Ok here's an "honest question" from me...What's the significance of the orange on the seder plate. I know it's not traditional, and has something to do w/ Jewish feminism, but why? I went to a couple of seders when I was younger (middle school) and never saw an orange, of course.

Ummm can someone please tell me what does "purple pu$$y" mean?

:p

No it was started by a bunch of Jewish feminists and signifies equality from this statement: "A woman belongs on the bimah as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate."

-Rudey
--I'd flip out if I went to a seder with oranges and had to sit with feminists.

I would also like to add, "christening" for Roman Catholic is mostly done on babies, or childrn. I was "christened" in the third grade on a Tuesday, my First Reconciliation the following Monday, then the next month my first Holy Communion. Then I was 17 when I was confirmed.

I will never have Holy Orders so the next sacrements for me are Matrimony, Anoiting of the Sick and then death rites.

The first ones are for youner people, then confirmation is like a to basicaly say " ok, my family has raised me in the Roman Catholic Church, and as an adult I agree with it. I want to be part of this faith, and I come freely on my onw accord"


::::::::::::

Ok so here is my question.
Which is the correct term:
Jew, Jewish, Hebrew, Isrealites (sp) ?

and I heard the the Jewish church believes that there was Jesus bar Joseph aka Jesus Christ. Is this true, and if it is what does the church believe?

Christia

Another important distinction regarding Catholic baptism/christening is that it is "washing away" the original sin that the Roman Catholic church believes we are born with (because of Adam and Eve). That is why they feel it is important for infants to be baptized. That way, if they pass away before willingly committing themselves to a Christian/Catholic life, they are still accepting into heaven. As others have said, Confirmation is when the person is old enough to accept the Holy Spirit into their lives being knowledgable about what they are doing.

The "original sin" idea is controversial and is one of the things that people can't fathom. How can an innocent baby be sinful?

I was baptized Catholic but wasn't raised Catholic and chose to go through the sacraments of Reconciliation, Communion and Confirmation after I graduated from college. I had gone to every church I could find while in college to find where I felt most comfortable and chose Catholicism. I admit though, I don't believe that God would send a baby to Hell because it wasn't Baptized.

Also, Catholics repeat the ritual with water each time they enter the church. There are fountains or bowls of Holy Water and we "cross ourselves" with the water each time to remind us of our Baptisms. There are also other times during the year, particularly at Easter where the Priest dips a broom type thing into Holy Water and shakes it over each row in the church to remind us of our Baptism.

There were several people in my RCIA (Ritual for Christian Initiation of Adults.. the Catholic conversion process) who were baptized into other faiths and the Catholic church recognizes those Baptisms. The reason that others cannot take Communion in the Catholic church is because most other denominations (all?) take Communion as symbolic whereas Catholics believe that the bread and wine are transfigured into the body and blood of Christ during the mass. They feel it is important that the recipient of the Eucharist understands and believes this.

Dee

While I've visited & attended 23 different sects of Christianity, I am mostly non-denominational or a blend of full gospel Baptist. We believe in infant dedication & adult immersion, also.

I've never heard a Protestant sect refer to a "christening" - I think that's mostly a Roman Catholic phrase.

Here are my questions, and I have been wondering about these for a while...

1). What exactly is the Christian denomination called in which the women are not allowed to cut their hair or wear pants? (I went to school with a few of these girls, but I was afraid to ask because I didn't want to offend them.)

2). Why don't Jehovah's Witnesses celebrate Halloween, birthdays, etc.?

Firstly, I can't believe I forgot about the holy water. D'oh! :p

And secondly, that's also why Catholics are discouraged from taking communion in other churches - because it doesn't mean the same thing to them as it does to us.

Jew is a noun. (ie. Hi I am a Jew)
Jewish is an adjective. (ie. Hi I am Jewish)
Hebrew is used in the modern world to refer to a language, but in the bible Hebrew is used for Jews. (ie. Hi I speak Hebrew)
Israelite...well I've never heard that term outside of really old texts so nobody ever would probably use it.

And there is no Jewish church. It is referred to as a synogauge, temple, or shul.

Jesus bar Joseph means Jesus son of Joseph. Jews have never claimed Jesus did not exist but merely that we do not believe he is the messiah. That is your sunday school lesson on Tuesday night.

-Rudey

1) I think that they are Pentecostal. There were a few girls who identified themselves as Pentecostal and didn't cut their hair or wear pants at my high school.

2) According to my mom who did a paper on it, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons don't celebrate holidays because they believe that every day is a celebration and that one day isn't any more special than the next because they're all coming from the same place.

1) There's a few, but most of them are on the Pentacostal/Fundamentalist line of thinking. I think it's in Corinthians about women needing to look like women and men needing to look like men.

2) I understand the Halloween bit, since I don't celebrate it either, but I'm not sure about birthdays. Halloween is a pagan holiday, and that's why Jehovah Witnesses don't celebrate it. Actually, that's their reasoning for Christmas, too, since Jesus was more probably born in September/October than in December. When pagans were being "Christianized", many of the missionaries thought it better to let them retain their old holidays & give them Christian names, rather than try to deter them. That's the short version! :)

Israelite=some one from what of the 12 Tribes of Israel. Israel here means a person. In the nation called Israel in the old Test. there were Ten tribes, and two in the land of Judea in the south. I think they should use that map to settle differences about palenstine today, since there is a place called that, and its positioned south of Israel and west of Judeah. (going from memory).

Question for Christians: which explination of the trinity is older?

Here's a q-
I am Episcopal, although I went to a Catholic school for 8 years.

My parents (Episcopal) genuflect whenever the cross passes us as it's moving down the aisle- no one in the Catholic church does this.

Is this an Episcopal thing?? Why am I bowing and kneeling like 80 times in one mass??

http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm

That gives a history of Halloween but here is some of the info ...

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
(lots more interesting info and then...)
So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.

JWs use two Scriptural events to justify not celebrating birthdays: Pharaoh's Birthday (Gen. 40:20-22) and Herod's (Matt. 14:6-10).
They say that all other holidays have pagan roots and therefore do not celebrate them.

Dee

That's the explanation that I alway get.

GPhiLlama, I attend a Pentecostal church and we women do wear pants and cut our hair. :) I guess it all depends on what church organization you belong to though.

Yes. I know of some Baptist churches at home that have these practices, but they're not affiliated with the 'official' Southern Baptist Convention. A lot of times things come down to nomenclature and affiliation. I'm not sure if there's one national mainstream demonination that has these practices.

DIVINE 9 QUESTION!

Okay, this has bugged me for a looooooooong tim because I've never found a "true" answer, so here it is:

Let's say a Caucasian rushes Divine 9 GLO, can they be extended a bid and actually pledge?

In Judaism, it is believed that children should follow the religion of their mother. So, let's say dad is Catholic and mom is Jewish, the children are technically Jewish.

Is this the same in Catholism, Christianity, and Islam? Do these 3 religions also hold the same belief that children are whatever religion their mother is?

Yes. I don't think it happens too often, but it happens.

As here: link

NPHC organizations have members of all races. And as an aside, that thread isn't the best example of the question because it got out of hand, but I digress.

It did answer her question well but I also see your point.
That being the case, if you want me to delete the original post linking to it (plus this one referencing) and wish to delete yours quoting it, on that basis please pm me.

Peace.

This is not the case with Christianity. That is, "being a Christian" is not on a paternal or maternal basis. Each human being must choose for him or herself whether or not to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour.


The thing is that, according to an anthropology study I conducted with a Jewish woman, Judaisim is in a bit of a "twilight zone" between being a religion and being an ethnicity of sorts. In my ethnography, my participant explained to me that Judaism runs along maternal lines. She explained this by using her own daughter as an example. Her daughter elected to become a Christian by her own accord. However, because her mother is Jewish, the daughter is automatically Jewish too, even though she chose another religion. That says to me that, in some cases, "Jewishness" isn't always necessarily linked to actual religious ritual practice.


.....Kelly :)

Slight correction - in Reform Judaism, you are considered Jewish if either parent is Jewish and you have been raised in the Jewish faith. So if dad is Jewish, mom is Christian, and the kids are raised Jewish - they're Jewish.

That's probably it. I went to high school in south Mississippi, and that was the practice of the one Pentecostal church in the area. Can't base 'em all after one!

Thanks for answering my questions, you all. :)

Believe it or not I have never thought about the genuflecting thing although I always do it. It is also done when entering the pew for service and then when you exit the pew to go to the alter to take communion. My honest guess is a sign of respect and/or reflection.

Your question about the bowing and kneeling thing reminds me of an old joke that compares Episcopal mass with a football game...stand up, sit down, kneel...

BTW, the Episcopal church also believes that the wine and bread are the body and blood of Christ.

And most of the people I am familiar with that believe that women should not cut their hair, where pants, or even go to the beach (women and men should not bath together) are what they call Fundamental Baptist, which as someone else has said is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Comvention.

Took a while to find this thread
 

If a child of black parents is born, then naturally his parents teach him about the world etc while he is young; through what they say, demonstrate etc. I understand that while a child is younger black parents might well teach him about how there was slavery etc and all the atrocities that accompanied it; for a long time? What I am wondering about is, when telling junior of these happenings how do they ensure - perhaps more with a younger child? - that s/he will not grow up resenting/prejudiced in their life toward white people because of those historic events. That he/she will not grow to think more negatively(/attribute behavior to) of white people based on that shameful past. Perhaps even because when growing up they do not/can not make such an easy distinction between things. Thanks.

To be honest onetime, I don't know if that's something that can be taught. I think it mostly comes from personal experience.

If parents teach their kids to love their neighbor as you love themselves, it's a good place to start. If parents teach kids about anger management, tolerance, and forgiveness, they're ahead of the game.

Personally, it took going to an integrated school and making friends with people of many races to learn to channel that anger into something more positive. I can't lie -- the anger still exists sometimes -- and I'm sitting here as a black woman who is a member of an NPC sorority. But as soon as I learned to look as people as individuals not as a collective, what anger I was holding on to dissipated over time.

bump... I think you said it beautifully.

I have another question. Why do people call some one who is black African-american? Becuase not every one who is black is American and 2) not all black people are from africa, (originaly all people are from Africa, I am not going get into that)

and in America, How many generations does it take where you are no longer of your ancesters nationality. Like my mom is a 2 generation American, but considers herself American, with an Irish backround... even though both sides of her family is as pure as an Irish family can be genecticly.

The movie Malcolm X explains this really well.

The word "black" has negative connotations (i.e. black moods, black magic etc) as opposed to the positive connotations of "white" (white as snow, white magic) so people did not want to be referred to as black. African-American expresses that they still felt part of Africa.

That is a REALLY stripped-down explanation, and if anything I said came out wrong, my apologies.

I think it would be up to the individual, I would think. There are Italian-Amerians who've been in the US for generations who are still very proud of their Italian heritage, and therefore will continue to refer to themselves as Italian-American. Some people stop referring to their heritage after two generations, but then their kids become interested in their background and may refer to themeselves as hyphenated Americans.

I am Methodist and I was Christened when I was little. I have always been told that Christening and Baptism are the same thing, but that different denominations do it differently. For instance, I was sprinkled with holy water on my head, but my Baptist friends were fully immersed and were not baptised until they decided they were ready. The meaning is supposed to be the same though.

The people with long hair, no makeup and skirts that I have known are Pentecostal. A girl I went to school with said that the hair is a womanly feature and that you should keep it to give glory to God. She also had to have a special uniform made for her so that she could be in marching band and not wear pants.

I've been reading these posts...and I must say, I know VERY little about other religions. I don't know where I've been but I just realized that I don't know ANYONE who is Jewish. I didn't realize there were somany people on here that were. I don't know very many Catholics either. Man, I really do live in the Bible Belt. Everyone I know is Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian...etc. This is an interesting thread to me.

OK, forgive me if this is a really dumb question...I should know the answer to this. But what exactly does "Kosher" mean? I see things like "Kosher Salt"... huh?