Talk:Cultural Christian
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[edit] Simplifying the first paragraph
I made substantial changes to this article. I believe these make the article tighter, but some discussion is warranted.
Cultural Christian is broad term describing nominal Christians, individuals who would not generally be described as being active in their faith yet who identify themselves as Christian, were raised in a Christian family or community, or who adopted Christianity at some point in the past but have since exhibited less frequent or nonexistent practice of the religion. It is usually used in a negative sense and is often a term to describe someone whose understanding of Christianity is seen as underdeveloped, relative to a conceptual reference.
I rewrote to
Cultural Christian is a broad term describing individuals who identify themselves as Christian, but who generally would not be described by others as active in their faith. The term is usually used prejoratively by other Christians to describe individuals whose spiritual understanding they see as underdeveloped or superficial.
My reasoning being that the significant attribute of a cultural Christian is that they believe they are Christian, but that the one who is using the term to describe him does not consider them practicing. My (admittedly anecdotal) experience is that people who were raised as Christians and do not consider themselves to be Christians would be called "non-Christians", and not "cultural christians," even if they happened to listen to Christian music, etc.
I've personally never heard this term used by a non-Christian, but I'll allow that it is possible....
- Is there a term for non-believers from a Xtian background who celebrate Santa day and Bunny/egg day? These might be comparable to "Secular Jews". Or maybe pagans??? Fourtildas 07:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Dropping the paragraph about ethnic Jews
I have difficulties with the second paragraph, as I don't know how the term ethnic Jew compares. Judaism appears (from my outsider's perspective) to have a much more complicated and nuanced sense of identity than Christianity does. "Cultural Christian" is mostly a term rejecting Christians whose beliefs or practices are somehow not up to snuff, but an ethnic Jew can mean any number of things, or nothing at all. (See Who is a Jew?.) Because ethnic Jew doesn't seem to have a clear definition, I don't think it is illustrative to compare cultural Christian to the term. I've decided to drop the section entirely for now.
