What is a "non-theistic" Christian?

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First, define a Christian ;p It actually isn't as simple as you'd think - for example, consider the definition this site uses:

As far as the scope of this site is concerned, any group that identifies themselves as Christian are to be considered on-topic and allowed to label themselves Christian.

You would perhaps need to ask the author, but "cultural Christians" may be one answer; for example, the recent results of a UK MORI (i.e. well-respected/independent survey) of only people who self-identified as Christian showed that 65% are actually non-religious cultural Christians, i.e. identify as Christian for reasons such as "was Christened as a child", "parents are Christian", etc. Likewise, only 10% used religion as a primary tool in morality issues. Summary document - but emphasis: while the survey was commissioned by the Dawkins Foundation, the survery was conducted independently paying scrupulous attention to the actual questions to ensure the questions weren't leading, etc.

I can't know whether this relates to the thoughts of the answer you are thinking of, but that number is pretty telling, particularly when interpreting geographic religion statistics - i.e. how people identify might not actually relate much to their religious beliefs, but more to their historic/cultural identity.

Upvote:0

In the Netherlands we used to have a 10-yearly returning academic study “God in the Netherlands” about what the Dutch believe. The latest version was in 2016 as far as I can find, so the numbers will be irrelevant by now, but the tendency is the same for decades: only a minority of the people in the Netherlands say they are part of any Christian denomination. Majorities of both Protestants and even more so Catholics do not go to church on Sunday anymore. Among Protestants “orthodox” belief is strongest, but even there about 1/3 doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. Among Catholics this is even stronger.

My personal experience, so not scientific relevant at all, as a member of the Catholic clergy in a Dutch diocese, underlines these findings. It has become very rare for Catholics to have their children baptised, to marry in Church, to come to Sunday mass, and so on.

Even if parents wish for their children to be baptised, it is very clear that most parents do not know much about the Catholic faith, and on most points do not subscribe to it verbally. It is impossible to know what people really believe, but I think it gives an indication.

So there is a very large group of Catholics, and a bit smaller but still large group of Protestants, who call themselves Catholic, Protestant, or Christian, who say they believe in “something”, “a force”, “the universe”, but definitely not in the central Christian teachings and very often not in a personal God, let alone a God in three Persons.

These people have all freedom to call themselves atheist. In the Netherlands there is absolutely no social stigma on being an atheist, there is a growing stigma on being religious. Still, this group that can hardly be described as theists in the Christian sense, wishes to see themselves as Protestants, Catholics, Christians. They feel the need to belong to this group, the need for certain rituals, and maybe some sort of sense making attached to being Christian.

(news story in Dutch: Hoe God (bijna) verdween uit Nederland)

Upvote:1

Atheism is not necessarily not believing in a God. Roughly one-in-five self-described atheists (18%) say they do believe in some kind of higher power. Atheism means you do not believe in a personal God - "a deity who can be related to or thought of as a person, through an anthropomorphized persona, rather than an impersonal, and faceless, force of nature—an example of a personal god is the Abrahamic God of Judaism".

Basically, western theology in general defines a 'God' as a personal God who believes there is a physical supreme being that is personified and talks to people directly, which is what theists believe. You even have Oxford language define theism as "belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures". Another source supports this by saying theism - in common parlance at least - is "a belief in God or in gods without the rejection of revelation as is characteristic of deism", which usually includes the personification of said God or gods as physical beings existing in an anthropomorphized manner. An atheist simply rejects that, which is why non-theistic/atheistic religions actually exist such as certain versions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and even some forms of Christianity. For example, you have Paul van Buren who rejected the idea of the Christian God being a personal God after reading some text from the Bible that was previously considered non-canon:

We cannot identify anything which will count for or against the truth of our statements concerning 'God' - Paul van Buren

Because of this, plenty of people who read certain parts of the Bible still believe in Jesus and his message but do not necessarily believe he literally is an exceptional physical embodiment of God. In the Netherlands, 42% of the members of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) are nontheists according to God in Nederland by Ronald Meester. According to the same book, 17% of Catholics in the Netherlands reject the idea of a personal God and based these beliefs on interpretations of less popular parts of the Bible interpreted by Catholic thinkers like Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (which he presents in a realistic fiction novel called San Manuel Bueno, mártir). Again, they still believe there is a 'God' in a higher power, but Christian atheists tend to not believe God was a literal, personal God and literal 'magic man in the sky' God is stereotypically depicted as. Many theologians who study the Bible - again, including content that is not traditionally read by most Christians - become Christian atheists including:

Also forgot to mention pandeism: a theological doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism & it is considered a form of non-theism too.

Deism and pan-deism, as well as agnosticism and atheism, are all Non-Theisms.- Theologian Charles Brough

Christianity has a version of pandeism that believes that God became the entire universe and no longer exists as a separate being. The idea of pandeistic Christianity goes back to Catholic thinker Bonaventure back in the 1200s and Unitarian Christian William Ellery Channing with some believing that God became 'one with the universe' and no longer existed as a physical personal God after the sacrifice of Jesus, something that was stated by a Unitarian minister in an article of the 1906 Chattanooga Daily Times called "Man of Sorrows: Place of Jesus in the Religion of Today".

Upvote:3

Nontheistic Christianity grew out of Existential Theology pioneered by Lutheran Theologian Paul Tillich and his concept of God as "the ground of all being". For Tillich, God could not be a being because then God would be limited by time and space as all beings are. So, instead, God had to be being itself and not an entity.

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