Thursday, August 18, 2022

Intra-Faith Christian vs Inter-Faith Chrisitan.

I was recently asked if I had ever heard of an Interfaith Chrisitan or an Intra-faith Christian.  This came from a Bishop in a progressive Catholic Church.  I gave him a very quick off the top of my head response.  Then like all curious people it bounced around in my head and I did the following.

I did some more research since you sent me the original question. I found 2 distinct categories in the area you asked about. One was intra-Faith Christian. The other is  Interfaith Christian. 

Defining and explaining Intra-Faith is the easier of the two as the RCC and the broken-up Methodist Church are prime examples.   As the United Methodist Church before not united, it led to individuals being forced to become an intra-faith Christian.  Just the same for all the members in the RCC.  To better define this for you, Intra-Faith Christian is a person that moves to a differing belief pattern inside the same denomination.   As the United Methodists split into eventually three distinct belief patterns into the overall Methodist denomination and the membership was being put in a position of choosing which dogma and ritual they better identified with they became was Intra-Faith Christians.

They are in the same denomination, but now in just a specific subset of the Denomination. 

Inter-Faith Chrisitan differs as it is moving from one denomination to another.  I am personally a prime example of that.   The main defining factor of being Interfaith Christians as best as I can find is the movement is away from the faith or denomination that they were baptized in.   So, for me, I was baptized in the First Christian Church, part of the Disciples of Christ.  In my late teens and twenties, I moved to an Episcopalian Church and faith pattern.   When I married my present wife who was Catholic, I fell in love with the ritual and the pomp but struggled with the exclusionary dogma at times.  But I stayed there and am still there, but I am now an intra-faith Christian as I found the Reformed Catholic Church.  

This is just what I could research real quickly and like an absent-minded professor, I forgot to write down my sources.  I am trying to relocate them all and once that is done I will forward those to you.

Meditation

  Today’s Meditation "Much that is true of human relationships is also true of our relationship with God. Human relationships of friend...