From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxa!mhuxh!bwkna!ljs
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Hutchinson and Religious Matters
Article-I.D.: bwkna.133
Posted: Wed Feb  2 13:33:27 1983
Received: Thu Feb  3 05:24:44 1983

As a "Liberal Christian" with some knowledge of RC (Roman Catholic) -
Anglican - Mainline-Protestant Churches, I have never heard of a Church
which offers the sacrament of Communion to a non-Christian.  Often
Communion is even denied to members of other denominations.  (By the way,
in some churches Communion is not even a sacrament - the outward and 
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace - it's a "memorial.")
Often the test of the acceptability of persons of other denominations
is whether or not they are baptized members of some Christian body.

Again, I have never heard of a Communion service without some form
of confession preceding it.  Sincere repentence is generally considered
a requisite to the communion, but mainline Protestantism generally
maintains that confession need not be heard by anyone but God;
an intercessor like a priest or other "trustworthy believer" is 
not necessary.  They're 'hard-wired' and don't need a dialup.

These religious articles on the net indicate a rather surprising
ignorance about Christianity in general.  Most people seem to think
there is much more coherence and unanimity of belief in the 
Christian world than is generally true.  Any two Christians, even of
the same denomination, can have widely divergent religious beliefs.
That's what all the fuss was about during the Reformation, when
Hus and Zwingli and Luther and Calvin got in their licks.  They
didn't agree with one another, and their religious descendants are
even more widely at variance today.