Posted on 02/22/2011 2:53:04 PM PST by Natural Law
An alarming trend is developing in the Free Republic Religion Forum in which a caucus identifier is being claimed for non-existent or impossibly defined groups. With the caucuses being self defined we see nonsense like the Sola Scriptura Caucus. Of course it doesn’t mean all Scripture, only the thread initiators or Forum Moderators definition of Scripture. Jews who believe in the Scripture of the Old Testament are excluded. Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are excluded even though they believe in the sufficiency of their own versions of Scripture. The not so transparent purpose of these faux caucuses is clearly to exclude a group of FReepers in a modern day repetition of “Whites Only” and “Irish Need Not Apply” prejudice. If this is allowed to stand what will we see next; caucuses so narrowly defined so as to only include one’s bridge club or to exclude an individual FReeper? How about a caucus designation for everyone but citizens from New York? How about a men’s only caucus? How about a caucus for those of us who drive BMWs? And what is being discussed in these faux caucus threads? Critical doctrinal issues such as ruggedized aircraft, home schooling, and civil unrest in Egypt. Give me a break!
Hence this thread.
Without addressing whether belief SYSTEMS were intended to be covered by caucus definitions, is it really hard to know who belongs to a “Sola Scriptura” caucus?
Just as a “Catholic Caucus” is open to anybody who holds a personal belief that they are Catholic (until such time as a sizable number of other Catholics complain that the person doesn’t sound Catholic), a “Sola Scriptura Caucus” would be for people who think they believe in the doctrine of “Sola Scriptura”.
Those who don’t understand it probably don’t believe it, and wouldn’t participate. Those who think they believe it, but don’t really, might soon enough be apprised of this by other participants.
Meanwhile, the body of believers who believes in SS would be allowed to discuss all manner of doctrinal issues, knowing that their arguments will be based on differing interpretations of scripture within the SS framework, without having to be distracted by arguments from tradition, reason, or other extra-biblical texts.
Just as the church caucuses not only allow discussion of church matters, but also more general matters from the narrow perspective of a common belief.
It is a requirement of a “caucus” thread that it not disparage any other faith of belief. So what harm could there be to other faiths that a thread be limited to a type of belief?
Any topic that you are interested in, can be posted to an open thread. The rule of “duplication” has never been applied that I can tell to an open thread version of a caucus thread.
If you want to repost an article as “open” then you must wait at least 4 hours or the thread will be pulled as a duplicate.
There you go again.
Trying to be sensible.
How can we have a hebrephrenic cat fight with sensible in the mix?
Nice to see you around . . . even at this late date in the thread! LOL.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
this is a silly caucus
With some
RC’s
IT’S !!!!TRADITION!!!!
lol
And furthermore, why a duck?
It leads over to the mainland.
Since this is the whiner thread, I’m going to leap at that opportunity to make an observation that I would normally not — namely, that I find the “presentation” of most of the things by quix to be annoying and self-reverential to the point of hubris.
Like taking other people’s well-formatted arguments, and repeating them but with weird formatting, large fonts, and ludicrous banner-text repeated words.
Yes, seriously. I wouldn’t “complain” about it, but for this freeper, the presentation makes it near impossible to take anything so written seriously, and mostly it seems to call for mockery.
I’m thinking that maybe it might be wise for all the threads to be open threads, unless they were prayer or devotion like in the old days.
Am I being foolish. Jesus tells us not to be foolish in the ways of the world.
Hmmmm.
It’s not only RCs but all who are wasting time by being rude instead of focusing on Christ’s words. Quix, you too do that when you straightaway start personal attacks, you were the reason I wanted to stay away from freerepublic completely
I just hope Mr.Jim sees that and considers these threads as valuable as the other threads, which also get hot and heavy. But I think those who complain about the religious threads may very well not be in the front line of defense where many of us find ourselves in the world...and we're going to see much more that needs defending.
It disturbs me greatly that some Christians think Christianity is ONLY about Gods love. He is also a God of War...A God of Justice and a God who has shown His rage, does, and will show His rage ultimately in ways mankind has never known before.... who certainly has no problem showing these in the time of His choosing. Just ask the nation Israel....and we are taught to learn from the old testament as well as the New.
There is a time for war..a time for peace....a time to love and a time to refrain. I think in the direction the world is going we have great great need to ‘discern the times’...and the tactics being used to dupe our citizens....both in our churches...schools and in our politics. We either wake up out of the stupor and stop being passive and weak kneed or we will be mowed over...but in order to stop that we have to have a training area...FR is doing that both in arming us politically but also in the faith...the two go hand in hand in these times....contrary to popular opinion.
I think You answered your own question Salvation...straight from the Master Himself.
Well said! I agree.
"I am pleasantly surprised that you referred to Catholics as Roman Catholics."
And now you would have us believe...
"I was saying that using the term “Catholic” is better than “Roman Catholic”
That is not what your post said or implied.
yes, they have no place on a religion discussion webpage, much less on a conservative religion discussion webpage. I have been lurking and I see that when there is less play with formats and less annoying pictures, there is more understanding among Christians and people read what each other are writing.
“By the way, I recently read that, technically speaking, it is only correct to refer to Catholics in the Diocese of Rome as Roman Catholics. For example, I would actually be a Pittsburgh Catholic, not a Roman Catholic, although I am from the Latin Rite. Do you or Mark know what I am talking about or if I am correct?”
In a manner of speaking it is correct.
Catholics look on diocesan bishops (Catholic and Orthodox) as the successors of the apostles who founded the particular church of their locale.
In this manner a person could be a member of the Church of Corinth, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Tucson or Pittsburgh.
Those of us who prefer Roman Catholic (actually Latin Catholic) are emphasizing our connection with the Roman Pontiff rather than the (e.g.) Maronite or the Melkite Patriarch.
Emphasizing the connection with the particular church rather than the Roman Church is IME common among very liberal Catholics and liberal bishops, many of whom actually see Roman Catholic as a derogatory term.
I don’t see a 4-hour rule as being particularly restrictive, but I would argue, for the reason I stated above, that there be no 4-hour rule for duplicating an article when it was posted as a caucus thread. That way the rest of us would have a place to discuss something of interest that we CANNOT discuss on FR anywhere because it was posted first as a Caucus.
And vice-versa, the caucus members would lose the chance to discuss a topic immediately within their caucus if a non-caucus member beat them to it and posted it open.
The purpose I believed of restricting duplicates was so we could all discuss in a single thread, rather than repeating the same arguments in multiple threads. That argument would not apply to the case there a caucus thread is posted, since by it’s definition we can’t discuss it together in a single thread.
So I would respectfully suggest that the rules be written such that a caucus-designated article can be immediately reposted in an open forum, and vice-versa.
It’s not like we are “religious” about the duplication rule anyway, every day there are multiple duplicates posted within minutes of each other, and it is pure hit-and-miss as to whether they get locked or not.
BTW, I would guess that for 99% of the caucus posts, nobody would WANT to re-post as open. So it’s not like I’m suggesitng something that would lead to widespread duplication.
I don't see Quix "starting personal attacks."
OTC, he's more often on the receiving end of them.
But by your own reasoning and the rules of the RF you should probably stay off the open threads.
Thats picture perfect reply!! LOL! Your Good!
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