort of starts with orthodox and I feel like those started around the same time. Protestant- Protestantism is the newest one, and it comes out of Catholicism, which we'll get to but Preston's going to  jump in and correct me.

Preston Meyer  19:07
Yeah. So Christianity has never been properly united, even biblical, like the first decades of Christianity, Peter and Paul, who, for some reason, share a feast day, 

Katie Dooley  19:25
But they hate each other. 

Preston Meyer  19:26
I wouldn't say they hate each other. They disagreed on an awful lot on some pretty high-profile topics. 

Katie Dooley  19:33
Weren't they both there? 

Preston Meyer  19:35
Paul was, far as we know, never witnessed to anything that Jesus did while he was alive. But the story is that while he was off persecuting Christians for being terrible Jews, he was struck with a vision and went blind briefly, and saw Jesus say, stop being a dick. Here I Am become a Christian? And then he did. He quickly led 

Katie Dooley  20:05
I can't believe Jesus just called me a dick!

Preston Meyer  20:08
Right? Book of Mormon musical some good fun. And so Paul, after having seen Jesus went and hung out with the Christians and quickly led, rose to leadership, and wrote, basically half of the New Testament and famously disagreed with Peter on a bunch of things, called Peter out on being a bad Jew sometimes, when Peter was like, I'm not so worried about being a Jew. I'm a Christian. Peter has some struggles in his life, Paul has struggles in his 

Katie Dooley  20:45
Don't we all?

Preston Meyer  20:46
Right. And they did agree on a good handful of important things, but they're more famously celebrated for disagreeing. And there's loads of other factions in Christianity that became visible very quickly before the New Testament was done being written. You've got these groups who believe some some things that are condemned by the leadership of the church

Katie Dooley  21:09
Or the Gnostics, they believe some weird shit. 

Preston Meyer  21:13
So there's not one cohesive group of these are the Gnostics either, but Gnostic belief definitely crept into Christianity and caused some problems for a lot of people. And yeah, pretty decent example. And then, when all of the apostles were gone, mostly by being brutally murdered... 

Katie Dooley  21:34
Martyred, Preston 

Preston Meyer  21:36
Yes, martyred, they refuse to deny what they had taught, and that's the credit we get, we give them a slightly cooler title. There, they started using the word Catholic for the most broadly accepted tenets of the faith, Catholic meaning universal, and Orthodox as a word probably was used around then, realistically as a Greek word, which literally just means right teachings, the Catholic Church uses orthodoxy.

Katie Dooley  22:10
I remember why I think orthodoxy comes first, which is clearly now incorrect, but I always thought it came first because in the Orthodox tradition, so I think still in Ukrainian and Greek Orthodox, the mass is done with actual bread, and actual wine. And I believe they don't believe in Transubstantiation. So it's a metaphor that the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood, whereas Catholics believe in Transubstantiation where it literally turns into the body, you're literally eating the flesh and blood, if you show up for mass, you're a cannibal. Yes. And I remember hearing a story is that the reason that Catholics use the Eucharist the cracker is because so when you break, bread crumbs are made. And if you're having mass in church, you know, there could be birds or rats or church mice and they're obviously picking up the crumbs and the Catholics think it's like sacrilegious for a mouse to have the body of Christ in him. So that's why in my brain, I was like, well, the bread and wine would have come first and then it innovated into the, the Eucharist cracker

Preston Meyer  23:29
I hadn't heard that, but it does make sense in that context.

Katie Dooley  23:33
So that's why in my brain orthodoxy came first because they didn't give a shit and then they got stricter. But that was my reasoning. Why I said what I said, I said what I said, but thank you for correcting me. Fun fact for for for you.

Preston Meyer  23:49
Yeah. So orthodoxy and Catholicism, weren't really titles that were used a whole lot, until maybe a little less than 1000 years ago, at Catholic would have been used more than orthodox as describing the church, which would have been the Christian church until the big split of going from memory, I'm going to say 1134 AD. And I really hope I remembered that right. It feels like I studied pretty hard? I don't like focusing on dates because trying to. I don't think you guys care.

Katie Dooley  24:28
It was a long time ago. 

Preston Meyer  24:29
Yeah about 1000 years ago, there was this huge split, but between a whole bunch of Christians and the split, mostly ended up being the leadership of East versus the leadership of West. Ultimately, down to a word, one word in Latin. And an awful lot of argument about that word, because the big split, and that word is based on my pronunciation of Latin which people can argue but can't prove anything is filioque which is "and the Son", which out of context is meaningless. But we're really talking about the Holy Ghost in the Trinitarian godhead, that is the God of Christianity. The Holy Ghost is said to come from the Father, and those in the West added, and the Son. And the folks out east are like, No, that's not a cool, that's not right. We don't believe that, and you can't make us at it. And if you want to start a fight over it, bye. 

Katie Dooley  25:42
Bye, Felicia. 

Preston Meyer  25:43
And so the guys on the east side and the west side just excommunicated each other, and said we're splitting the church up and 

Katie Dooley  25:52
That's not the first time it's gonna happen. Spoiler alert!

Preston Meyer  25:56
So many similar things have happened over and over again. It's, it's interesting, like we talked about in Judaism, that there's the major groups within Christian within Judaism that we look at our, you know, the Orthodox, Conservative and Liberal, where it's not wildly different beliefs, they just sort of level of this level of practice. Most mostly, 

Katie Dooley  26:24
I mean, not fair either really. 

Preston Meyer  26:26
Yeah. Because every every discussion on theology is different from Rabbi to Rabbi anyway, even within the Liberals within the Orthodox within any given group, which is nice that you can actually have those discussions, it's so much easier to talk religion to a Jew than to a Christian. In Christianity, there's huge fights over almost every single point of doctrine. And in an awful lot of those instances, new church pops up. That gets really frustrating. So we had that huge split after a decent universality of Christianity for many centuries. And then we went a few 100 years more without any really big splits. And then in the 1500s, things got really messy, really, really fast. Europe started falling apart and splintering really bad. As far as Christianity goes, we have reformers like Martin Luther, who's like, you guys have a lot of issues. I noticed this one thing I spent a lot of time studying. Here's a list of 95 things you guys need to get figured out and change.

Katie Dooley  27:44
And there was a time there was like three Popes. Then there is a division and...

Preston Meyer  27:48
It was definitely always been questioning authority. That hasn't been too big of a problem. I mean, it definitely causes issues that I want to talk about a little bit later on. After I deal with the split. Yeah, Martin Luther. If you know much about him, you're either a fan or you're not. And that's fine. He put a lot of work into trying to make the church better. And that itself sounds pretty laudable. And there's actually a pretty decent movie up telling this story, starring Joseph Fiennes how you pronounce his name. I really enjoy the movie. It's got a bunch of other big stars in it. It's a lot of fun. A little bit of a downer, but it ends on a nice note. I've been told that Martin never left the Catholic Church. But

Katie Dooley  28:43
I thought he was considered a heretic.

Preston Meyer  28:47
He was definitely like going to trials all the time for excommunication. Like, don't cut me off from the church. But that's different than leaving the church. His relationship with the church was rocky from actually pretty much the beginning of him teaching at the university, and then only got worse as he started teaching against things that the Pope was doing. causing problems. That's the thing. A similar sort of thing about the same century, England had a fundamental issue with King Henry, who really just

Katie Dooley  29:31
Wanted to fuck a lot of women.

Preston Meyer  29:34

I mean, it's easy to say that that's what the problem was. 

Katie Dooley  29:37
He was king so he didn't need to. 

Preston Meyer  29:38
Well, okay, he was king. You have an awful lot of power is king. He also had an impotency problem. So and that's not published nearly enough.

Katie Dooley  29:50
Like, I've read quite a bit on King Henry.

Preston Meyer  29:52
Yeah, like he killed a couple of his wives. He divorced a couple of his wives,

Katie Dooley  29:58
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded survived, right?

Preston Meyer  30:04
It's very nice. It's poetic. Actually, George Carlin does a great bit on Henry the Eighth too. But that's not the point.

Katie Dooley  30:12
He wanted to divorce Katherine of  Aragon and he couldn't because he was Catholic

Preston Meyer  30:19
And right Pope said, That's not okay. And the kings like, you guys are in Italy. I'm in England. I'm gonna do what I want.

Katie Dooley  30:26
I got divine right from God, right. God says I can start my own religion.

Preston Meyer  30:32
And ever since that time sharing today, the Church of England has been a thing. And most of the time the monarch is looked at as the, the authoritative head of the church, though not actually the ecclesiastical leader of the church. That's the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  30:52
And there I mean, it flipped flopped a little bit after Henry the Eighth backwards, Catholic, but now, I mean, Queen Elizabeth is still Church of England.

Preston Meyer  31:01
Yeah, that was actually one of the issues that a lot of people have with Charles taking over his king is that he married a Catholic after his wife died. Yeah. And there's a lot of people who are super uncomfortable with him being the head of the Church of England, having married a Catholic, and a lot of people like, well, let's just, let's send it straight to William. Okay. Awesome. Does it solve the problem? It did?

Katie Dooley  31:29
I mean, I would argue that William is probably a lot like most US presidents and is a part of the Church of England I'm doing air quotes

Preston Meyer  31:39
I can see what's great and high level of certainty that William has been to church a lot more than Donald. How much he believes I have no idea. I've not talked to him on the subject. But

Katie Dooley  31:52
Do you want to do our podcast Prince William, please,

Preston Meyer  31:55
We would be very honoured. Yeah, all right. So Luther Henry, once they both successfully started their own churches, more or less. I don't want to say Luther started at church, but he definitely started a church. He started his efforts from Catholicism, his efforts led to what we know today is the Lutheran Church, which, if you're looking at how to deal with your neighbour, who was Lutheran, Lutheran is basically Catholic light. It's, it's not wildly different. It's just pretty different on a lot of little things. But

Katie Dooley  32:40
Now my understanding of Martin Luther his biggest complaints, concerns with the church is that the priests were the gatekeepers to religion, you needed a priest to have any sort of chance of going to heaven. And everything was still done in Latin, which very few people spoke and I remember hearing that some of the priests didn't even speak Latin, and they just kind of go fettuccine bikini.

Preston Meyer  33:08
Yeah. If they couldn't remember exactly what to say, or they didn't have the text to read the script. Yeah, they would just spout nonsense.

Katie Dooley  33:17
And it was all about getting religion in the hands of the people, which, yeah, if you're going to do it anyway. That's I'm gonna agree with that, I think empowering people...

Preston Meyer  33:28
Another 400 years for the Catholic Church to be like, maybe we should do it in the vernacular. Vatican two is when we finally got English as a standard thing.

Katie Dooley  33:41
And that I mean, that killed Latin as a language. Nobody speaks it now

Preston Meyer  33:45
Right? Honestly, we're going through getting my bachelor's degree, I had to have language credits. And I had so many people like you're going to study Latin? No, I have no reason to study Latin was so previously that I had been working as a translator for the Bible. And they're like, Well, you work with the Bible. So you need Latin? No. Why would I want to read the Bible in Latin, that separates myself further from the original text, the original language, it was a problem. It's annoying. The New Testament was written all originally in Greek. With potentially that not being true with Matthew, an awful lot of people believe that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, I guess, and then translated into Greek, but there's no evidence for that,

Katie Dooley  34:34
Because I can see the argument, which we'll talk about in our Bible episode is things getting lost in translation, which is why absolutely you can get the Quran in different languages, but it will, services are always done in Arabic because that's the language of the Quran. So you can see had it originally been written in Latin that that was their argument, but

Preston Meyer  34:55
The liturgy definitely would have been originally written in Latin, but that's it. I guess the papal bowls and whatnot. The ecclesiastical discourse would have happened in in Latin an awful lot of the time, but probably not exclusively. So, in England, they wanted the Bible in English, St. Thomas Moore, who was sainted, which aggravates me because the big thing that he did was kill people and burn books. Just because these people wanted the Bible published in English. He was sainted. The Catholic Church has not rescinded this. I don't think they've ever rescinded a sainthood. I could be wrong. I've honestly not looked it up. But I think that only just came to mind. But same thing, St. Thomas Moore is a thing I'm uncomfortable with. There's actually a lot of saints I'm uncomfortable with and we will definitely just talk about that for a whole episode one of these days, but not quite yet. And so what the the success of these two groups creating their own churches or movements in Europe, and the Pope really proving powerless against them. You got a whole bunch more people, Holland, and Germany and Scotland and pretty much all over Europe, people were or Western Europe, at least English or English. Eastern Europe didn't really do it so much. But Western Europe really started up a whole bunch of new movements, some of which are fairly termed Protestant. And some of them feel a little separate in in the way that they came to be from that label. Anabaptist are really cool. 

Katie Dooley  36:44
I was gonna say Mennonites, and Hutterites, which are part of the Anabaptist umbrella are very interesting denominations that originated in Europe and are now very popular. I think they're almost exclusively in North America. I know they had some from your persecution, which is why they came to North America. But yeah, that is one that seems very, I mean, to this day, very separate from mainstream Christianity.

Preston Meyer  37:12
I believe Mennonites are actually becoming more and more popular, right, like growing rapidly in Mexico right now. Which is pretty nifty.

Katie Dooley  37:21
I have a note here that I would like, you know, I wrote the notes on this. But there's a lot of words I want you to explain to me. So it's the big issue in Christianity is the question of ecclesiastical authority. First of all, what is ecclesiastical authority?

Preston Meyer  37:41
But I want to say it's complicated. It's not that complicated. Ecclesiastic authority is who has the power to make decisions and guide the church. And what that authority looks like is also in question in the Orthodox tradition, and

Katie Dooley  38:01
I have Catholics, most Orthodox and Latter-Day Saints are apostolic. So what is apostolic? 

Preston Meyer  38:15
For example, I worked for an Egyptian family right out of high school that I absolutely loved. And I learned from them that the church in Egypt, the Egyptian Orthodox Church, was basically founded by St. Mark, the dude who wrote the Gospel of Mark, travelled to Egypt as a missionary establish the church, as an apostle of the church. And that and they just, they hold on to that authority from descended from every successor, who held the basically the bishopric over that territory. And that's the same for an awful lot of jurisdictions out in the east, is an apostle setup camp, sent out missionaries from his camp, and basically established the church. And Rome is the same way, with Peter being the first bishop of Rome, and then Linus following. The idea is that these bishops in a way that nobody's willing to explain in a way that satisfies me hold apostolic authority over that city, even though they've not actually been made apostles by their predecessors. And so there's that line of authority that lots of people like to say is unbroken, because they can draw you a line through names. Yay, being able to write your own history as being the person in power.

Katie Dooley  39:47
Sounds like it's a lot like the history with the British Crown,

Preston Meyer  39:53
Right where you can trace through the British Crown into the genealogies recorded in the Bible, that sounds sketchy.

Katie Dooley  40:02
But like, yeah, absolutely you can draw a line. But there at some point there are different families and political marriages and Elizabeth didn't have Elizabeth the first didn't have kids. So she appointed someone new and wars. Yeah. So that's, that's what this sounds like, to me where yes, you could draw a line, but it's not necessary. Yeah, that's not necessarily unbroken. It's there's a lot of shenanigans in there.

Preston Meyer  40:27
Right? Well, like, as you mentioned, the time when we had three Pope's reigning at the same time, each fighting over the bishopric of Rome. That's not an unbroken line that's slightly bubbly, and funky, and unpleasant and historically confusing sometimes. And so, there's that idea of authority being received all the way through this line from the apostles. And so that is claimed by most orthodox denominations that I'm aware of the Catholic Church, and Mormonism. Mormonism doesn't do it the same way as the Catholics and Orthodox. Well, there's the modern Apostles in fulfill us a slightly different role than Catholic and Orthodox apostles. And also, there's a different narrative that there's not an unbroken 2000 years of history. It's in the 1820. I'm blanking on the air. So in the 1820s, Joseph Smith reported that he had Peter, James and John appeared to him and ordained him as an elder and an apostle for the Restoration of the gospel. And so we don't have a full 2000 year history for Latter Day Saints apostolic authority, we've got 200 years, which is rejected by an awful lot of Christians around the world, like the vast majority. And then there's the Protestants, who really think is interesting. The Anglican Church pulls no punches, they will flat out call the church of Rome apostate. Not all of them, obviously. But in plenty of official documents, that is the wording that is used. And that's problematic when you all of your authority is derived from that heritage. You can't say that your authority is good when you denounce the source of it. It's tricky. It's very tricky. And Lutheranism is similar, but not quite the same. And then you've got your your evangelicals who don't worry about authority at all.

Katie Dooley  43:01
Whoever wants to be the next, Billy Graham, yeah, can be the next Billy Graham. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  43:07
It's that easy and terrifying.

Katie Dooley  43:11
I mean, it's, this is gonna sound crazy coming from a Katie, but kind of falls into what Martin Luther it's in the hands of the people like why can't an average person and arguably Jesus was an average person become something great. Great. And that's how the Vatican pick their saints is that these people show some higher level of religiosity that is worthy of being made a saint. So why, yeah, why? Why do you need a if you preach a good, message, why do you need authority?

Preston Meyer  43:56
So different churches use that authority differently. Even the Catholic Church who claims and authority on their claims a monopoly on salvific authority. As long as you believe in Jesus, you can perform a baptism, an Anglican can perform a baptism and the Catholic Church generally will say, Yep, I could baptize now. And they're good. They reject baptisms from a handful of churches, that they're not comfortable with their theology. Catholics reject all authority claimed by Mormons for their baptisms. The wording on that is a little bit weird and fuzzy on why that's the case. And being able to defend that position when, you know, literally, anybody claiming an Anglican or Lutheran or Episcopalian, or Baptist faith can baptize on the Catholic Church says, Yeah, that's cool. It's just a little bit weird to me. Whereas the Mormon Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you. You've got a very specifically delineated character of authority on who can baptize somebody. And it's cut and dry, it's easy to follow. But it's also a lot narrower than other groups. Then you've got the common evangelical position where a baptism isn't performed by somebody, you, you go into the water, you come out and no one has to touch you - parroting a lot of what we see in Judaism with the mikvah. You go into water, you come out, you're good. That's the deal. Whereas, biblically, the baptisms that we see in the Bible, we have John the Baptist, a person with authority, baptizing another person. So that's authority is a tricky thing. What that authority does, sometimes that authority is just the authority to teach and to lead. Sometimes it's who can perform these sacraments or ordinances. And it's kind of weird, Jehovah's Witnesses, their notion of, of authority, as far as it relates to the priesthood is baffling to me. I've asked, and I've not gotten an answer that makes sense to me enough to satisfy my question that Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Latter Day Saints claim authority by ordination from somebody who has got authority before them, the chain. Jehovah's Witnesses claim authority to perform Christian rights by virtue of having a Bible. Which is problematic to me. I haven't been able to make sense of it. I haven't had anybody explain it to me in a way that has made sense to me. I don't really, I can't defend it, because I don't understand it. It's just just one of those things that is odd.

Katie Dooley  47:32
So we've talked a lot about differences.

Preston Meyer  47:41
We've talked about the one thing that binds them all together.

Katie Dooley  47:44
Yeah. And how they split and split and split and split. Yes, there's one thing that binds them all, David, but there are more similarities. If they're not entirely universal, there are some things that are quite common. First one I think of is Sunday as the Sabbath.

Preston Meyer  48:06
Not universal

Katie Dooley  48:07
No, I know. That's because the Seventh Day Adventist is the first one I think, but near all of these are near-universal, because the only thing that's universal is Jesus is the son of God. But this would be very short episode, if we just said, Jesus Christ, and we believe he's the son of God. And that's how Christian started. And that's the overarching.

Preston Meyer  48:31
There's actually a little detail in there. That's not universal. Jehovah's Witnesses straight up, deny a cross.

Katie Dooley  48:38
Oh and I forgot that one too I've heard that one too. There's one where he was on just like a post, right? 

Preston Meyer  48:45
It's so complicated, Katie!

Katie Dooley  48:48
And here we are trying to give an overarching groundwork

Preston Meyer  48:53
We just we need some sort of foundation to move forward with our later discussions.

Katie Dooley  48:58
But this one's this one I think is the hardest one because there's just so much variance. All these next points are near universal. So don't be emailing me saying "but we don't believe in this" 'Cause we know we know. So Sabbath near universal on Sundays. And that is, that's because God rested. No. That's Judaism. Yeah, that's because Jesus was resurrected on

Preston Meyer  49:33
Jesus was Jesus rose from the dead.

Katie Dooley  49:39
That's because Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday.

Preston Meyer  49:42
Yep. So it's the Lord's day. There's actually plenty of churches that they'll have their sign up on the front of the building, and to let you know, when they're when their mass is or their meetings, as that's pretty standard detail, but a lot of them will actually say we meet on the Lord's Day, which isn't ever confusing to the people who go there, but it can be confusing to people from outside that group.

Katie Dooley  50:14
And how the Sabbath is recognized is different. I imagine it's everything from similar to Judaism where you don't do anything at all. Typically, people go to church for North America often you go for lunch afterwards. 

Preston Meyer  50:33
Gotta get that Chick-Fil-A 

Katie Dooley  50:36
after but, you know, some people work all day Sunday.

Preston Meyer  50:41
There's no Chick-Fil-A on Sundays, it's okay.

Katie Dooley  50:46
So, how the Sabbath is recognized is different, but typically it's the church day. Unless you're a Seventh Day Adventist, in which case that's Saturday.

Preston Meyer  50:57
There's there's a bunch of Christians who have retained the ancient Sabbath rather than the renewed Sabbath.

Katie Dooley  51:08
Communion, or mass. 

Preston Meyer  51:13
The emblems of the bread and the wine. 

Katie Dooley  51:15
Mostly universal

Preston Meyer  51:16
Mostly universal. I've not - I can't think of any off the top of my head that don't. It is specifically said in the Bible, you should be doing this. And I don't think I can think of

Katie Dooley  51:27
I've been to church services where it hasn't happened. But I don't know if that was because it was it's a separate service or whatever. But I have gone to just like a regular Saturday Protestant service that didn't but again, I don't know if that. 

Preston Meyer  51:43
Yeah, there's, there's loads of churches who don't do it every Sunday. There's, there's some who, even if they have several meetings over the course of the week, they'll only do it on Sunday. Or, or Saturday, if that's their day. Jehovah's Witnesses, if I remember correctly, only do this the Eucharist on the Passover. So if it's once a year, you've got the Latter Day Saints who will do it most Sundays, but they'll usually skip four or five Sundays in the year. 

Katie Dooley  52:16
And they wouldn't do it with wine. 

Preston Meyer  52:17
Right? They'll use water instead, in almost every case.

Katie Dooley  52:21
Do you maybe you want to talk about what the communion is like what I mean? I don't want to assume anyone knows that it's the body and blood of Christ

Preston Meyer  52:31
Yeah, it's it's not just a thing that showed up in the New Testament, it's a carryover from an older set of sacrifices. When you brought your lamb to be sacrificed at the altar at the temple, there was very often sacrifices accompanying that of bread and wine, and the little bit of wine would typically be poured out into the ground, as we see in a lot of religions around the world. And then it would be shared among those who are participating as well. And so Jesus said, my blood is the wine spilt for man. And because Jesus, of course, in Christianity is that great final blood sacrifice, and then the bread, which was broken apart and offered for the good of humanity, is that body of Christ, again, sacrificed all that. And so that tradition is perpetuated throughout Christianity for the last 2000 years, to remember that sacrifice that Jesus made. And so it's one of the handful of things that are pretty much universal among Christians, even if it's not every Sunday or Saturday for everybody.

Katie Dooley  53:48
The other one I have and again, I can't think of an exception is baptism seems pretty common again, the way it's done vary, but I can't think of a denomination that doesn't encourage baptism.

Preston Meyer  54:08
The Bible is pretty clear, in a few instances that Jesus tells the people go out baptizing the people. So if you're a Christian preacher who's not telling people that they should be baptized, that would be very irregular, because it doesn't mesh with what is taught in the book that you're teaching from.

Katie Dooley  54:29
The baptism can be done for infants.

Preston Meyer  54:33
That's pretty standard for the Catholic and Orthodox faiths.

Katie Dooley  54:37
And then the other one you see often it's about 11 years old. And that is so that the young person understands what the, the gravitas of a baptism is, and that they understand the commitments that they're making.

Preston Meyer  54:54
Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Anabaptists tend to be around puberty age. Latter-Day Saints typically do it at eight. There's, I'm sure there's other traditions where it's it's got another obscure specific age. There's plenty of churches who just say when you're an adult.

Katie Dooley  55:13
Yeah, when you're ready. And then Catholics also have they have a celebration at 11, your first very first communion, affirmation and confirmation, and that's, I mean, it's not a baptism you would've been my baptized, but that is sort of that was like the double whammy where you have to like, that's where you and then you're really committed you're really committed and you understand the gravity of this choice you're making to be confirmed.

Preston Meyer  55:43
Yeah, for Latter-Day Saints, the tradition that I'm pretty familiar with from a first-person point of view, that first communion is typically like a day after the baptism. And it's not really such a big deal as the baptism itself. But just one denominations experience.

Katie Dooley  56:03
The the actually I don't I, I think most Christians believe in the Second Coming.

Preston Meyer  56:12
I think, as I know, that's universal

Katie Dooley  56:17
The idea is that Jesus was crucified, he's gonna come back, restore the temple. Last Judgment. And yeah, so he'll decide where we get to go. It'll be hell on earth, according to Revelations.

Preston Meyer  56:35
Yes, the Revelation of John, not revelations. There's no s on the title. There's far too many Christians who get it wrong. I certainly can't blame you for not getting it right

Katie Dooley  56:46
I've only ever heard revelations.

Preston Meyer  56:49
But remember how I said an awful lot of Christians don't open the book? Yeah, that's where that problem comes from. And, yeah, in the Revelation of John, it warns us that the world is going going to get an awful lot worse before it gets better. Which is pretty typical of apocalyptic literature of the era.

Katie Dooley  57:11
Perfect. So we have a second coming. And then I guess, with that, again most Christians believe in some form of heaven. And most Christians believe in some form of hell. So there's variants and that's all it's debated how you get to either one of them. But they do, I guess that is our Yeah, that's an afterlife. And that's how you keep people in line.

Preston Meyer  57:42
Yeah, that's ultimately how it's been used for all of recorded history is striking fear into people's hearts to control them, which is not a characteristic of love, which is kind of the primary doctrine of Christ is to love one another. So, yay for disconnects within your logic and reasoning.

Katie Dooley  58:09
So here's a question for you. Since we have a resident Christian, how do you, this could be you personally, or the universal you decide what you believe when there's so much variation. And as an outsider, it really feels like you could just cherry-pick to...

Preston Meyer  58:32
Absolutely. I don't think that choosing what you believe is really the way it works. You can receive information, and then you either believe it or you don't. And that has a lot to do with how it meshes with information you've already had up to that point. Definitely, the burden of proof is ever-present. And something's what counts as evidence. What counts as evidence changes sometimes, depending on context, is the word proof is actually kind of weird. There's no such thing as proof in any context other than mathematics. Everything else is evidence.

Katie Dooley  59:17
Interesting. Maybe the question maybe it's not choosing what you believe. I don't I don't know how to frame this. But if you can find it doesn't matter what you believe you'll find it didn't I guess? Yeah. Doesn't matter what you believe you'll find a denomination of Christianity that jives with it.

Preston Meyer  59:37
Yeah, at the very least you'll find a denomination of Christianity that's going to let you not change.

Katie Dooley  59:44
And isn't that a problem?

Preston Meyer  59:50
Yes, from the Christian perspective of there is one faith, one God one baptism. That's the mantra Having such a diversity of gods that you have sculpted in your own image is a huge problem. It's a complicated problem. And the trick is that you can't just convince somebody that the God that they've made up for themselves isn't real.

Katie Dooley  1:00:19
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because if you could, then we wouldn't be a registered religion. Fun times. This is a complicated topic. Do we have a nice summary for for our listeners?

Preston Meyer  1:00:44
I want to summarize what Christianity is supposed to be, as presented in the Bible that all of these Christians are supposed to be reading and teaching out of. That there is good news. That's where the word gospel comes from, is that there is good news. The good news is that because Jesus died for us, we can change and have that change actually affect our outcomes after this life. It doesn't matter what I've done in the past, that doesn't make it impossible for me to actually have happiness in the next life. As long as I've changed and become better, change is meaningful change is possible. And because of that, we need to encourage people to be their best selves, by loving them, not by forcing them to suffer under our burdens of abuse and punishment for being different. There's, there's an awful lot of hope in the biblical Christian message. And that's true for an awful lot of religions. That there's a reason to be good, that all of the bad things that have happened around you or happen to you or happen because of you can be made to matter less, which is pretty cool. Yeah. But honestly, when you look at the way Christians behave towards each other, that's really easily lost.

Katie Dooley  1:02:30
Yeah, and toward others,

Preston Meyer  1:02:34
especially towards others, that I can't decide which is more unnerving. The way Christians treat people of other faiths or the way they treat each other. But it's all bad. It's all disappointing.

Katie Dooley  1:02:49
Yeah. It's definitely a problem. And I think there needs to be some more self-policing, in I mean, probably all religions, but

Preston Meyer  1:03:03
definitely all religions. Because it's a human problem. It's not a religious problem. It's yeah, we are weak and frail. And we're, we get self-conscious, and we need to protect ourselves. So we suck.

Katie Dooley  1:03:16
I think where I struggle on this isn't really a point on Christianity necessarily. But as an atheist, it's when people behave holier than thou because of their religion. And then you're actually not. And I think, yeah, that is a barrier to correction or moderation or what have you. I mean, move forward popped up, or having a conversation about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, or acting holier than now. And the rules don't apply to you. All of a sudden, it's like, there's sex abuse in the Catholic Church, it's still an issue and it shouldn't be like they should all be in jail. Like, I don't understand.

Preston Meyer  1:04:07
It's frustrating. It's deeply uncomfortable for most people to talk about, but it's a real thing. And the problem is not being fixed.

Katie Dooley  1:04:16
Yeah. And I Yeah, so I guess I think sometimes religion is a hindrance to having those conversations

Preston Meyer  1:04:27
very often it is so

Katie Dooley  1:04:30
Anyway, on that Debbie downer, of a note. Jesus loves you.

Preston Meyer  1:04:39
Yeah. Oh, actually, I just remembered, is slightly more positive. Which I think is maybe why it came to mind. There's a wonderful quote by Nietzsche, that God is dead. And loads of people love to just end the quote there. Which is a fun way to say all these philosophers are the worst because they just are done with God. There's more to that, quote. God is dead, and we have killed him. And how can we be forgiven? It's it's kind of a weird question. And, of course, he grew up in a Christian community where he is aware that Jesus died. And the story is that he came back and isn't vengeful, which is pretty cool.

Katie Dooley  1:05:48
I mean it's nice of him

Preston Meyer  1:05:50
I mean, so many of the other gods that we've heard of in our histories definitely would have come back bearing a sword. Right,

Katie Dooley  1:05:59
Or a lightning bolt in the form of a swan

Preston Meyer  1:06:04
in the form of a swan or in the form of swan's dick good old Zeus. Well, that's our episode on Christianity

Both Hosts  1:06:17
Peace be with you!