What Does it Mean to be a Christian?

(excerpted from "Conversations with Christians" Adult Education class, 
Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, May 1995) 


Baptist:

A Christian believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, that he 
attoned for our sins. 


Unity: 

The Christ Spirit is in everybody. There is a spark of divinity within 
everyone, we ALL have that spark of divinity. 

"We do believe in Jesus the man and in Jesus Christ but we believe 
Jesus experienced the Christ experience more so than anybody else had 
up until that time and that we can also. That we DO express that 
Christ." 

"We do believe in Jesus Christ but not in the traditional sense of the 
one and only son of God. We consider Jesus to be the most enlightened 
person who ever lived." 

"We think, yes, Jesus was a son of God and so are we. We don't see a 
difference. We see him as a brother but the most enlightened person 
that's lived." 


Episcopal:

"A Christian is someone who lives a lifestyle that models that of the 
historical Jesus and sees Jesus as a clear focus of a revelatory God. 
That's what makes a Christian different from other people of faith who 
have other models they follow and have other ideals but for a 
Christian Jesus would be the clearest." 

"We have the outward and visible sign of Baptism as the mark of a 
Christian where we receive the Holy Spirit." 

"Christianity has a style of life that has a specific value. It's a 
very specific one about how you relate to God, how you relate to other 
people and how you relate to yourself. 


LDS:

"Being a Christian means to believe in Jesus Christ, believe that he 
is the Savior of the world - our personal Savior - and that we will 
come to the Father through him. Not jsut that he was a great teacher 
or philosopher but that he was divine and it is through attonement 
that we are saved. 


Lutheran:

"Regarding the Christian faith... There's a very strong tie to the 
history of Israel and to the Old Testament. Jesus himself, as the 
center of Christianity, was a Jew. That's very, very significant, very 
important. The Chrstian faith is historyically related. The 
particularities of history - of how God actually operates and works, 
how He reveals Himself and deals with the world and people in the 
course of human history - is actually essential for defining who 
Christians are and who Jews are and also who God is." 

"When you ask a Christian who or what is God, it's whoever or whatever 
raised Jesus Christ from the dead - the one whom he called 'Father'" 

"The Trinity is the history of God. It's a way of looking at the Bible 
and the history that it talks about and identifying God as He has 
identified Himself in that history as Father, Son and Holy Spirit." 

"Christ is the absolute center in Chrsitian thought."


Other interesting comments:

Episcopal:
"The Savior saves us from the brokeness of the world FOR a life of 
joy, hope, peace and love rather than saving us FROM damnation and 
hell." 


Lutheran:
"Being itself is a relationship. All being related to the Creator. The 
Creator is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This relationship is what 
makes up God Himself (there's a relationship going on WITHIN the 
Godhead). Love is mirroring [the relationship of] the Trinity."