Hey Kids, Maybe Don't Call People Heretics

Hey so I just saw someone throw out the word “heretic” in a way that sort of offended me.  

I claim “heretic.” My worldview is fairly different from most of the people I know who like to claim the title “Christian.”  I feel, however, that folks should not call OTHER people that word.  If I want to tell you I’m a heretic and explain my belief system, that’s cool.  If YOU are going to tell me that I’m a heretic by virtue of whatever belief or because I’m Protestant (or because anyone’s not what you’re considering “orthodox”), then you are throwing around hurtful words.  People have bee told since the 200s that because their views didn’t reflect a powerful majority that they were damaging to the Christian movement and that their voices could be violently destroyed.

My name’s Joliene.  I am a panentheistic Christian with a low Christology and from a low church, Protestant tradition.  My community is noncreedal and I love that because no self-righteous individual at my church can call me a heretic.  I don’t believe in resurrection or trinity beyond metaphor, Heaven or Hell, the infallibility of the Bible, the authority of the Pope or any other dude-in-a-robe, and while I believe that Jesus was a unique person whose ministry has profoundly changed my life and expanded my thinking, I don’t think he was made of more “God stuff” than you or me.  I don’t believe in a virgin birth, transubstatiation, or that baptism, Eucharist, nor confession are required for salvation.  In fact, I think salvation language is bankrupt.

It is entirely likely that we think differently about these things and I intend to respect and value the way that different cosmologies are meaningful to different people.  

If you're in one of those high church traditions that are fond of dogma and doctrine, don’t call me a heretic.  This tradition is just as much mine as it is yours.