From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxa!mhuxh!bwkna!ljs
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Hutchinson and Religious Matters
Article-I.D.: bwkna.134
Posted: Wed Feb  2 13:46:20 1983
Received: Thu Feb  3 05:21:36 1983


As a "Liberal Christian" with some knowledge of Roman Catholic -
Anglican - Mainline-Protestant Churches, I have never heard of a Church
which offers the sacrament of Communion to non-Christians.  Often
Communion is even denied to members of other denominations.  (BTW,
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 who are not members
of the congregation 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.