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Does this actually matter to anyone? Religion as practiced by most adherents is a loose collection of rituals and superstitions that serves chiefly as a tribal identifier; to the extent that such people follow their own religious doctrines, they tend to pick and choose what already fits their values while selectively ignoring anything that doesn't. This is why, for example, you can have an explicitly pacifist faith that decries the accumulation of wealth serve as the official religion for a bunch of bling-obsessed warrior aristocrats without everyone's head exploding or decamping to a better aligned belief system.
In the last iteration of the thread, someone articulated the point that right now Christianity is very heavily right-coded and enjoys a fairly poor reputation with young people (not unrelated). These commercials seem best understood as attempts to challenge both of those perceptions. It may not be true to some platonic ideal of Christian theology, but you can say that about most Actually Existing Christianity (it's only relatively recently that they mostly chileld.
Yes! Though I don't think you have to appeal to Theology as a dogma to make this point. I'm atheist/agnostic and I can still see that the gospel was onto something with game-theoretic, social, and causal merit here. Christianity gained dominance in the real world at a time when there were plenty of other people preaching their own versions of Judaism. It was a competitive memetic environment. It matters to people in the sense that if you fail to convey the things that actually made the gospel powerful, you won't touch anyone. And part of that was definitely the radical proposition that those of higher status ought to perform actual care for those of lower status.
I am positing that this had little to do with the details of Christian theology, most of which weren't even settled until after a particular sect of Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and resolved its disagreements in the traditional way. Conveying the good vibes is more important to attracting converts (or just avoiding deconversion) than being theologically sound. Is the ad in question theologically dubious? Yeah, probably. Is it any more theologically dubious than other modern (or ancient, for that matter) variants of Christianity? Probably not.
(Also, you're producing for an American audience. The Good News is not news for most of them them, so that's not a very strong angle of attack).
Theology and soteriology (study of salvation) have always had a push-and-pull relationship. How much of what is true about God must be believed accurately for a saving faith? (Not much.) Does knowing a lot of theology before being saved actually reduce the likelihood of conversion? (Probably.) Is the underlying reality of God, the afterlives, and the spiritual realm(s?) able to be modeled by human minds? (Comic books have tried in fascinating ways, from DC’s The Source to Marvel’s One Above All to Cerebus The Aardvark’s asymmetrical Light and Dark.) What does it matter if nobody believes on a gut level anymore?
So yes, please take it back to first century Roman-occupied Judea. Take it back to an era where reading the future in the guts of animal sacrifices was official Roman decision-making policy and the high priest of Israel transferred the sins of his people to a ram before running it off a cliff. Take it back to the era when “love your neighbor as much as you love yourself” was simple, spiritual, subversive, and called “atheistic” by the polytheists who ran the Mediterranean world. Take it back to when we didn’t have Superman and Wolverine returning from death whenever the comic sales slumped, like Greek heroes escaping the clutches of Hades.
And if you want to see what such a simple, awe-filled faith looks like, watch The Chosen. It’s a bingeable dramatization of the gospels, in prestige TV format. It shows how a simple rabbi from the rural hill country overturned the world. And it’s making white Baptist-flavored Christians invite their neighbors to watch Brown Jesus unironically.
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Yes, theology matters quite a lot to many people. In general though Protestant denominations care much less than Catholics or Orthodox Christians.
Is this really true? Perhaps I'm just in the "really cares about theology" corner of denominations. But I know a bunch of other laypeople besides me who I know have read at least a thousand pages of theological writings, not counting the bible. (one I directly know, at least four more whom it would be inconcievable for them not to have done so, many more who I'd be surprised if that weren't the case, and still more who I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was the case)
Actually, yeah, maybe I'm in a subculture, that's definitely less true broadly across protestantism. That said, what with preaching being a larger emphasis, I'd expect that that would push a little more towards caring about teaching. I guess you definitely see it in the end-times things, in some groups.
My sense was that Eastern Orthodox Christians were often there for the vibes, or maybe due to their ethnicity.
My feeling is that there’s a pretty big division between ‘serious’ or ‘hardcore’ Catholics who do things like have big families and refuse to go to gay weddings, who really care about theology(the actual IRL tradcaths are a subset of this group), and ‘Sunday’ Catholics who go home after church and don’t think about it all that much until next weekend. I kind of assume it’s the same for Eastern Orthodox because there’s similar dynamics.
Now, disclaimer that this is just IME, but IME evangelicals don’t care very much about theology, even very religious ones. They’re more interested in ascertaining a minimum level of commitment and piety than they are in the details of theological beliefs and surveys tend to show that they really don’t know a lot about their own theology, either.
Yeah, this seems pretty true. (And the further divide, I assume, between those who call themselves Catholic but don't even attend regularly.)
I think this varies, but after rethinking it, yeah, you're generally right. Doctrine can be seen as a barrier to unity (which it can be, all too often!), and as relatively unimportant compared to caring about Jesus, the basics of the gospel, etc. They will have some beliefs that they're committed to, but it's not as central.
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