I met a woman who identifies with this faith and just wondering how crazy it is. Yes I know google is my friend and i have googled it, but I prefer to hear things from REAL people. Does this sect of Christianity have the strict rules that Catholicism does? specifically the no oral sex part What about other rules? I'm Christian but don't particularly identify with any particular sect so I'm flexible to whatever type of Christianity someone is into (i'm flexible even if they aren't Christian) but I can't have lame rules like no oral sex be a factor in my life. Anything you know would be great. Thanks!
I know of them as being largely a middle eastern/African sect of Christianity but I do not know a lot about the particulars of their dogma in relation to other Christian sects.
Just do what thousands of other sects and assorted neurotics, New Atheists, homosexuals, and other self-indulgent sociopaths do and just rewrite any of the books to suit your personals whims and urges of the moment.
Indeed I did, but your response is slightly on the vague side. Was there some topic in my OP you wanted to elaborate on? I'm always up for friendly and civilized discussion
Based on your topic post, it's a good idea for you to stay clear of all branches of Orthodox Christianity. .
Jesus never made any silly rules about SEX. I worship Jesus, not the people that took his words and transformed them into the religion of their chosing. Jesus was all on board for sex. https://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/jesus-on-sex Nobody in here answered my questions so I did some more extensive research on Coptic Christianity and a lot of things come up about FASTing (which I do anyway for non-religious purposes). I didn't see any lame rules about no sex before marriage or no oral sex or any of that nonsense so I think I'm in the CLEAR
My suggestion would be to have a friendly and honest discussion with your friend about it if she is open to discuss her beliefs. Regardless of what the textbook answer is to the tenants of her faith each individual can be drastically difference. My family is a perfect example. We run the gambit with a family member who is a pastor to hardcore atheist on the other end with most somewhere in between each one having drastically different spiritual views.
I don't know anything about it beyond what little I've read. It seems to be another authoritatively prescribed version of Christianity where followers are told what to believe. If so, I'd rank it as more 'faith twisted for social control.' But then again, who knows if what I've read is accurate or not.
Word has it that they preserved a host of astonishingly interesting and valuable writings into our time period such as the fascinating Book of Adam and Eve that was translated from one of the Coptic Ethiopian languages several centuries ago. http://reluctant-messenger.com/eden_1.htm Some scholars would trace their origins back to the time of King Solomon. Other scholars would trade them back to the Book of Acts of the Christian Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/niv/act/8/27/s_1026027 Acts 8:27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[fn] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship,
Darthcervantes - The Ethiopian Coptic Church like the Egyptian one, rejected the nature of Christ as defined in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and thereby separated themselves from the other Orthodox churches. That's why they're called 'Copts'. The differences with the Greek Orthodox Churches are minimal though, and they are tryin to unite. As for sex: The teaching of Saint Paul about sexuality is analogous to his teaching about eating and drinking and all bodily functions. They are given by God for spiritual reasons to be used for His glory. In themselves they are holy and pure. When misused or adored as an end in themselves, they become the instruments of sin and death. The apostle specifically says that all sexual perversions have as their direct cause man’s rebellion against God.
The Jesus character was born out of wedlock and he had hooker ancestors. And he was always washing guys feet, a biblical sexual metaphor.
think it's pretty similar to mainstream Christianity. It would be most similar to Eastern Orthodox, which is like halfway between Catholicism and Protestantism. They probably believe in supernatural things more so than average Christians do in North America. There was recently that incident in Libya where several Coptic Christians were beheaded by muslims rather than renounce their faith. Doubt there's many Americans that would have held out like that in that sort of situation.
It's simple; if you don't want to be a Christian, then don't be one; just go be a mindless self-indulgent hedonist. The theology really doesn't have to please you or conform to your latest whims. Why not worship this 'Wyrd of Gawd' kid? He seems like your type.
So, some background here: I wrote a couple of papers about the Oriental Orthodox Churches (which includes Coptic Orthodoxy) back in college in my History of Christianity class. I promise I'm getting to the sex stuff, but wanted to address the "how crazy" part first. They essentially split from the churches that would later become the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church waaaaay back in the 5th Century. All of these churches were meeting to discuss the nature of Jesus in the nitty-gritty detail, which was what a lot of these councils were about, and this Council decided that Jesus, though a single being, had two different natures: a distinct human nature and a distinct divine nature. The OOC folks maintained that this was wrong, and that Jesus only had one, unified nature, and they split from the others. Honestly, the relationship remained pretty cordial, and they still share a TON in common with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, aside from this one niche theological issue. Even then, it doesn't really come up that often anymore and I doubt all that many Coptic or Eastern Orthodox lay people even care about the "debate." Like other Orthodox churches, they really aren't into proselytizing, which means a small group that can come off as secretive and weird, so some people get the impression that they are a cult. TL;DR, though, nah, they aren't that crazy. Sex-wise, I'm going to rely on anecdotes here, and most of the Orthodox folks I've known have been Eastern Orthodox, but the two are likely similar in this regard, since they are highly similar in pretty much every other way. I dated an Orthodox girl in high school, and she didn't really care at all about waiting for marriage and didn't care about oral sex. I was the prude in that relationship, having been brought up Southern Baptist. I had two Orthodox friends in my gaming group in college. Took me about a year to figure it out, but it turns out they were a gay couple, and it wasn't exactly the best kept secret at their church, but no on really cared. Their church had a very much had a don't-ask-don't-tell attitude to, well, all sexual relationships, not just homosexual ones. I attended Orthodox services for years. I never had any intention of converting, but they were interesting, the services were beautiful (often entirely sung, aside from a short homily), and the people were friendly and never pushed anything on me. I never heard any kind of judgement about sex come up. Ever. Which was odd for me, because that was a constant fixture of my Southern Baptist church. There were a few Orthodox students in my Bible as Literature class. One assignment our professor gave us (and it was funny to see him laugh about how this could get him fired) was to pick some kind of popular/mainstream belief and make the argument that it stands in contradiction to the Bible. One of the Orthodox girls specifically focused her paper on criticizing Catholic attitudes toward sex. If you were to ask her priest, I'm sure he'd say that you two should wait for marriage, but theory and practice often differ. Unless she's walking around with a head covering even when she's not at church, then she probably isn't that fundamentalist about her religion.
You have no idea what the Copts go through in Egypt. When Nassar kicked out the Christian foreigners, the Copts who are the original Egyptians, and who constitute about 10% of the population had no place to go. The plan at the time was to kill them all. They are still being treated as second class citizens by the courts. That the Copts weren't killed then, had to do with a miracle that occurred in the town of Zeitoun. It changed people's hearts and it went on for years.
